Freeman Vineyard & Winery

Tokyo-born winemaker whose path to Sonoma County wine was as unlikely as it is now distinguished. Akiko earned a master's degree in Italian Renaissance art history from Stanford in the mid-1990s before traveling to the great winemaking regions of Europe and South Africa with her husband Ken, whom she had met in New York in 1985 during Hurricane Gloria, a date (September 28, 1985) now engraved on the keystone of their winery cave. When Ken and Akiko founded Freeman Vineyard & Winery in 2001 after vetting more than 300 vineyard sites in western Sonoma County, Akiko apprenticed under their founding consulting winemaker Ed Kurtzman; she later took over as winemaker. She now oversees every aspect of the program: the organic farming of the Gloria Estate Vineyard (planted 2006 in Green Valley, named for the hurricane that brought her and Ken together) and the Yu-ki Estate (purchased 2007 above Occidental, in the West Sonoma Coast appellation), plus careful grower partnerships across the West Sonoma Coast. Her style is defined by restraint: 5 to 8 percent whole cluster, a maximum of 30% new oak in a given vintage, traditional production techniques, and all wines bottled unfined and unfiltered. The Ryo-fu Chardonnay (Japanese for “cool breeze”) was served at the Obama White House for Japanese Prime Minister Abe in 2015. Associate winemaker Eiji Daniel Akaboshi (a descendant of Kanae Nagasawa, the Japanese immigrant who helped found California winemaking in the late 1800s) makes for a uniquely Japanese winemaking team. Ken and Akiko co-founded the West Sonoma Coast Vintners Association in 2011, which successfully lobbied for the West Sonoma Coast AVA approved in 2019.

Ken Freeman co-founded Freeman Vineyard & Winery in 2001 with his wife Akiko, the winery’s winemaker. A Kellogg MBA who helped build the Discovery Channel in Asia before a career in finance, Ken brought the entrepreneurial drive, and a shared love of Burgundy, that turned a long-held dream into reality. The couple searched some 300 sites before acquiring a small Sebastopol winery in the Russian River Valley, dedicating themselves to refined, cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Their flagship, Akiko’s Cuvée, has helped earn Freeman a global following.