Kryss Speegle

Coming Up

At University of California, Davis, Kryss Speegle was trained in a setting known for analytical discipline and a close read of the vineyard as well as the wine. That grounding shows up across a career that moves between production, education, and sales—three parts of the trade that often operate in different registers, but that she works across with fluency. The common thread is a working view of wine as something built from the ground up, then carried through teaching and commerce.

Where They Are Now

As Executive Vice President of Winegrowing at O'Neill Vintners & Distillers, Kryss Speegle works at the point where cultivation, decision-making, and long-range planning meet. The role asks for attention to detail at every scale, from the vineyard to the larger structure of the business, without losing sight of how those parts fit together. Winegrowing, in this frame, is not only a technical exercise; it is also a practice shaped by place, timing, and intention, and her position reflects that layered responsibility. At Napa Valley Wine Academy, she teaches the WSET curriculum and custom-designed programs for private clients. The classroom changes the pace, but not the scope: the work becomes more direct and more structured, with a tighter exchange between teacher and student. Her teaching extends the same practical sensibility that informs her leadership, turning experience into a usable framework for students and clients who arrive with different goals, questions, and levels of fluency. Kryss’s career is notable for keeping one foot in production and the other in education. She works across winegrowing, business, and instruction, moving between the cellar, the classroom, and the marketplace. Each setting asks for a different register, but together they form a single practice: work rooted in the physical realities of wine, and equally attentive to the language that explains it, sells it, and gives it reach. That dual perspective is clear in her own description of the producer’s side of the business. Wine, in her hands, is not only something to sell or study, but something to understand from more than one angle at once—made, taught, and carried outward with a clear view of where it starts and where it lands.

In Their Words “While I do buy wine, our business is primarily as a producer so I see both sides of the coin.”