Born and raised in the Bay Area, Moke was brought up surrounded by good food and wine. He first started tasting wine seriously while working at the Bay Wolf restaurant in Oakland after college. Working crush in 1995 at Au Bon Climat/ Qupe in the Central Coast was the turning point; the love for wine that was kindled by this experience convinced Moke to make wine his vocation.
After that he worked in wine retail at the Ashbury Market, as a server specializing in wine at EOS wine bar in San Francisco and at Balthazar in New York, and eventually as a wine buyer for 131 Duane in NYC and for Range in San Francisco.
Moke has been selling Taransaud barrels since 2001, working for and learning from barrel sales legend Mel Knox. This experience has afforded Moke the amazing opportunity to taste with winemakers at wineries from the Okanagan in British Columbia to the Valle de Guadalupe in Baja, in wineries across California, Oregon, and Washington. Working a harvest for Nicolas Potel in Nuits St George and another for Yves Cuilleron in the northern Rhone helped add to this continuing education.
He works hard to provide quality service commensurate with the standard set by the barrels, and is committed to serving the interests of the winemaking community in the western United States and Canada.