John Raytek, born in Pennsylvania, was already active in the gastronomy world alongside school and studies due to his father's profession – hotelier. After his studies, he worked for almost 10 years as a sommelier in several upscale restaurants, e.g. in the 5-star luxury hotel "The Little Nell," where he had one of the best mentors with Bobby Stuckey MS.
After his stations in gastronomy, his interest in wine production grew. In 2001, he moved to California and took on the challenge at Flowers Winery as a regular intern, who diligently had to clean 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 the experience at Flowers, he fortunately got a position at Rhys Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which had just started making their own wine. At Rhys, he contributed to super-dense plantings, which are rare in California.
After that, from 2004 to 2010, he worked as a winemaker at Copain and meanwhile founded Ceritas in 2005 with his wife Phoebe Bass.
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 US dollars 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 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 to carry out their individual work. The Bass family has been managing the site biodynamically since 1980.
They get their grapes almost exclusively from monopole 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.
