Ownership
Andrew & Laurel Quady
Chief Executive Officer & Chief Financial Officer
Andrew and Laurel Quady are the founders, C.E.O. and C.F.O. respectively, of Quady Winery. Their path into the wine world began with an exodus from southern California to pursue their dream: a rural way of life making wine. Formerly working in underwater explosives for the U.S. military, peaceful, plant loving Andrew was looking for a natural redirection. He returned to school at U.C. Davis, graduating at the top of his class with a masters in Food Science-Enology. Laurel went back to school and became a licensed C.P.A., opening her own office and funding the fragile first decade of winery production with her flourishing small town practice. Needless to say, Andrew’s inventive nature keeps them both on their toes: with his pioneering use of rare muscat varietals, and his fascination with aromatic herbs, Quady tends to take the market by surprise. The Quadys are known for an uncommonly energetic zest. When they are not exposing the world to their wines, forecasting sales, responding to emails, or navigating financial statements, they can be found hiking the Sierra Nevadas, or enjoying their garden, friends and family.
Allie Quady
Safety, Sustainability, and Communications
Allie started as a general winery worker in high school running lab tests and doing all manner of winery work – which mostly meant cleaning equipment! She traveled widely and joined the Peace Corps after college to help farmers integrate agro-forestry techniques on their farms in West Africa. Returning home with a love for sustainable agriculture, she helped to start the family’s second operation in Southern Oregon and then went to school to study public health, nutrition, and sustainable agriculture at Tufts. She’s certified Organic farms for California Certified Organic Farmers and was the former Program Director at The Ecological Farming Association in California. She joined Quady Winery in 2012 as Communications and Marketing Manager and managed the redesign of quadywinery.com, vya.com, and the creation of saltofthearthwine.com. She upgraded Quady Winery’s marketing collateral to reflect the dynamic and visionary company that she knew from the inside. After handing off the communications reigns in 2017 to pursue an entrepreneurial bug of her own as a professional corporate wellness coach, she remained engaged and active at Quady Winery in a strategic role on the Board of Directors and as an advisor to the sales and marketing department. In 2020 she returned with a focus on employee wellbeing and safety. She led the company in updating safety protocols and engaged all employees in the process to become safety leaders themselves. She recently took on a leadership role in the new Communications team, re-igniting the fire for clearly articulating the unique competitive advantages that can only be found at Quady Winery. Allie is also a leader on the sustainability team, working closely with the production team to pursue sustainability certification in 2022.
Herb Quady
Northwest Regional Sales Manager and Quady North Winemaker
Herb grew up at Quady Winery with a compulsory love for Muscat, but after an accidental exposure to the world of Rhone varieties at the hand of the infamous Randall Graham, he became obsessed with the idea of making (gasp!) table wines. After earning his winemaking props at Fresno State, he eventually found his way into the great unknown of Southern Oregon. While working as the winemaker for Troon Vineyard, Herb and his wife Meloney founded Quady North in 2006 in collaboration with the Quady family. Herb also runs Applegate Vineyard Management Company. In 2014 Herb took on the role of Northwest Regional Sales Manager for Quady Winery.
Crew
Darin Peterson
Winemaker
Darin was promoted from Assistant Winemaker to Winemaker in 2015. A graduate of California State University Fresno’s Enology program, Darin comes to Quady from Simpson Meadow Winery. Prior to winemaking, he spent several years in the advertising industry. It was while working with food stylists and attending client dinner meetings that Darin discovered a passion for food and wine. He briefly considered a second career as a chef, but in the end chose to trade the long hours and frenzied pace of the art department for the long hours and frenzied pace of the crush pad. He says he feels like an artisan when watching over the Vya vermouth: “It’s heady, if I dig into a giant bag of cardamom in the morning, it gets in my clothes and I’m just thinking pie all day long. As you infuse and steep, the flavors deepen and change and build quickly. With wine, the deepening of the flavors takes months, but because vermouth is really like a tea, you can see the results in a much shorter time.”
Juan Cuevas
Cellar Master
Just came to us as no stranger to the wine industry. Juan started working for Central Valley wineries at the age of 18 and became enamored with the frenetic pace and endless work during the Harvest season. Just two short years later, and at the age of only 20, he was granted a leadership position at the winery he was working for at the time and was hooked for life. “Being by far the youngest person on the shift while being the boss filled me with a sense of urgency, motivation and gratitude. I owed it to my crew to be the best leader possible regardless of my age.” 25 Harvest seasons and three wineries later, Juan is now driven most by what he can give back to the Central Valley wine industry. “My priorities will always the same: Keeping our workers safe while delivering the highest quality product for our customers in the most efficient manner possible.” And he’s doing just that!
Dan Mejia
Production Manager
Dan began his career at Quady Winery in July 1985. His first tasks involved working with 500 or so barrels of wine in the aging process and assisting with bottling and labeling. Bottling was done by hand and labeling with a New Jersey Pony Labeler. As the winery grew so did his responsibilities. When Dan started working at Quady we were producing about 5,000 cases of wine. Today he manages a production crew that produces 140,000 cases of wine; bottles and labels all year long, crushes over 1,000 tons of grapes, and produces thirteen different wines. Dan manages and supervises the bottling and labeling of our wines on a 16 head filler corker and a pressure sensitive labeler. He supervises a crew of 5-10 people at any given time.
Ray George
Freight Coordinator & Production Specialist
Ray has been helping at Quady Winery since 2008, and became a full-time Quady crew member in 2013. He studied computer engineering at Fresno State after a five year career in the United States Marine Corps. Initially he worked at Quady part-time, but over time decided to put education on hold to learn more about the wine making process. Ray has assisted with many facets of operations during his time, including compliance, data entry and logistics coordination. He enjoys the pace and challenge presented by the rapid growth Quady Winery is experiencing. In his spare time, he enjoys a nice board game or video game with friends and family.
Dave Glover
General Manager
Dave came to Quady Winery in 2002 when Laurel’s hard drive crashed and panic set in. Dave was working as an IT Consultant and was called in to solve the problem. He was able to retrieve her data off the dead drive and get everything up and running like new. While working on Laurel’s computer, he noticed the office staff was passing around a phone cord to check email and surf the web. Dave knew a friend who had just completed setting up a wireless broadband tower and was looking for a site to test. He insisted that Quady be the first site on this new form of internet in Madera. An exciting partnership formed and in 2004 Dave decided to join the Quady team full time. Over the past 15 years, Dave has picked up several additional duties like pouring at wine tastings, managing exports, supervising office and tasting room staff, wine trail and club party planning, backup bookkeeping, and assisting finance and operations. “I still can’t decide what I like best about Quady… working with the IT infrastructure, our importers, the Quady Crew, or pouring at tastings. If I were forced to choose, it would have to be working with Andrew, Laurel, and the rest of the crew – especially our Winemaker, Darin Peterson and Assistant Winemaker Cole Dennis… they are hilarious!”
Andrea Milliorn
Senior Accountant
Andrea comes to us all the way from Long Island, NY. She moved to Fresno in 1991 when her Father began work in the Central Valley. She earned her business degree with an emphasis in accounting through our local CSU Fresno and finished at Chapman University in Irvine. Andrea’s path led her to Quady Winery after personal desires to grow and succeed through new opportunities, and she seems to be enjoying it! “It seems that from my brief time here that we all have a lot in common and get along wonderfully. Accounting is in my blood and I’m excited to follow in many of my family members’ footsteps.” Although, Andrea has confessed to us that she has an intense Lego problem, and she’s quite the book worm. She’s also a loyal yogi to one of the best yoga studios in the valley and now attends classes 3 to 5 times a week not only for mental clarity and focus but increased energy and strength.
Cassie Oglesby
HR & Business Operations Specialist
Cassie joined the Quady team in Spring 2018 to assist with Finance and Business Operations which later developed into an HR role. Her prior experience made for a good fit: a collective career of operations management and HR for a large security provider and accounting at an agri-irrigation company and local bank. Though she has only lived in the area since 2017, her knowledge and delight of the Madera Wine Trail stretches back to 2009, when she experienced her first Wine & Chocolate Weekend. Wine has long been a part of Cassie’s life, with early childhood memories of Central Coast vacations spent running around the wineries of the Paso Robles Wine Trail, identifying fruit and spice aromas in her parents’ glasses and sipping sparkling grape juice alongside them in tasting rooms. Her final years at UC Santa Barbara were spent working as a tasting room host for Giessinger Winery while sharing the joy and excitement that goes into making and drinking wine. When she’s not at the winery, Cassie enjoys attending concerts, comedy shows and art museums, and challenges herself with 5/10/15k races. She is an ultimate Prince fan, indulges in Stephen King novels and is a craft beer enthusiast.
Jim Fricke
Director of National Sales & Marketing
Jim joined Quady Winery in 2015 to lead Quady Winery’s transition to handling the responsibility of all aspects of sales internally. He has a strong distributor management and sales background developed with over 20 years of industry experience working with large and midsized wineries. He is excited to join a growing company with such a strong family based culture with great wines. When not flying around the country, Jim helps coach his kids’ hockey, baseball, and softball teams while also rooting for his Wisconsin hometown sports teams including Wisconsin, Marquette, the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Green Bay Packers.
