How We Ended Up Here…

The main drivers of Pack String Wines are me (James) and my wife (Danielle Frost), two local El Dorado County kids who moved away, but couldn’t resist the pull of family and the wonderful area we called home while growing up.

The two of us had spent our whole lives living in the Placerville/Camino area before heading off to college and eventually traveling the US on a 4 month road trip with what little savings we had after graduation. This all led us into the depths of the wine industry after a few fleeting experiences with it during high school and college.

We ended up in the Willamette Valley in Oregon following a vineyard management job with a few large high end wineries. Luckily Danielle was game to come up there with me and strike out on her own path to work up the ladder in Forensics and along the way take on a few jobs in the wine industry in lab analysis and wine making. 

After nearly 3 years in Oregon Danielle and I were itching to start our own venture to build something for ourselves with our efforts rather than only working for others. The discussion boiled down to a wine brand and possibly our own vineyard and tasting room as that’s where our passion and skill lay. With lots of research and scraping up the money we were able to push through our first harvest and vintage in 2020 working with fantastic local growers, some of whom I have known and worked in their vineyards as far back as the 8th grade.

While all of this was happening another stroke of fate came out of nowhere, an opportunity to work in vineyard management and possibly take up management of a handful of sites in El Dorado County. This fast tracked our process of building up our business and going all in on licensing, launching, and finding a property. To truly chase our dreams Danielle and I ended up leaving our jobs in Oregon, selling our house and after nearly 4 years moved back home. 

The only way we could make all of this happen is that I had the job in vineyard management waiting for me, Danielle was able to grind and get herself a job back in forensics and we have been able to crash land with parents, and in January 2021, we closed on 10 gorgeous acres of vacant land in Camino, CA where we plan to build our home, vineyard and tasting room. 

As Pack String Wines as a label has been launched, the two of us have been working hard to clear and prep the land on our property for future planting and to build a small home for ourselves there. Our ability to make it this far and have some runway ahead of us mostly comes down to planning, effort and a supportive family. We run this business on a shoestring budget as we get started, using the last of our savings after property down payments and construction loan costs and a ton of our own effort to get things done rather than hire out projects. This all means there isn’t a bottle of wine, email, text, call, post, or webpage that isn’t either completely or mostly made/designed by Danielle and I. Our hope is that this comes through in the way our business conducts itself going forward as a force for good in the community while providing quality wines that highlight our home region. 

-James