He had been working for a wine importing company in San Francisco when he met a man who owned a winery in the Napa Valley.

“We drove up on a Sunday morning during the 1971 harvest and worked for the day and I thought it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever done,” he said.

He spent a year in Germany as an apprentice winemaker in 1974, then 17 years at Joseph Phelps Vineyards.

In 1991, he left to begin Neyers Vineyards. At the time, Neyers and his wife Barbara began the winery, he accepted a position as national sales manager for Berkeley importer Kermit Lynch. Today, he divides his time between these two positions.