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Top Ken and Akiko Freeman

Opposite page The late afternoon fog helps keep the
grapes cool and preserve their acidity

C

alifornian Pinot Noirs have made big strides,

and anyone who thinks they are all fruit

bombs could not be more wrong. Sure, some

wineries still make the juicy, fat quaffs that

have mass appeal, but an increasing number of

winemakers are tipping their hat towards Burgundy, making

Pinot Noirs with more elegance. The revolution isn’t exactly

new: it began in the 1990s, when a handful of producers—

Littorai, Melville, and Calera Wine Company, to name a few—

started the push towards a more restrained and elegant style

of Pinot Noir.

In the new millennium, a second wave of like-minded

winemakers arrived to join the elegant Pinot camp. One of

them is Freeman Vineyard and Winery in western Sonoma

County. The winery was set up by Ken and Akiko Freeman in

2001.

LOVE AND WINE

The story of how the Freemans met sounds like a Nora Ephron

movie. In 1985, after graduating from college, Ken was sailing

a yacht from New England to the Caribbean, but a hurricane

forced him to make a detour to a port near his hometown

of Scarsdale, New York. A friend invited him to a casual keg

party, where he met Akiko, who was then an exchange student

from Japan. She was overdressed in a Chanel dress. He was

lovestruck. Cue the Jimmy Durante soundtrack.

“I was supposed to be in New York for only a year, and it

was just my first three weeks into school,” recalls Akiko. “I

met Ken, we started dating, and I ended up not going back to

Japan.”

After earning his MBA, Ken got a job with Discovery

Channel and was tasked with establishing the brand’s presence

in Asia, a role that took him and Akiko to Singapore and Hong

Kong. In 1997, they returned to the U.S., and the wine-loving

couple looked around the Russian River area in Sonoma Coast

to set up their winery. “The region is close to the Pacific Ocean,

so a fog rolls in in the afternoon,” says Ken, the winery’s

proprietor. “We fell in love with the place because of its cool

weather and its potential for wines with acidity.”

Making Pinot Noir was top of their agenda. In 2006, after

working with contracted growers, the Freemans established

Gloria, their first estate vineyard. Named after the hurricane

that brought the couple together, the eight-acre site sits in the

westernmost corner of the Russian River Valley and was once

an apple orchard. The vineyard lies on a hillside with sandy

loam soils, which encourage excellent drainage, and consists

of six blocks of Pinot Noir clones: Swan, Pommard, Martini,

Dijon 115, and two Caleras.