Ana Diogo-Draper (Winemaker and Proprietor)

Ana Diogo-Draper is a native of Portugal. Her passion for agriculture and winemaking was nurtured from an early age as she experienced planting vines with family and neighbors who were immersed in the European tradition of wine appreciation. She earned a B.S. in Agriculture Engineering from the University of Évora, the second oldest university in Portugal and located in the heart of the country’s cork industry.

Ana moved to the U.S. in 2005 to join the winemaking team at Rutherford Hill Winery in the Napa Valley. During her eight-year tenure there, she rose from being a harvest intern to lab manager, and ultimately to assistant winemaker. She then accepted a comparable position at Artesa Vineyards & Winery in the Napa Valley, where she worked with Mark Beringer. She was named Director of Winemaking at Artesa in March 2015. She left Artesa in mid-2023 to focus on consulting and her own brand, Ana Diogo-Draper, crafted in Amador County.

Ana was the first woman to hold the top winemaking position at Artesa. Known for her collaborative approach, she thrives in the fast-paced environment of a winery and excels at a wide diversity of roles from laboratory analysis and quality control assurance to creative applications such as sensory analysis and blending. Fluent in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French, she provides her winemaking team with a truly international perspective.

Among her initiatives at Artesa was redeveloping the estate’s vineyards by introducing new clones, using rootstocks better fitted to the soil types, and planting Cabernet Sauvignon vines on the highest elevations of the property. An indication of her growing stature in the field is a Wine Spectator article that focused on California's cooler-climate Chardonnays and recognized Ana "as a leader in the push toward a less oaky, more restrained stye of Chardonnay.”