Meet five women who embrace dirt under their nails while bossing a tractor in muddy boots - all in a quest to grow top-quality fruit and make some of Napa and Sonoma's best wine.
Growing up in Napa Valley, Kathleen Inman's passion for the grape, specifically Pinot Noir, and gardening began early. However, working as an accountant in England kept her away from viticulture for almost two decades. "When I lived in England gardening was my hobby. I made my own compost, had a worm farm, used worm teas and did everything organically," she explains.
She returned to Sonoma, and launched Inman Family Wines in 2000, where she wears many hats—vineyard manager, winemaker, boss, farmer, and "grape groper." She oversees a small team including her sister, Diane, and assistant winemaker, Madelyn, who joined her last summer. While Inman enjoys mentoring women, she did not intentionally hire an all-female staff. However, she confesses to finding communication among women in the cellar easier, "We seem to know what is needed without many words, and often we finish each other's sentences."
Translating her English garden into commercial viticulture, Inman uses a "sensitive farming" approach, which she explains is non-certified organic—intentional sensitivity to the environment and the people working in the vineyard. Honoring acid "as the backbone of wine," she picks based on how the clusters "feel" (aka groping), taste, and how the skin reacts to saliva. Migrating away from "proper sampling," Inman selects her pick dates based on sensory perception rather than quantitative data. Taking sensitive farming into the cellar, she produces "natural" wines from organic or sustainable grapes by eliminating additives, utilizing ambient yeast, limiting sulfur dioxide to extended barrel aging and bottling, and cross-flow filtration; resulting in beautifully crafted wines that sell out quickly.
