The winemaker is Abe Schoener.

His winemaking is shaped by his education.

He as a PhD in Ancient Greek Philosophy; in graduate school, his chief study was Homer. After graduation, he taught for nine years at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he eventually became Assistant Dean. The College offers the students a rigorous curriculum in the Liberal Arts and requires both the students and professors to study all subjects– from Ancient Greek to Plant Biology to Nuclear Physics. After teaching in all aspects of the curriculum, he was awarded a sabbatical in his ninth year. He chose to combine his delight in gardening, interest in plant morphology and physiology, and passion for wine in a year-long study of grape growing in Napa Valley.

He found a culture of winemakers and grape growers so full of knowledge and so willing to teach that he extended his sabbatical through 3 years of leave and has since found himself unable to return.

His career in winemaking began as an intern at Stag's Leap Wine Cellars in 1998, and then as a cellar rat at Luna Vineyards in 1999. In 2000, he devoted himself further to learning about viticulture and continued working for Luna, now as a viticulture consultant.

For all of the complexity and fascination of the vineyards, he was continually pulled to the realm of the barrels, and the amazing invisible transformations that took place within them. He learned about low intervention winemaking at Luna, natural yeasts, low sulfur levels to allow the microbial life of the wine to prosper. He made small amounts of wine from growers that he met through friends.

The first of these was a Chardonnay in 2000 that eventually grew into the Maldonado Los Olivos Chardonnay in 2002.

By the fall of 2002, he knew the wines that he wanted to make and the vineyards that he wanted to make them from. The Maldonados, from whom he had bought Chardonnay grapes in 2000, were so pleased with the wine that he made that they asked him to become the winemaker for their new project based on their remarkable Chardonnay vineyard in Jamison Canyon. At the same time, Luna asked him to take over as their winemaker. For the first time, he devoted himself to winemaking and nothing else.

In 2004, he helped guide Luna to the selection of a winemaker with a set of skills and experience more appropriate than those brought by an uprooted professor of philosophy. Since that time, he has concentrated on the extravagantly small lots that are the foundation of the Scholium Project.