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Our Story

The Fat Dragon story began in May of 2008.

At the time, Dani was working for Wynn Resorts, where she would spend 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 sommeliers and 29 dining outlets throughout 4 resort properties in Las Vegas and Macau, China.  (Prior to being recruited to Wynn, she spent 7-years in New York City as the corporate wine director at the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group where she oversaw a $30 million a year wine program across 17 restaurants. In these roles, Dani 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.  This broad knowledge base has been instrumental in shaping the direction of Fat Dragon’s program.)

But back to Fat Dragon …

Dani was in Hong Kong on business attending a prestigious Domaine de la Romanée-Conti wine tasting being held at Happy Valley, one of the oldest horse racecourses in Asia and while most of us would have sat back and enjoyed a vertical tasting of the most expensive wines in the world, Dani snuck away to place a bet. She looked at the lineup and, unbeknownst to her at the time, picked the long shot at 44 to 1 odds – a horse called Fat Dragon. She bet all of the Hong Kong Dollars she had in her pocket on Fat Dragon to win – and he won! It was destiny.

While Dani went on to blow all of her winnings that night and that could have been the end of the story, she arrived back home to the states, told Mike, and his first reaction was “wow, that’s a great name for the future wine brand we’ve always dreamed of creating together“ and since that time, Fat Dragon has been a project percolating in the background as Dani and Mike juggled life and other initiatives – and sought out the perfect place to call home and give proper life to Fat Dragon.

Fast forward to 2018. We found home in the form of a beautiful 30-acre property that had 16.5 acres of derelict vineyard, but amazing terroir located just outside the quaint town of Healdsburg, California. It’s one of those rare parcels up on the bench that only comes up once in a generation if you’re lucky, and it had been in the same family for 50-years.

Why Healdsburg?  For us, our very first wine trip over 20 years ago was to Healdsburg and we just fell in love with it.  It has always held a special place in our hearts and the fact that it had become a center of excellence for food, wine, and hospitality, and the Dry Creek Valley itself an ideal growing region for the Rhone grape varietals we are just so passionate about, made it a no-brainer.

In order to execute on our vision for Fat Dragon and produce truly world class fruit and wines, we gutted the property. Once the vineyard was cleared, all new hardware, irrigation systems, drainage, and deer fencing were installed. In 2019, a new agricultural well was drilled.

The vineyard was replanted to 2 clones of Cabernet Sauvignon and Rhone varietals that we love and that do so well here such as Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvédre. The buildings were all renovated or rebuilt and then we waited … and waited. It takes 3 years to produce the first commercial crop and for Fat Dragon that arrived in 2022 and we bottled that first vintage in the spring of 2024.

We won’t lie. This was an intimidating 6-year project, and it took a lot of hard work, grit and determination for us to get to this point. But we wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the world. Realizing our dream and this vision for Fat Dragon has been incredible. We are just so proud of and excited about the quality of the fruit and the wines we’re producing, and we feel so fortunate to wake up every day to the beauty and nature that surrounds us here at Fat Dragon Farm.  It is a true gift.

We hope you will support us on this amazing Fat Dragon journey and please come visit us soon.

Cheers!

Dani & Mike Price

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