A friends dad treated us to a real dinner, after living on chianti, pizza and pasta for 5 months he thought we might want to taste some real Italian wine and cuisine.  I watched in awe as the waiter brought a vintage Brunello, decanted it table side, and then left it to ‘breath’ for our first courses.  I had never seen anything quite like that, and then once I got my first sip… that was it.  I was wisked away.  I have been working with wine in one way or another ever since.  

From restaurants in Boulder CO, I moved briefly to Charleston South Carolina where I took over my first wine list, then to Blue Fin in Times Square NY as an assistant Sommelier, to Tellers on Long Island as Wine Director/Sommelier. Whilst at Tellers I asked one of my favorite Italian producers to host me for the 2004 harvest so I could learn more about wine making. After the harvest, they asked me to stay on to take care of Public Relations, and a bit of their international marketing. I stayed for more than a year on the estate, and returned to NY the following fall where I started working for Sokolin.

After two years with Sokolin, Italy came calling again in the shape of Amy Wadman at diVino Tours, an experience that had me help create custom itineraries for wine and gourmet travel all over Italy. 

Over the years, whether in Tuscany, Long Island, or NYC, I have been fortunate enough to discover numerous hidden gems, small boutique wineries making wines in harmony with nature, many using either organic or biodynamic methods.

In 2009 I decided to call these producers Indie Wineries and started looking to find homes for them in the US. These wines have soul, they are alive and are full of charming and unique personalities and represent the antithesis of the mass produced wines that unfortunately saturate the market. They are the wines that have inspired the birth of my passion project, ‘Indie Wineries’.

Indie Wineries are all artisanal, sometimes natural and biodynamic, always organic, handcrafted terroir-driven wines.  These wines often represent the wine maker him or herself… and so getting to know the person behind the wine is just as important as getting to know the wines themselves.
My mission is to share with you the wines, and introduce you to the artists and estates behind the wines that make our eyes light up, that ‘wow’ us, that inspire us to learn more, and that keep us on a constant and fascinating journey in the world of wine. I hope you enjoy the ride!

to study (Duke) and to see family and friends. It was not until the beginning of this century that I have approached the wine world through Summer Wolff, my next door neighbor in the small village of Montaldo in Piedmont, Italy. A new world of honesty, enthusiasm and love for their craft has immediately overwhelmed me. I felt then and am proud now to be part of Indie Wineries and represent and work for these amazing producers. It has been 4 years now and it gets more exciting every day as the family grows bigger all around the world.

Meeting his colleagues and friends of the wine world, translating e-mails into English for her parents, she got to know Indie Wineries and had always stayed in touch. After completing two internships with Indie Wineries, for her studies she’s officially on board in France, ready to discover new hidden gems and learn more about French wine culture.

In every experience, the opportunity to support small producers of high quality wines has always driven me forward. I was part of the Indie Washington team in 2015 and 2016 and I’m thrilled to now represent Indie Wineries in Oregon. Wine is my work and my obsession and I’m currently enrolled in the WSET Diploma program to round out the knowledge I’ve picked up over the years. I appreciate that this life with wine I’ve chosen will keep me endlessly curious and perpetually searching for another new sip.

someone who I’d grown up with on the East End of Long Island involved in such a unique and fascinating business, made me see that one didn’t just have to enjoy wine as a spectator, but could be a part of the process.


A few years later, I got a call asking if I wanted to join the newly formed Indie team. Join a company that seeks to find small hidden gems and bring them to the masses? Kind of a no-brainer! Working with Indie, I’m blown away by the sheer numbers of different varietals I’d never heard of, let alone tasted. Getting to meet the winemakers (or rock stars as I like to think of them) at their respective vineyards is truly the best part for me. Seeing the passion and dedication they have to their craft is inspiring and always reminds me that Indie isn’t just a company that imports organic wine. It is a family of artists and enthusiasts (like me) that love doing what they do….and also happen to import some pretty amazing wine!
 As a lover of travel and experiencing new cultures, I’ve been fortunate enough to introduce new ones to this wonderful world of Indie by being a guide and taking them to various vineyards we work with in Italy. Seeing their newfound appreciation for wines and the producers who create them is one of the most satisfying aspects of working for this company.

then that I really became interested in non-interventionist, organic, biodynamic and natural wine. Tasting through hundreds of wines a week, some started to stand out, have more personality, a purpose and a sense of place. I met the Indie team at VinItaly in 2011 and I knew immediately that I had found my ‘wine family’. Bringing these wines to the market in Seattle, I got the same reaction from buyers that I had: these are wines with a purpose and a sense of place. It is very gratifying to be able to truly believe in everything you present It took us a few years to go out on our own in Washington but it has been a fantastic journey and I couldn’t be happier.

 head after that trip. I moved West to pursue a career in environmental sciences. After that ran it’s course, with several stops in between, Indie Wineries seemed like the right fit given my personal philosophies and relationship with the environment.

Like many that grew up in the U.S. without a family history of drinking wine with dinner, my exposure to “finer” wine came a bit later in life. I was seventeen or eighteen years old when I had a (small!) glass of Beringer Chardonnay that lit up my senses and set me off on a life of wine exploration. After several years of drinking the “typical” California wines of the time, my palate started craving more complexity and less power. I don’t recall a similar epiphany with natural wines, just a gradual progression of my palate and general disfavor with the current state of modern winemaking. It’s been wonderfully exciting to watch and share in the growth of Indie Wineries, and to see and hear the overwhelmingly positive impressions of clients, to the wines and the portfolio at large. Time for even more!

I have acquired a deep love of food and wine along the way. Even more, I have developed a respect and appreciation for the people who bring so much joy to our lives-Chefs, Line Cooks, Farmers and Producers alike. I am thankful to have found a family here at Indie where admiration for the culture, tradition, history , and potential of wine is the driving force.

Music led me to leave my Midwestern home for larger cities, first San Francisco and then later on New York. While working in Brooklyn, I had the good fortune of getting a job at Roman’s, one of Andrew Tarlow’s restaurants. At Romans we only served what would be considered “natural wine,” my first exposure to wines not made in the traditional commercial manner. This was also my first opportunity to work with many of the wines in Indie’s excellent portfolio. Music continued to steer my life over the following years, but I always found a way to work more with the wines that I had begun to love. After a brief sojourn to Nashville, Tennessee and helping open Dixie’s Wine and Liquor in Upstate New York, I decided to head back to the West Coast and Seattle to pursue a career in my other passion with Indie. I couldn’t be happier than working with these beautiful wines.

As I listened to each of our customers, I quickly discovered that it mattered to them where the wine was from, so I had to know why. I started reading books, talking to newfound industry friends, and asking everyone who worked in the surrounding restaurants to taste and learn more about wine and its relationship with the various regions it came from. One particular distributor spent a lot of time educating me about wine itself, which is when I saw it mattered how it was made and why.

I would later go on to work for that distributor and that experience served as a catalyst to attend business school. I eventually moved on to help develop an online retail giant sell wines direct-to-consumers by driving their compliance program. That experience was both challenging and rewarding, but it is also where the disconnect between the producers and customers became much more apparent to me. After I finished my MBA, I was presented with the opportunity of joining a scrappy, growing company who loved sharing the story of its producers; can you believe each of them had unique, compelling, and inspiring stories worth telling? Beyond everything I learned along the way, this current stage in life has been enjoyable and fulfilling because my “work” consists of joining our producers’ work to present their life’s story to the world the best way we know how—one incredible bottle at a time.