John Raytek, born in Pennsylvania, was already involved in the hospitality world alongside school and university due to his father's profession as a hotelier. After his studies, he worked for almost 10 years as a sommelier in several upscale restaurants, for example at the 5-star luxury hotel "The Little Nell," where he had one of the best mentors in Bobby Stuckey MS.
After his time in the hospitality industry, his interest in wine production grew. In 2001, he moved to California and took on the challenge at Flowers Winery as a regular intern, diligently cleaning the press, tanks, and floor, but was also allowed to take care of the Chardonnay production. This allowed him to focus on a single grape variety to get to know it better. After his experience at Flowers, he was fortunate to get a position at Rhys Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which had just started producing their own wine. At Rhys, he contributed to super-dense plantings that are rare in California.
Afterwards, from 2004 to 2010, he worked as a winemaker at Copain and in 2005 founded Ceritas with his wife Phoebe Bass on the side.
Phoebe Bass is the daughter of the Bass family, who have been cultivating Porter Bass Vineyard biodynamically since 1980, also known as Mays Canyon.
Both started looking for more vineyards to build Ceritas. At that time, there was no Google Earth or other digital media showing vineyards and soil types, so paper and pencil were always with them on every car tour to create their own terroir maps. At the same time, they invested a lot of money in wine purchases and tastings to better understand the complex terroir of Sonoma Coast. In the first years, they visited about 20 wineries annually to expand their knowledge. The beginning was not easy, but now the two know Sonoma County and the different wine styles well.
The starting capital was about $10,000 each from their own pockets. No one knew the young couple – no scores, no ratings, no reputation. No wonder the grape growers were initially skeptical about whether they could really pay for the grapes. But everything went well.
The winery is located in Healdsburg, about 1.5 hours by car north of San Francisco, where Arnot-Roberts and Ridge Vineyards are also located.
The first wine came from the Porter-Bass Vineyard. Porter-Bass is completely surrounded by forest and has no neighbors, so the location is ideal for carrying out their individual work. The Bass family has been managing the site biodynamically since 1980.
They get their grapes almost exclusively from monopoly sites so that the grape growers can focus solely on Ceritas individually. This way, there are no problems regarding different opinions from other winemakers, for example about harvest timing and other vineyard work in the same sites.
