Michael Bonaccorsi was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1960. By the age of twenty-one, he knew he wanted to be a winemaker. He moved out to San Francisco to be closer to the California wine country, his first job as a stock boy at a wine shop. After a short time selling wine for a distributor, he became interested in becoming a sommelier, eventually landing him at Masa’s Restaurant. After a three-year course of study and exams, Bonaccorsi became the twentieth American to be awarded the Master Sommelier Diploma.

In addition to Masa’s, Bonaccorsi served as a sommelier and manager at Cypress Club and Zola’s until his arrival in Los Angeles to become Sommelier at the original Spago Restaurant, and then the Beverly Hills location.

As the director of Spago’s wine program, the restaurant has been recognized for its excellence in wine service by the Wine Spectator (Best of Award of Excellence each year since 1995), Food Arts, Wine and Spirits Magazine and the Los Angeles Times.

Jenne Lee Bonaccorsi was born in Seoul, Korea in 1970. By the age of 11, she knew she wanted to be a writer. She studied creative writing at USC, doing individual directed research with poet David St. John.

While attending USC, Jenne Lee started to work in restaurants; her first job answering phones at Michel Robert’s Trump restaurant and within a short time becoming the assistant matre’d. There, she began her fifteen-year meticulous love of food and wine. As Trump’s closed, she moved on as opening matre’d at downtown’s WaterGrill restaurant. One month after Michael arrived, Jenne Lee began her first of ten years at Spago restaurant.

In 1999, Michael and Jenne Lee Bonaccorsi formed the Bonaccorsi Wine Company and set out to produce wine of their own with the love of Burgundy and the Rhone. Since their first vintage in 1999, they continued to strive for improvements not only in winemaking techniques but improve the quality of the best vineyards in the central coast. "Our goal at the beginning was to move from Santa Barbara to the Russian River Valley, but Michael realized that we could produce wine just as good, if not better in the central coast, especially in the new Santa Rita Hills appellation…all this untapped potential."

Bonaccorsi Wine Company strives for complexity and concentration, with delicacy in their wines. The qualities Bonaccorsi Wine Company will always continue to strive for. Even with Michael Bonaccorsi’s untimely death in 2004, the standard is not to maintain, but to surpass it.