Peter Hoffmann's Bio

Peter Hoffmann was born in 1968 in Southern California and grew up in the original wine country in Rancho Cucamonga, on a property once part of the Guasti Vinyards that boasted to be the largest vineyard in the world, totaling 5000 acres.  However, By the time the neighborhood were Peter grew up in was constructed, the citrus and avocado industry had also moved into the area and most of the vineyards that were all once planted in mission variety that were slotted to go to the Catholic Church had been left abandoned due to Pierces Disease.  Most wine growers moved north where climate and disease pressure were more favorable for wine grape growing production and quality.  As a child Pete roamed the vineyards and orchards hunting rabbits, make wine with his Father.  A life shifting experience for Peter was witnessing a the bygone era of the vineyards erode and disappear to exponential human encroachment, seeing old family wineries sell their properties to the highest bidding developers converting the beautiful old vineyards into  housing developements, movie theatres, restaurants, malls and freeways didn't resonate with what Peter wanted in his life and soon after highschool found himself longing for the views of the vineyards and the smell of sulfur dust.  In the late 80's Pete follwed the vineyards North and studied Ecology and Systematic Biology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a minor in viticulture. 

By the early 90's Peter was finally on the path to his dreams of growing grapes and making wine.  He was working on the central coast planting thousands of acres of grapes and learning to make wine and also learning about this new "organic farming" practices.  In 2000, Pete moved north to Napa where a job managing hundreds of acres of some of the best napa grapes to over 50 different Napa wineries.  In 2001, Peter was hired by Stags Leap Wine Cellars working side by side with Warren Winiarski, further refining his farming and winemaking abilities.  In 2003 Peter started his winery and in 2005 started the Aum brand, in 2008 he aquired a small 4 acre vineyard where his first 2009 Aum Estate Cabernet Sauvignon was just recently released.

Since 2008, Peter Hoffmann has been working for Benziger Family Winery assisting in the viticulture and management of all of their Estate Biodynamic Vineyards.