Dan Fishman

Dan Fishman is Vice President of Winemaking and Vineyards at Donum Estate. As an undergraduate at Cornell University, he studied philosophy and psychology with the goal of pursuing a PhD and becoming a professor, until a wine appreciation class changed his trajectory. After his first harvest internship at Donum in 2007, he continued his training in New Zealand at Wither Hills Winery, where his winemaking career began.

He returned to California for the 2008 harvest and worked several vintages under Donum’s winemaker Kenneth Juhasz, gaining a thorough understanding of the estate’s vineyards. In 2012, he was appointed Head Winemaker. In 2019, he also assumed responsibility for Donum’s estate vineyards and initiated the transition to organic farming, which culminated in CCOF Organic Certification in 2022 and Regenerative Organic Certification in 2023.

He believes that wines of depth, complexity, and vitality can only be achieved through minimalist winemaking with grapes grown in healthy, living soils under conditions as close as possible to those in which the vines evolved. He holds a BA in philosophy and psychology from Cornell University and an MA in social psychology from the University of British Columbia—training that uniquely prepared him to listen to each vineyard and vintage.