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., 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 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 presses, tanks, and the ground, but was also allowed to take care of the Chardonnay production. This way, he could focus on a single grape variety to get to know it better. After his experience at Flowers, he fortunately got a position at Rhys Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which had just begun to produce its own wine. At Rhys, he contributed to super-dense plantings that are rarely found in California.

After that, he worked as a winemaker at Copain from 2004 to 2010 and, alongside that, founded Ceritas with his wife Phoebe Bass in 2005.

Phoebe Bass is the daughter of the Bass family, which has 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 during every car tour, they had paper and pencil 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 various wine styles well.

The starting capital was around 10,000 US dollars from their own pockets each. No one knew the young couple – no scores, no ratings, no reputation. No wonder the grape producers 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, making the location ideal for conducting 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 producers can focus solely on Ceritas individually. This way, there are no issues regarding different opinions from other winemakers, such as on the timing of the harvest and other vineyard work in the same locations.