About Us

Dani and Mike have been together since she was 19 and he was 21 years old. Dani’s passion for food and wine took hold of her early in her career and it would become her focus and a common thread in her relationship with Mike that afforded them the opportunity to visit incredible wineries and regions around the world and meet so many amazing people in the food and wine industry.

Those early experiences formed the foundation of their dream to one day own their own world class vineyard and wine brand – and be in a position to sit on the other side of the table to welcome a community of likeminded people passionate about food and wine intro their own world on a daily basis.

So why Healdsburg and Dry Creek Valley? One of Dani and Mike’s earliest wine trips was to what at the time was a sleepy town in Sonoma County called Healdsburg. It was such a bucolic place and while it would be many years later, this (still) incredibly quaint place had become a center of excellence for food, wine and hospitality – and the Dry Creek Valley itself (where Fat Dragon is located) had become an ideal growing region for the grape varietals Dani and Mike really love and are just so passionate about.

About Dani

Dani spent 14-years building and managing two of the largest and most diverse corporate wine programs in the world for both Wynn Resorts and the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group before she would go on to launch her eponymous brand, Maison du Prix Wines, an online retailer of blue-chip collectible wines from around the world that she continues to operate today.

In these roles, she has and continues to taste through hundreds of wines from around the world each year and is known to have one of the most discerning palates in the industry. It is this breadth and depth of knowledge and experiences that helps guide Dani in every aspect of the wines produced at Fat Dragon.

At Wynn Resorts, Dani spent 7-years as the founding executive director of wine and built a $42 million a year wine operation from the ground up that comprised a team of 24 world class sommeliers and 29 dining outlets throughout 4 resort properties in Las Vegas and Macau, China. Before being recruited to Wynn, she spent 7-years as the corporate wine director at the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group in New York City where she oversaw a $30 million a year wine program across 17 restaurants.

Over the years, Dani has been featured in prestigious publications including Food & Wine, Robb Report, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Vegas Seven, Las Vegas Review Journal, and Las Vegas Sun News and she has lent her time and expertise to charitable organizations including James Beard Foundation and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

About Mike

Mike is a Silicon Valley veteran. He spent his early career in the consumer internet and digital marketing space helping to scale companies including DoubleClick (now owned by Google) and Yahoo. More recently, Mike’s focus has been helping to scale innovative venture capital backed health care and health tech companies with a focus on the senior care space. His most recent adventure in the corporate world was as SVP of Corporate Development at Honor Technology, Inc. (the parent company of Home Instead), where he spent 6-years and helped build their early go-to-market sales team and strategy, and later oversaw both the acquisition and integration of its growing portfolio of corporate owned and operated locations.

Mike is currently on hiatus from the corporate world so he can work with Dani on the launch of Fat Dragon. His focus has been on the design and development of Fat Dragon’s brand logo, website and wine label development, as well as managing all of the budgeting, financials, and setting up all of the other backend infrastructure and logistics needed to operate in a highly regulated industry.

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