For Kathleen Inman of Inman Family Wines, tending vines and wines is second nature.
If terroir is destiny, Kathleen Inman is its midwife.
The founder and fearless force behind Inman Family Wines in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley, Inman has spent the last two decades coaxing elegant expressions of Pinot Noir from her sustainably farmed estate like a mother raising gifted children—they’re sometimes stubborn, often sublime, always homegrown.
And for Inman, “home” is a moving target—geographically and emotionally. “Home for me is wherever my family is,” she says. “When I’m with my daughter and her children in England, I feel at home. When I’m here with my sister and my father in wine country, I feel at home. When I’m taking care of my wines, I feel like I’m at home.”
This is classic Inman: a clear-eyed romantic with dirt under her nails. A third-generation Napa native whose journey to winemaking took a 15-year detour through finance in England, Kathleen returned to California in 1999 to pursue her long-held passion for Pinot Noir.
With her husband Simon, she purchased a 10.5-acre parcel on Olivet Road and transformed it into one of the most forward-thinking, eco-ethical wine estates in the North Bay. Solar-powered, built from post-consumer recycled materials, and home to the region’s first publicly available EV charging station, the winery walks its sustainability talk from soil to cellar.
Mother & Maker
With Inman, maternal metaphors are a natural go-to. Each vintage, like each family gathering, is an exercise in showing up wholly, responding to the moment, and trusting that all the quiet work below the surface—be it microbial or emotional—will eventually blossom.
Her estate vineyard, Olivet Grange, isn’t just where the grapes grow—it’s where the soul of Inman Family Wines resides. “I think of [the OGV Estate Pinot Noir] as the baby I give birth to every year,” she says. “It’s an organic thing that I have control of from now, waiting for bud break, to when I bring the fruit in and make the wine.”
The metaphor doesn’t end with the estate fruit. The other vineyards she works with—Sexton Road Ranch and Pratt Vine Hill—she describes as “my surrogate children. Jim Pratt is taking care of them for me. And then when it’s time for them to be picked and I make that call, then they’re my children, and I love them just the same as I do the one that I grew myself.”
Ahead of the Curve
In her winemaking, Kathleen is refreshingly untrendy—but also, paradoxically, ahead of the curve. She was making direct-press rosés before “intentional rosé” was a thing; bottling luxury wines under Stelvin screw caps before it was cool; and crafting single-vintage sparkling wines while her peers were still blending out the nuance.
But behind the innovation and green tech is the quiet relentlessness of her labor—harvest after harvest, crush after crush. “It’s so exhausting,” she says, likening it to childbirth. “When you haven’t made wine in a while, you get excited—the grapes are turning color, and it’s like, ‘It’s going to be time soon!’ It’s not dissimilar to being pregnant. At first, you’re very excited… and then at the end of nine months, you’re like, ‘Get it out of me!’”
And just like new mothers who swear “never again,” she finds herself back at it every year. “As soon as the smell of the grapes hits me, it gets me excited again. I’m so fully in the moment during harvest—I love it. But then I’m utterly exhausted when it’s finished and thinking, ‘Do I have to do this again next year?’ My friend and I, we always say, ‘This is our swan song,’ but then there we are again the next year.”
There’s a kind of wild optimism in this cycle—equal parts passion and quiet resilience. Perhaps that’s why Inman Family Wines remains one of the rare independently owned, woman-led wineries in the region, with Inman herself still hooking up the hoses and sanitizing tanks.
“I think I’m also one of the few that’s been doing it this long that doesn’t have an assistant winemaker who’s really making the wines,” she says. “I started late in life—I was 40 when the first wine came out. This will be my 23rd harvest.”
Inman jokes that everyone helping her lately has been over 60, “So we say we make very wise wine here at Inman.”
Wise, indeed. And mothered with a rare clarity of purpose: to make wines that are as alive as the land they’re from, and as loved as any child.
Inman Family Wines
3900 Piner Rd, Santa Rosa
To make a tasting reservation:
(707) 293-9576