David Hirsch

The Path

Craft training came early, before wine. Columbia University gave Hirsch a formal education, and 1970–1979 as a garment maker gave him a practical one: measuring, cutting, refining, and learning how objects are built. That background explains the attention to structure and detail that later carried into vineyard ownership. In 1978, he founded and became owner of Hirsch Vineyards, fixing the estate as the anchor of his work. In 2002, he added his own eponymous label, Hirsch, bringing the vineyard’s identity even more directly into the bottle.

The Work Today

Hirsch is the founder and owner of Hirsch Vineyards in Cazadero, United States. In 2014, he was founder there as well, a repetition that points to the same thing: continuity, stewardship, and the patience required by farming. His specialties are Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. "The wealth is in the soil, but the cash is in the bottle" is a plain sentence, and it tells you how the business works. It keeps cultivation and commerce in the same frame: fruit has to be grown, but wine also has to be finished, bottled, and sold. For a vineyard owner, that is not theory; it is the daily arithmetic of the trade.

Signature

David's signature wines include San Andreas Fault. The name puts the vineyard’s geology front and center, using the fault lines below the site as part of the wine’s identity.

In Their Words “The wealth is in the soil, but the cash is in the bottle.” “Everardo and I began planting West Ridge in 1992.”

Acclaim

Recognition around this work gathers at the level of place, not ornament. San Andreas Fault makes the estate’s geology part of the label’s public language, tying the bottle back to the vineyard in direct terms. That clarity of site is one of the main ways the work is read. For a lineage page, the estate itself carries the weight of that recognition: Hirsch Vineyards in Cazadero, United States, with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay among its wines. The enduring point is the vineyard as the center of David Hirsch’s work, with the named label extending that identity rather than replacing it.