Born in Los Angeles and raised in suburban Tarzana, California, Tim Spear is the winemaker for Clos Mimi. Tim and his two younger sisters were not brought up with wine at the table, however, he remembers mixing the perfect Seagrams 7 and 7up for his Dad after a hard day at the real estate office. Before graduating from William H. Taft High School in 1985, Tim was encouraged by his Dad to accept admission to the University of California at Davis. A year later Tim received a Los Angeles Times Magazine article from his Dad expounding the virtues of the Department of Enology and Viticulture professors. Tim enrolled in the "Introduction to Winemaking" course in the fall of 1986 and there was no looking back. After graduating from Davis in 1990 and craving more insight into old world viticulture, Tim asked his Mom to take as many vineyard pictures as possible on her September trip to France. Consequently, Tim's Mom (with a little help from her intuition and photos of a California-like harvest in Pauillac) chanced upon a magical French internship that opened the mind to old world winemaking for the first time.

Tim's winemaking experience includes internships at Chalone, Mumm Napa Valley, Silverado Vineyards, Tablas Creek Vineyard, Château Lynch-Bages, and Cloudy Bay between 1988 and 1995. Tim gained tremendous old world insight while apprenticing under Monsieur Jean-Michel Cazes and his régisseur, Daniel Llose, in Bordeaux between March, 1991 and February, 1992. At the age of 25, Tim landed his first head winemaking position at Justin Vineyards & Winery, the 72-acre Paso Robles estate in-fact inspired by great vintages of Château Margaux. One of Tim's winemaking successes at Justin was racking, blending, and bottling the 1991 Isosceles, a red wine rated 94 points by Robert Parker Jr. In 1994 Tim hung up his winemaking spurs to focus on the viticultural efforts of nearby Tablas Creek Vineyard. The unique nursery experience attained at Tablas Creek yielded an enlightening research viticulturist and grower relations position at Meridian Vineyards under the tutelage of Beringer Vineyards' senior vice president of vineyard operations, Robert Steinhauer. Tim took a leave of absence from Meridian in the spring of 1995 to pursue a winemaking internship working for Mr. David Hohnen and his winemaker, Kevin Judd, at Cloudy Bay in New Zealand. Six months after returning to Paso Robles, Tim married Mimi on the winter solstice at Meridian Vineyards. Soon after leaving his viticulture position at Meridian in 1996, the owners of Shell Creek Vineyard (one of Mr. Steinhauer's favorite growers on the Central Coast) offered Tim and Mimi three tons of très divin Syrah. The fruit and the idea of starting their own label was too good to pass up. Tim made the first three vintages of Clos Mimi at Creston Vineyards while serving as Creston's assistant winemaker, and ultimately, head winemaker and vineyard manager. In December, 1999, Mimi gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Margot Roussanne, and Creston Vineyards decided to shut its doors for business. Since 2000, Tim has focused on Clos Mimi exclusively, moving the one man operation to Central Coast Wine Services in Santa Maria. In July, 2004 Mimi gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Tristan Messier. In order to spend more time with his growing family, Tim resigned from his full-time consulting winemaker position with Red Car Wine Company just prior to the 2004 harvest (a position he had honored since October, 2000).