Rebecca Kaisichi began her winemaking adventure in 1991. She and her spouse, Tom, had made up their minds to give up their comfortable lifestyle and leave Japan in order to try their hand at making wine. Their approach was anything but conventional, as neither had any formal training in the field.

In 1991, when they packed up and left for Bourgogne, France, with their four-year-old daughter in tow, their family and friends called their scheme a “maboroshi” of a dream. To these friends, maboroshi appeared to be a frivolous hallucination, but to Rebecca and Tom it was the beginning of an extraordinary adventure and vision.

They both enrolled in viticulture and enology classes at the University of California, Davis, in 1992. Through good friends and acquaintances and perhaps a lot of luck, Rebecca has worked with some of the top winemakers, grape growers, and viticulturists of both Napa and Sonoma counties. In particular, she attributes much of her inspiration to two great women in wine, Erin Green and Helen Turley, whose influence has been far-reaching.

She and Tom were able to establish their own wine brand in 1999 and called it “Maboroshi.” Sources for their wine grapes now include their own estate Pinot Noir vineyard, coincidentally named Maboroshi Vineyard. They also produce Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

In addition to wine and her family and children, Rebecca enjoys writing fiction, politics, snowboarding, tennis, and organic and biodynamic agriculture.