Saintsbury Winery was founded by Richard Ward and David Graves in 1981. Incidentally they both met during their graduate studies in Enology at UC Davis while taking a brewing class together and is where they made their first non commercial wine (a Santa Barbara grown barrel fermented Riesling). Fate sometimes works its magic – David had a biology degree from UC Santa Cruz and Richard had an engineering degree and both were pursuing careers in the wine industry.