David Girard Vineyards Introduction

Welcome to our E-Newsletter!  This newsletter will provide you with more information about the wines you love and what we do differently at David Girard Vineyards to ensure a classic, top quality product.  Our love for Rhones grows stronger each season, and we are sure yours will too as we introduce some of the major backbone varietals this summer.  Don’t know much about southern French wines?  Feel intimidated by those long, foreign pronunciations?  Take a look at the character guide to see which of our Rhone varietals suit you best and how to sound like a pro in the tasting room. 
Rhone Character Guide

As a new winery, we would first like to introduce our team at David Girard Vineyards.  Learn about the owner and vineyard manager in this issue and the winemaker, tasting room staff, and other people behind the scenes in the next issues.

Who is David Girard?

As a boy growing up on the outskirts of Detroit, David Girard thought more about hockey, snow, and auto plants than vines and grapes.  But after working in his father’s gas station through high school and college, a stint as an Army enlistee, a Ford manager and accountant, and armed with an M.B.A. from Wayne State University and a law degree from the University of Michigan, a California perspective seemed like a good idea.

With wife and daughter Rachel in tow, David moved to Berkeley where he earned his Ph.D.  After practicing law briefly, he moved to Europe for a year where he studied and traveled.  Upon his return, David accepted a position as a professor at U.C. Santa Barbara in the Graduate School of Education where he taught educational finance and law.  After three years, David returned to Berkeley where his second daughter, Yvette was born.  He taught for some six years at U.C. Berkeley before returning to the practice of law, primarily representing schools and colleges. 

This is the work that brought David to the Sierra Foothills where, in 1992, he purchased the 85 acre property where the vineyard and winery are now located.  Soon after the vineyard was planted, David traveled with winemaker and friend Steve Edmunds (of Edmunds St. John winery) and vineyard manager Ron Mansfield (of Goldbud Farms), through the Rhone Valley of France to learn more about the traditional techniques and varietals of the area.  Today he continues to practice law, yet feels the tug of the vineyard grow stronger with each passing year.

As for other interests, David has been an avid runner for over 35 years and continues to run an occasional 10k and a rare half-marathon.  He has abandoned marathons because they hurt too much.  During the weekend, when he’s taking a break from planting flowers and landscaping at the vineyard, you can find him on the winery patio sipping a chilled glass of Viognier-Roussanne.