Jim Woods

Founder & CEO

A thirsty sixteen year old with a summer off from school and a pocket full of lifeguarding money, Jim picked up homebrewing after seeing a small ad for Berkeley’s Oak Barrel Winecraft in the back of the Yellow Pages.

Armed with advice from Oak Barrel legend Homer Smith, a starter “American Ale” recipe, and a car seat piled with large paper bags of magical syrups, pellets, and powders, Jim headed home to brew.

Unfortunately, Jim’s dad discovered the bubbling brew, and grabbed a baseball bat, threatening to smash the carboy — and young Jim’s brewing dreams. Thinking fast, Jim offered dad a taste of his first American Ale. Won over, dad let his son proceed, for a hefty paternal excise tax: a sample of every beer he made.

For Jim, a taste of that first batch of beer was just as revelatory. With one sip, a passion blossomed, and soon after, so did a business. In 2003, by now an experienced homebrewer, Jim decided to experiment with marrying the flavors of his favorite California IPAs with the natural buzz of yerba mate, a South American tea he drank to fuel his late-night brewing — er, studying — sessions. That union became MateVeza — the first mate-infused beer of its kind in the world — and its commercial success enabled Jim and his good friend and partner, Matt Coelho, to open Woods Beer’s original brewpub, Cerveceria, a small cafe on the corner of San Francisco’s Dolores Park, in 2012.

Today, MateVeza is joined by hundreds more adventurous brews, as well as wines, made and served at a growing network of pubs and brewing outposts, and Jim is happy to be at the helm, forging new adventures through the foamy seas.

Matt Coelho

Founder

“Oh, so that’s what beer tastes like!” A Jersey Boy raised on barbecue and Yuengling, Matt was no stranger to beer. But this was something different. With that fateful sip of Chimay Blue, Matt set sail to unknown beery seas on a journey that would change his life — until a second sip shifted his course again...

With his friend and roommate Bryant Goulding, Matt explored San Francisco’s nascent network of craft beer hubs and turned their Russian Hill apartment into a bubbling home-brew lab, with late-night recipe experiments fueled by Bob Dylan, Za Pizza, and six-packs of Anchor Liberty. Little did he know, a fellow San Franciscan, Jim Woods, was concocting his own strange new brews just a few blocks away. Their friendship began amid the aisles of City Beer Store, and was sealed smuggling beer-festival leftovers in the trunk of Jim’s Chrysler.

It was clear that Matt, Jim, and Bryant were not long for the 9-to-5 lifestyle. Bryant soon left his job to work in beer sales before opening his own brewery, Rhinegeist, in Cincinnati. Jim turned a home-brewed yerba mate IPA into Woods Beer Co. And Matt moved to the other side of his favorite bars, serving beer at the Blackhorse, Church Key, and City Beer Store. When Jim asked Matt to help him open Woods Beer’s first bar, the choice was clear, and Matt’s beer-world adventure became a full-fledged career.

Meanwhile, shifting winds were blowing through Matt’s life of food and drink. Wine had long been part of Matt’s upbringing — dinners at his grandparents, immigrants from Portugal, revolved around a cold bottle of vinho verde. And one day, after wandering into Terroir for a nightcap, wine would become more than just a family tradition. Like that fateful sip of Belgian beer years earlier, a taste of natural wine sparked a brand new adventure. Today, Matt helps produce an annual natural wine fair called Brumaire, with his friends Bradford Taylor (Ordinaire), Josh Eubank (Percy Selections) and Quinn Kimsey-White (Psychic Wines).

With the help of this passion, and the evolution of the beer-wine hybrid series Divine Origins, Woods Beer Co. expanded its wine program and transformed into Woods Beer & Wine Co. staying true to the company’s values - curiosity, adventure, and experimentation in the pursuit of a good time.

Kyle Jeffrey

winemaker

Kyle was born and raised in Seal Beach, CA and is a 5th generation Californian. He attended Cal Poly, where he studied winemaking and viticulture. There, Kyle fell in love with the winemaking process, and began to make his own wine in the fall of 2009.

Following graduation, Kyle worked a harvest at biodynamic winery Henri Cruchon in Lausanne, Switzerland, to learn about winemaking in Europe. It was there that he developed an appreciation for small-batch, handcrafted wines, with bright acidity and a deep sense of terroir. Kyle also worked harvests at the renowned Rudd Winery in Napa Valley, Three Sticks Winery in Sonoma, Claiborne & Churchill in Edna Valley on California’s Central Coast, and at wineries in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand and McLaren Vale, South Australia, before becoming the assistant winemaker at San Francisco’s urban Bluxome Street Winery.

After several years of making wine, Kyle moved to New York City to manage Discovery Wines, a very well-regarded boutique wine shop. There, Kyle was able to taste some of the world’s benchmark wines, and credits this time as the greatest education of his career. He landed in Los Angeles and began working for acclaimed distributor Revel. In 2017, eager to get back to the creative outlet of winemaking, he created his own small winery, Minus Tide, with a couple of his closest friends from college. As much as he thought that would satisfy his itch for winemaking it only made his desire to jump back into the winery even stronger. He joined Woods Beer & Wine Co. in 2019 and helped expand the wine program with his expertise and drive to experiment with various methods of natural winemaking. 

In his free time he loves cooking and eating, snowboarding, traveling, and hiking with his adorable puppy assistant Joe.