All entrepreneurial ventures begin with curiosity and an obsession with solving a particular problem. For a teenage Eric Dunham it was his parents locked wine cabinet. So as one does, he learned how to pick locks and when the lock was upgraded, he learned how to pull the door off the hinges. Fast forward a few years after leaving the Navy and the obsession with wine continues. But now, he wants to make it. Without any experience, he volunteers his time at Hogue Cellars before landing an assistant winemaker position at l’Ecole No. 41 in Walla Walla, where they allow him to use their resources to make and bottle wine under his own label in 1995. And people LOVED it. But he couldn’t scale and meet demand operating out of another winery’s facilities. So the aspiring young winemaker found warehouse space in an old WWII airplane hangar in Walla Walla, and was able to convince his parents to help him launch. And the rest is history. He turned nothing but genuine curiosity and a can do spirit into one of Washington’s great wineries.