Ron comes from an historic winemaking family. His great grandfather was a vineyard owner in Friuli (northeast of Venice) in the 1880s, and in the early 1900s his grandfather and a great uncle both started vineyards in Eastern Contra Costa County. Ron and partners started his beloved Veedercrest Winery in 1972 at a time when there were less than 50 wineries in Napa. In 1976 Veedercrest was one of the participants in the historic “Judgement of Paris” wine competition where the California wines bested the French wines, to the dismay of the French (as dramatized in the movie “Bottle Shock”).

Ron is now sole proprietor of Veedercrest, an award-winning Napa Valley Cabernet producer and 2017 Winery of the Year iat the American Fine Wine Invitational. He is also a member of the California Wine Institute and is Chair of  Family Winemakers of California, a winery trade association of 350 California wineries. Veedercrest is currently the second largest west-coast-based importer of  Portuguese wines. Ron has been an investor in and/or the owners’ representative for restaurants in California, Oregon and Hawaii, and attended cooking school in Verona, Italy. He lectures on and writes extensively about food-and-wine pairing and wine topics for a several wine magazines.