Ehret Family Winery

Blending from Knights Valley fruit

At the tasting bench, Erin Green keeps the work as winemaker for Ehret Family Winery in Santa Rosa, reading Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Franc, and Syrah. The fruit comes from Bavarian Lion Vineyards in Knights Valley, and Green’s task is to hold the estate’s structure without sanding away its place. Her formation suits that kind of work. She trained at University of California, Davis, then took early part-time roles with Helen Turley and Sonoma-Cutrer, where repetition, blending, and cellar judgment became the method rather than the decoration. Green later worked as winemaker at Vinwood Cellars in Sonoma County, director of winemaking at Napa Wine Company, and winemaker at Stone Creek. At Pahlmeyer, where she was director of winegrowing and winemaker from 2000–2012, vineyard decisions and cellar execution sat in the same hand. At Erin Green ’s current station for Ehret, the same discipline narrows to estate fruit: taste, decide, return, and taste again until the blend carries the vineyard more clearly than the winemaker.

An estate model from Bavarian Lion Vineyards

The Ehret family began its Sonoma County farming story in 1976, when Werner Ehret established the Bavarian Lion brand after relocating to the estate and bringing Bavarian Simmental cattle to the United States. Pierre Ehret moved the land further toward wine in 1996, planting Bordeaux grapes on the property and first supplying fruit to other Napa and Sonoma houses. In 2005, the family began reserving selected fruit for its own label. That decision still shapes the program: Ehret Family Winery works from a family-owned, estate-grown model, with grapes sourced from the 1,800-acre Bavarian Lion Vineyards estate at the base of Mount St. Helena in Knights Valley. The vineyard is certified sustainable, and the winery’s scale remains small-lot and limited production. The cellar emphasis sits with Bordeaux-focused still wines, especially Cabernet Sauvignon, alongside Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Syrah, and red Bordeaux blends. Warm days, cool nights, and volcanic soils give Green material with ripeness, acidity, and tannic line. Her work is not to make those features louder. It is to place them in proportion.

The tasting room carries the vineyard into town

The tasting room sits in downtown Healdsburg, away from the 1,800-acre Knights Valley estate but tied to it by story, bottle, and pour. The room is conversational rather than theatrical, with guided tastings built around the Bavarian Lion Vineyards and the sensory differences that come from the estate. This is not a large production facility dressed for spectacle. It is a small, family-owned room where the counter carries vineyard language into the glass: Cabernet Sauvignon for structure, Sauvignon Blanc for freshness, Merlot for breadth, red blends for the house’s Bordeaux focus. Pierre and Susan Ehret operate the winery, and Alex Ehret represents the third generation now active in the business. That generational line matters because the wines do not arrive as isolated releases. They come from land the family has farmed since 1976.

Current releases keep the frame narrow

The portfolio stays close to the estate and its strongest register. Current releases include the 2025 Sauvignon Blanc, 2023 Bella’s Cabernet Sauvignon, 2023 Merlot, and 2023 Hillside Reserve Red Wine, each drawn back to Bavarian Lion Vineyards rather than spread across outside sources. If the next movement at Ehret is quiet, it is visible in that narrow frame: Green’s blending bench, the family’s Knights Valley fruit, and the 2023 Hillside Reserve Red Wine.