Madeleine Rowan-Davis grew up in Eugene, Oregon, spending her summers in high school and through college volunteering with the US Forest Service on several studies of bat behavior and ecology. After graduating from Mt Holyoke College with a degree in Biological Sciences, she worked as a biologist and ornithologist for a California ecological consulting firm while pouring wine on the weekends at a local tasting room, Bonny Doon Vineyard. The creativity and explorative approach to wine drew her to join the marketing department, running their unique and varied wine clubs, where she was at last exposed to the vineyard. Randall Grahm's conversion to biodynamic farming ultimately inspired her to return to graduate school and combine her newfound love of wine with her background in ecology as a viticulturist.

After attending graduate school at UC Davis, studying vine water relations on complex slopes in the Priorat wine region of Spain, she left Davis to work as a viticulturist in the North Coast of California. After over a decade working for mid to large-sized vineyard management companies, she is now the Vice President of Polyculture for Antica Terra's agricultural properties, building integrated systems to best steward the land and combat climate change through permaculture, viticulture, animal husbandry, and forest ecology, with vineyards under both Biodynamic and Organic certification.