William “Bill” George Dyer, 1948–2026: Winemaker, Grower, Naturalist and Friend
By Tim Carl
CALISTOGA, Calif. — Bill Dyer, a renowned Napa Valley winemaker and grower whose life moved easily between vineyard rows, mountain trails, wild mushroom patches and the quiet labor of community service, died at home April 18. He was 77.
For those who knew him, Bill was never only one thing. He was a winemaker with deep technical skill, a grower who believed farming carried environmental responsibility, a careful forager, an adventurer, a storyteller, a board member, a neighbor and a friend. He was also, for 57 years, the partner of Dawnine Sample Dyer, his wife, best friend and fellow winemaker.
Born Oct. 8, 1948, in Berkeley to Dorothy and George Dyer, Bill grew up first in the Oakland Hills near Lake Temescal, then in San Jose after his family moved there in 1962. His father loved to fish, and the family spent summers camping in Northern California at places that included Yosemite and the Trinity Alps. Those trips seeded a lifelong affinity for wild places.
Bill attended UC Berkeley then graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1972 with a degree in philosophy. At Santa Cruz, in 1969, he met Dawnine. They married in 1981.
His path to wine began after college, when he took a cellar job at Bargetto Winery in Santa Cruz. In 1974, he and Dawnine moved to Calistoga, where both built long careers in wine. Bill worked at Charles Krug, then moved to Sterling Vineyards for the 1976 harvest. There he worked with and was mentored by Rick Forman and later Theo Rosenbrand, who had trained with André Tchelistcheff at Beaulieu Vineyard. While working at Sterling, Bill returned to school and earned a master’s degree in enology and viticulture from UC Davis in 1986. He later became winemaker at Sterling.
His interest in terroir found form in Sterling’s single-vineyard wines in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One of his favorite vineyards was on Diamond Mountain. That connection eventually led Bill and Dawnine to 12 acres there, where they planted Dyer Vineyard in 1993. After leaving Sterling in 1996, they founded Dyer Straits Wine Co.
Dyer Vineyard became the fullest expression of Bill’s work because he could bring vineyard and cellar into one conversation. He believed farmers could be strong environmental stewards, and he practiced sustainability and dry farming. Bill and Dawnine built their wines around Diamond Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, drawing on more than a century of combined experience in the wine industry.
Bill also consulted widely, working with Marimar Estate in the Russian River Valley, Sodaro Estate Winery, Meteor Vineyard and Frog’s Leap Winery in Napa Valley. His reach extended north to British Columbia, where he worked with Burrowing Owl Estate Winery in the Okanagan Valley and later Church and State Wines on Vancouver Island.
But the professional résumé, impressive as it was, did not fully explain Bill.
He had the manner of someone who had spent much of his life paying close attention outdoors. He knew how to look. He knew where mushrooms might rise after rain, how a trail shifted with weather, how a creek changed when something blocked the run of steelhead. He developed a taste for wild mushrooms as a young man in Santa Cruz and studied them for the rest of his life. Friends called him a mycologist, though the family obituary described him more precisely as a careful forager who liked nothing better than heading into the woods with a knapsack in search of boletes or chanterelles.
I knew that side of him, too. Bill took me mushroom-hunting. He moved through the woods with the patience of someone reading a familiar book in changing light. He was generous with what he knew but never casual about it. With mushrooms, certainty mattered. So did humility. The forest always had the final word.
Bill and Dawnine’s Diamond Mountain home reflected that same sensibility. In 2016, I wrote about their rammed-earth house in the hills above Calistoga, built with David Easton of Rammed Earth Works. Dawnine said they had built it without an architect, instead spending time with Easton talking about how they lived. Bill said an adobe house they once visited had stayed with them because “just entering that home had brought on a certain level of peace.” After nearly 20 years in their own earthen home, he said they remained deeply happy with the decision.
“We also wanted something that had a low impact on the environment — all the material for these walls came directly from this mountain range,” Bill said then. “With David as our guide, we achieved our goal and built something that feels to us like home — beautiful, comfortable, functional but also tranquil and peaceful.”
That quote still feels like Bill: practical, grounded, aesthetically alert and rooted in place.
His outdoor life was wide-ranging. He ran distance in high school, including a 17-mile run into the Santa Clara Mountains. He ran the Dipsea Race twice, fished commercially in Alaska during college summers, hitchhiked across the Yukon and hiked many High Sierra trails. He and Dawnine traveled to Nepal in 1991, where he summited Mera Peak, a 21,000-foot trekking peak. Later trips took them to Tibet, Europe, the British Virgin Islands and New Zealand.
Bill also gave time to the Napa Valley community. He served on boards connected to wine, parks and conservation, including the Napa Valley Wine Library Association, Napa Valley Wine Technical Group, Sierra Club and Napa Valley State Parks Association. The State Parks Association became one of his deepest commitments. He helped raise money for Bale Grist Mill and improvements to the visitor center at Bothe-Napa Valley State Park. He hiked the trails, attended the pancake breakfasts and harvest dinners and cared deeply about removing impediments to the steelhead run in Ritchie Creek.
In 2017, I ran into Bill and Dawnine in Oregon during the total solar eclipse. The backcountry was full of smoke, ash, dust, fire crews, eclipse chasers and the strange silence that comes when the sun disappears at midmorning. The moment felt both prehistoric and immediate: nighthawks overhead, crickets beginning at the wrong time, the land turning cold and metallic under the moon’s shadow.
It made sense, somehow, that Bill and Dawnine were there. Of course they had found their way to a remote place to witness a rare convergence of sun, moon, mountain and sky. Bill’s life was full of such movements: toward the vineyard, toward the trail, toward the creek, toward the woods after rain, toward places where attention becomes a form of gratitude.
Bill is survived by Dawnine Sample Dyer; his sisters, Marcia Dyer Crapo of Berkeley and Diane Dyer Harmon of Walnut Creek; his sister-in-law, Martha Sample Tingle of Half Moon Bay; nieces and nephews; and many great-nieces and great-nephews.
Donations in his honor can be made to Napa Valley State Parks Association or Napa Valley Community Foundation. A celebration of life will be held later this summer.
Bill Dyer leaves behind wines, stories, trails walked, creeks defended, friendships deepened and a way of living that asked people to pay attention — to land, to flavor, to craft, to wildness and to one another.
--
Tim Carl is a Napa Valley-based photojournalist.
Explore These Related Articles:
Browse All Napa Valley Features Stories
Such a wonderfully written tribute.
Beautiful writing about Bill. Met in 1985. Rest in Peace.