Sarah O'Herron

The Path

Wine work often starts with repetition, and Sarah O'Herron’s path reflects that kind of accumulation: training at Stoneridge School, then building a practice that links cellar decisions to vineyard management. Since 2002, Black Ankle Vineyards has been the site of that combined labor, with O'Herron as proprietor, winemaker, and vineyard manager. The job is broad by design, spanning the ground under the vines and the work that follows in the cellar.

The Work Today

Winemaking, in O'Herron’s account, is a trade built on procedure first. She has described learning “all the nuts and bolts of everything,” which points to the unglamorous core of the work: timing, process, and the discipline needed to keep production on track. Just as important is the sensory side of the craft, where she notes the need for “the more subjective skills such as tasting and smelling for progress and/or problems throughout fermentation.” That mix of technical control and close sensory monitoring defines the day-to-day work at Black Ankle Vineyards.

Signature

Albariño, Estate, Phyllite, and Crumbling Rock are the wines most closely associated with Sarah O'Herron. As a group, they reflect a style grounded in vineyard work as much as cellar work, with the portfolio shaped by the same hands that oversee the land. The throughline is consistency: wines that sit inside a single operation where growing and making are treated as one craft.

In Their Words “I learned all the nuts and bolts of everything, and learned the more subjective skills such as tasting and smelling for progress and/or problems throughout fermentation.”