Clos De La Tech was founded by T.J. Rodgers, the founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. With a doctoral in electrical engineering, and a long career as a leader in the semiconductor industry, it is perhaps no surprise that when he decided to start his own winery specializing in Pinot Noir, he would combine the Burgundian “clos,” meaning “enclosed area,” with a reference to his technology career. Rodgers in the chief winemaker. His vineyards are in Woodside and the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the Woodside vineyard, his first, was planted in 1994. The winery is a state-of-the-art facility built into a hillside to accommodate gravity-flow winemaking.