Dick Shea

The Climb

The shape of the career is built on overlap rather than separation. Dick Shea is the owner and grape grower of Shea Vineyard, and the winemaker of Shea Wine Cellars. Those roles keep the work grounded in farming and cellar practice, with the vineyard supplying the fruit and the winery carrying that fruit through to finished wine. In that arrangement, the measure of the work is not rhetoric but consistency: staying with the vines, and taking responsibility for what they become.

Today

Shea Vineyard remains the farming base, where Dick Shea owns the site and grows the grapes. At Shea Wine Cellars, he holds the combined roles of owner, grape grower, and winemaker. That combination places him at each stage of the process, from vineyard decisions to cellar work, with each step tied to the next. He puts the contrast plainly: "This is such a great counterpoint to Wall Street, having been somebody who worked in those canyons for so long." The line frames the work in practical terms—open land, seasonal cycles, and the physical pace of agriculture and fermentation, in contrast to finance.

In Their Words “This is such a great counterpoint to Wall Street, having been somebody who worked in those canyons for so long.”

Recognition

That view sharpens the read on his work. Instead of treating wine as a stress economy, he describes it as sustained labor, repeated over time, with the payoff coming from the act of making. In Newberg, and through a commitment dating to 1999, the work joins farming, ownership, and winemaking into one connected practice.