Wine was "not so much" a part of his life growing up in a small farming town in Iowa, except as an altar boy. After college he worked as a skid-loader, movie projector operator and bartender. It wasn't until he travelled the country as an actor and started a two-year acting program in NYC that he met Lee Campbell, a well-known sommelier and natural wine advocate, that Joseph Ryan took an interest in wine. Now he's the winemaker for Ernest Vineyards.
