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This spring, Silvan Ridge Winery was sold back to the estate’s founding family and restored to its original name, Hinman Vineyards. For the Hinman family, reacquiring their estate — while rare in the industry — was as strategic as it was serendipitous.
After 33 years, Doyle Hinman returned to the grapevines he planted half a century ago, the ones that propelled him into Oregon’s wine industry.
He founded Hinman Vineyards in 1979, bottling his first commercial wines on the South Willamette Valley estate. He and his wife, Sue Ann Hinman, raised three kids there and cemented their name in Oregon’s wine industry.
The Hinmans sold their estate in 1993, but bought it back last month, marking both a rare kind of sale in the wine industry and a homecoming.
“It feels right,” Doyle Hinman said, sitting with Sue Ann Hinman on the tasting room patio.
Below, leafy green shoots emerged from those rows of vines, a promising start to the 2026 wine cycle. In a few months (barring bad weather and disease), tiny grape berries will form.
A winery is born
Doyle Hinman broke into winemaking in the 1960s.
“I didn’t know wine from apple juice at the time,” he said, half-joking.
He’d taken a class by Hillcrest Winery founder Richard Sommer that hit him “like a lightning bolt.” The more he learned, the more his passion grew.
Oregon wasn’t yet globally known as a top producer of pinot noir — or any wines, for that matter.
In 1979, Hinman Vineyards became Eugene’s first bonded winery, a facility that is federally authorized to produce, store and bottle wine. Nearby estates such as Sweet Cheeks and King Estate followed. That year, Doyle Hinman released his first vintages: pinot noir, gewürztraminer and riesling.
Sue Ann and Doyle Hinman got married in 1983 and Oregon established the Willamette Valley as its first American Viticultural Area (AVA).
‘Three generations of women’
As Hinman Vineyards took off, the couple sought an investor to sustain its rapid growth, but they ultimately sold the estate outright in 1993 to Carolyn Chambers, a Eugene media executive who helped launch KEZI-TV.
Chambers renamed the estate Silvan Ridge Winery and enlisted her daughter, Elizabeth “Liz” Chambers, to run it. Liz Chambers operated Silvan Ridge until her death in 2018.
Chambers’ daughter, Julia Stiltner, took over the Silvan Ridge estate. At the same time, she and her husband, Andrew, ran their Eugene restaurant, Elizabeth’s.
“You had three generations of women who owned this facility for the last 30 to 35 years,” Sue Ann Hinman said.
The Hinmans never left the wine industry: Doyle Hinman went on to work as a sales director for Henry Estate Winery in Umpqua, while he and Sue Ann continued growing their wine brand, DW Hinman Cellars, specializing in private labeling and custom winemaking. DW Hinman Cellars produces wine for national retail outlets such as Trader Joe’s. (You can buy their pinot gris at Trader Joe’s in Eugene for $9.99.)
Their daughter, Chelsea Hinman Miller, entered the wine business too, spending more than two decades in distributor management and national sales. She founded her own wine label, Tior, in 2024.
Their business ventures gave them a secure financial base to reacquire Silvan Ridge Winery. Still, when Doyle and Sue Ann Hinman heard it was for sale, they didn’t jump at the opportunity.
“My mantra when we started this whole thing was: This absolutely has to make sense,” Doyle Hinman said. “It can’t be coming from the heart. It can’t be the romance.
“The thing that really pushed us over the edge, I think for sure, is my daughter, Chelsea,” he said. “She jumped on board.”
Mom, dad and daughter closed on the property April 1, restoring the estate’s name to Hinman Vineyards.
‘We decided to run in’
The Hinman family reacquired their estate during an uncertain time in the wine industry: In Oregon, the number of bonded wineries shrunk 6% between 2023 and 2024. Nationally, grape growers and winemakers are contending with overproduction, an aging demographic and declining alcohol consumption.
“We decided to run in, not out,” Hinman Miller said of the wine industry.
Even though wine is a product of farming — of nonstop, backbreaking work — the industry is often romanticized: Rolling hills of gorgeous vines, crowds happily stomping grapes, drinking the stuff of celebrations.
“But then you have to sell it,” Sue Ann Hinman said. “You have to make some money. And so that’s really hard, trying to sell a bottle of wine.”
That money comes in part from the family’s multiple revenue streams, such as their private label, and decades of relationship-building in wine distribution and sales — not the estate itself.
“It’s hard to make a living off a tasting room,” Hinman Miller said. “A wine club can help, but you need a national footprint to pay some bills during off months.”
Building on a wine legacy
Changes at Hinman Vineyards will be gradual: During the next year, the Hinman family will sell Silvan Ridge bottles while bringing their own labels, Tior and Hinman Vineyards, into the fold. Specializing in pinot gris and pinot noir, the family sources grapes mostly from Oregon vineyards in the Willamette Valley.
Silvan Ridge fans will notice some familiar faces: The Hinmans retained Silvan Ridge’s staff, including winemaker Kim Bowman. She’ll take over wine production of Hinman and Tior bottles, while adding more varietals and blends to the winery’s portfolio. Patrons can also expect a similar wine club structure, and the beloved Friday night concerts will continue, too.
Renovations include new furniture, a few TVs for when the Ducks play, powerwashing and cleaning out the clock tower Doyle Hinman installed decades ago. The clock tower will be designed into Hinman Vineyards’ new bottle label, the hands positioned to the exact minute and hour Chelsea Hinman Miller was born.
Eventually, Doyle and Sue Ann Hinman will build a new home and retire on the property, and their daughter will take over.
Hinman Miller and her two siblings grew up on this estate. She remembers long walks down the driveway to the school bus stop and Easter egg hunts in the fermentation room. She brought her two kids back this Easter, so they could experience the tradition.
A few weeks ago, while cleaning out a back room on the estate, Hinman Miller pulled out a framed, black-and-white photograph of her dad as he smiled and picked grapes with her grandmother, Betty Lou, during the 1981 harvest.
It had been there, stored in a drawer, all those years.
“It’s like when your house speaks back to you,” she said. “It feels magical.”
If you go: Hinman Vineyards is located at 27012 Briggs Hill Road, Eugene. It’s about 15 miles southwest of downtown Eugene. The tasting room is open daily from noon to 5 p.m. Expect concerts and other events, wine flights and a tasting menu with gorgeous views of the South Willamette wine country. Reservations are encouraged, especially on weekends.
