Kelby Russell is the full-time winemaker of Seneca Lake, New York's Red Newt Cellars. Kelby is a natural intellectual in the sense that he seeks out new challenges and creative initiatives with self-driven ambition. He also has a profound love of music, having played jazz saxophone in high school, heading the Harvard Glee Club in college, and currently signing Tenor with the Eastman Rochester Chorus. One day at work, Red Newt founder David Whiting proposed to Kelby that he pursue a separate wine project that would allow him to experiment with the varied array of Seneca Lake vineyards available to him. This was the beginning of Kelby James Russell Wines.