Before and after graduating with an Enology degree from University of California, Davis, Jonathan Lachs worked as a winemaker in the Napa Valley and what would become the Santa Lucia Highlands. A respite from winemaking led to valuable business experience as a program development manager at a prominent Silicon Valley company. Together with his U.C. Davis Enology degreed spouse, they capitalized the development of a vineyard and built a winery of their own at 2,500 feet elevation in the Sierra Nevada Foothills, which they named Cedarville Vineyard.