Craig Camp / Managing Partner, Cornerstone Cellars

Craig Camp is a veteran fine wine professional with more than three decades of experience in every facet of the industry including importing, exporting, distribution, marketing, sales and production.

He joined Direct Import Wine Company as partner and Vice-President in 1980. From 1980 to 1995 he was responsible for sales and the selection of the wine portfolio, which was recognized as one of the most elite in the United States filled with cutting edge wine estates from around the world. In 1995 the company was purchased by the Terlato Wine Group, which promoted him to President and over the next three year period he increased sales from $3 million to $15 million dollars annually. During these years Camp visited and worked harvests in nearly all of the world’s fine wine regions.

In 2000 he left to pursue an education in wine production and spent the next three years working in Italy, where he studied winemaking and worked in the cellars of some of Italy’s most elite wine estates in Barolo and Barbaresco. During this time Camp was also Italian wine and food editor and Site Director of eGullet.org, the Internet’s largest food and wine discussion forum and published the successful Vino e Cibo website and newsletter.
In 2009 he moved to the Napa Valley to take over operations of the renowned Cornerstone Cellars, famed for producing outstanding Cabernet Sauvignon since 1991. In his first two years Camp has dramatically increased sales in all channels including direct to consumer, trade and exports and expanded production from 2,000 to 10,000 cases. In addition, Cornerstone Cellars has opened its first tasting room direct retail operation in Yountville, the culinary heart of Napa, and launched the new Cornerstone Oregon brand in cooperation with Tony Rynders, the premier winemaker in the Pacific Northwest.

Camp is recognized as an industry leader in the use of online marketing and Social Media marketing. He has been recognized for his online work by Food and Wine Magazine and Saveur Magazine. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Howell Mountain Vintners and Growers Association, the Rhone Rangers Board of Directors and on the Napa Valley Vintners Association Marketing and Social Media Marketing Committees, of which he is currently chairman. He has also been accepted into the University of California at Davis online Enology Degree program, which only accepts a small fraction of those who apply.