Ted Osborne

Ted Osborne started in the wine business back in 1995 with a harvest job at Cakebread Cellars. “I worked like a dog and loved every minute of it,” he says of the experience. Having a ravenous appetite to learn the art of winemaking while getting his hands dirty, Osborne began a journey that would take him around the world to work in top winemaking regions, gathering a body of knowledge and experience that would guide him in making his own wines. While maintaining his cellar rat job at Cakebread, he worked harvests at Passing Clouds Winery in Australia, and Rupert & Rothschild in South Africa. He then left Cakebread to make wine at Chateau du Seuil in Bordeaux, France. Returning from France in the winter of 2000, Osborne was brought on board at Storybook Mountain in Napa to help with their burgeoning Cabernet program. After two years at Storybook, Ted and his wife Kim began their Olabisi wine project. “Jerry Seps was nice enough to let us make our wines in the Storybook caves that first vintage,” says Ted. Once word got out of his success with the Olabisi wines, in 2004, the Piña brothers hired him to make their vineyard designate Napa Cabernet Sauvignons. This further success led to offers to make wines for some of the most distinctive boutique wineries in Northern California.

Today, Osborne continues to apply his expertise to a number of premier Napa Valley vintners, focusing on distinct vineyard designate wines, made with minimal intervention, to bring out the character of each vineyard in a balanced, layered, and elegant fashion.