who we are

A Close-knit Family who is Passionate about Creating Epic Wine

We are a small, family-owned winery with deep roots in this rugged, fertile, West Sonoma County utopia for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes. At the heart of Chenoweth Wines is a 20-year history of farming some of the most coveted grapes in Sonoma County on the land that has been in our family since the mid-1800’s.

 Leading the winemaking team is Amy Chenoweth, our sassy matriarch who helps her husband, Charlie, run their very successful grape growing business. Amy was bitten by the winemaking bug after watching rock star winemakers turn our family grapes into prized vintages. Now she, Charlie, their two sons, and a few other close friends who are considered family, keep a small portion of the Chenoweth grapes and create their own wines.

Every grape, every step of the winemaking process, the bottling and labeling is done by us. It is  our passion, and we are excited to share it with you!

Three Great Vineyards,
the Key to Epic Wine

They say great wines are made in the vineyard. For Charlie and Amy Chenoweth, that’s less a saying than an actual fact. For Charlie, the legendary grape grower, and Amy, the family winemaker, the fruit is everything. Learn more about our beloved vineyards by clicking on the images below.

Our wines

meet THE makers

AMY chenoweth,

“The Maker”

When asked to describe the philosophy that underpins her winemaking, Amy sums it up this way: “start with epic grapes and then don’t screw it up.” 

Not unlike every good wine, Amy’s path to winemaking started in the vineyard, specifically the ones tended by her husband Charlie, a grape grower and vineyard manager who has attained legendary status in the Russian River Valley and beyond for producing some of Wine Country’s most prized fruit. Ever since they married more than two decades ago, Amy has worked alongside her husband, managing the business that produces the grapes for such well-known cult brands as Patz & Hall, Kosta Browne, Bob Cabral, among many others.

Over the years, Amy had the chance to observe the region’s best winemakers ply their craft, and she “became a sponge, learning from the masters,” absorbing both the broad strokes and the finer points of transforming Charlie’s grapes into world-class wines. Though the classroom training in oenology she received at UC Davis bolsters her knowledge, her real education came through long days on the crush pads and in the barrel rooms of the most respected Sonoma County wineries.

 The winery’s first vintage was in 2010, just fifty cases or so of Pinot Noir from the Chenoweth’s own vines, planted on the family’s historic, sprawling hilltop ranch in the Green Valley appellation of the Russian River Valley AVA. Since then Amy has steadily increased production, with a plan to bottle around 600 cases. Tiny by commercial winery standards, but totally in keeping with their quality-over-quantity ethos.

CHARLIE chenoweth, “The Vigneron”

When he was just eight years old, young Charlie Chenoweth was tasked by his father to uproot his grandad’s cherry trees. With dynamite. Thus, started his career in farming. 

Fast forward a couple decades and the boy who “grew up farming unwillingly” on the family farm morphed into one of the most talented farmers in the business. The man who can coax from a grape vine what is arguably planet Earth’s finest example of Pinot Noir.

It was Charlie’s idea in 2000 to tear out the apple orchard his father had planted to make way for Pinot Noir grapes, the varietal best suited to the cooler microclimate of the Russian River Valley in western Sonoma County.  With the eye of an architect and the hand of the sculptor, his meticulous hand cares for every vine, leaf, spur and cluster.  As Amy, the Chenoweth family winemaker, says about her husband’s ferocious attention to the minutest detail, “you can taste it in the wine.”

Charlie is known to the handful of master winemakers responsible for the most sought-after “cult” wines as one of Wine Country’s elite growers, whose vast knowledge and fanatical attention to detail produces fruit of the highest quality.

Supporting Cast