Our team

Learn more about our team members below!

Winemaking

Patrick Muran
Winemaker — hearthill vineyard & bootjack Ranch

A sci­en­tist by edu­ca­tion, Patrick grad­u­at­ed with a degree in Micro­bi­ol­o­gy from UC San­ta Bar­bara. He then began his career in wine­mak­ing in the ear­ly 2000s, with stints work­ing under ven­er­at­ed French wine­mak­er, Chris­t­ian Roguenant and Black­jack Win­ery among oth­ers. Patrick joined our team in 200 and was even­tu­al­ly pro­mot­ed to Wine­mak­er in 2013. Patrick keeps busy cul­ti­vat­ing new pur­suits with his wife Heather, their 2 daugh­ters, Kaylinn and Clare, and their Aus­tralian Shep­herd, Bell. Patrick’s love of surf­ing has tak­en him all over the world and he is also an avid riv­er rafter, back­pack­er and snowboarder.

Molly Bohlman
Winemaker — Jespersen Ranch

After an intro­duc­tion to the world of wine dur­ing a study-abroad in the South of France Mol­ly had the bug. She began her edu­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta and fin­ished it at Cal Poly with a BS in Fruit Sci­ence and a Minor in Wine & Viti­cul­ture. In the 20 years since, she has method­i­cal­ly worked across sev­er­al func­tions with­in the indus­try seek­ing to under­stand sales, vine­yard sci­ence and wine­mak­ing-by-doing. In 2014, Mol­ly came to Nin­er after work­ing at Paul Hobbs Wines, where she was wine­mak­er for the Cross­barn brand. In her spare time Mol­ly enjoys spend­ing time out­side, craft­ing, and enjoy­ing food and wine with fam­i­ly and friends. She lives in San Luis Obis­po with her hus­band Daniel, and son Sawyer.


HOS­PI­TAL­I­TY

Amanda Osborne
Hospitality General Manager

Amanda grad­u­at­ed with a Biol­o­gy degree from The University of Virginia and proceeded to travel the United States, working across a variety of roles in luxury hospitality.  From Wine Education at Cakebread Cellers in Napa Valley, to Pastry Chef at Michael Richard’s Citrus in Hollywood California, to the Director of Food and Beverage at the Dream South Beach Hotel in Miami, Florida; Amanda has seen it all.  The beauty (and relative quiet) of the Central Coast ultimately captured her heart and she joined Niner Wine Estates in 2021.  When not at work Amanda can be seen heckling otters in Morro Bay and hunting for wabbits with her dog, Witmer.

Alicia Wooten
Wine Club Manager

Ali­cia has been part of the Nin­er Wine Estates team since the tast­ing room opened in 2010 and plays a vital role as Wine Club Man­ag­er. Chances are she is the voice on the oth­er end of the phone when you call us! Ali­cia grad­u­at­ed with a Social Sci­ences Degree from San Jose State Uni­ver­si­ty, and then her Mul­ti­ple Sub­ject Cre­den­tial from Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty. After work­ing as a teacher, she even­tu­al­ly found a sec­ond career in the wine indus­try. Ali­cia lives in Paso Rob­les with her hus­band, Brad, and their two chil­dren, Jake and Han­nah and enjoys spend­ing time with her fam­i­ly on the weekends.

Emily Key
Events Manager

Emi­ly grad­u­at­ed with a Biol­o­gy degree from Cal Poly in San Luis Obis­po. She quick­ly fell in love with the area and decid­ed to call it home. After spend­ing years in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty indus­try as every­thing from a serv­er to a Pas­try Chef, Emi­ly joined the Nin­er team in 2018. She now man­ages our pri­vate events and wed­ding pro­grams, and is the per­son to talk to if you are plan­ning a spe­cial event at our estate. In her free time, Emi­ly enjoys get­ting the most out of Cen­tral Coast liv­ing by scu­ba div­ing, camp­ing and walk­ing her two dogs along the beach.


RESTAU­RANT

Jacob Burrell
Executive Chef

Jacob leads our kitchen team and is respon­si­ble for the deli­cious, farm inspired dish­es that you enjoy dur­ing your vis­its. He has worked for many well-known restau­rants around the world, includ­ing the 3 Miche­lin Star Man­re­sa Restau­rant, Sier­ra Mar at Post Ranch Inn and the Big Sur Bak­ery. He moved to Bali in 2015 with his wife Fiona (who he met while she was man­ag­ing Manresa’s farm) and their two young chil­dren to open and oper­ate Para­chute Bali – a bak­ery, farm and restau­rant in Indone­sia. While abroad he also man­aged to com­pete and win Iron Chef Indone­sia: Crab! Jacob’s free time is all about spend­ing time with his fam­i­ly; adven­tur­ing around the Cen­tral Coast, eat­ing and drink­ing and enjoy­ing the sun­shine and salty ocean air.

Ian Nelson
Executive Sous Chef

Born in Texas and raised in Jackson Mississippi, Ian originally dabbled with theater in high school but transitioned to working in a kitchen as a part-time job and never looked back.  A few years after high school, he decided to move to California and lucky for us he landed in Paso Robles.  Ian has been at Niner since 2016 and his presence has been essential in developing the food and wine program into what it is today.  Indeed, many of the elements of our current program are his projects, including our fresh baked focaccia and house made vinegar.  In his free time Ian is dedicated to educating himself, working towards getting a Bachelor of Science degree.


SALES & marketing

Tucker Spear
Director of sales

Tuck­er inher­it­ed his pas­sion for the wine indus­try at a very young age from his moth­er, who worked in inter­na­tion­al wine sales. He grad­u­at­ed from San Diego State Uni­ver­si­ty before begin­ning his wine career work­ing as a sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive for a wine dis­trib­u­tor. He then spent ten years in both region­al and nation­al sales man­age­ment posi­tions at Chalk Hill Estate Vine­yards in Healds­burg, and Fan­tesca in St. Hele­na. When he’s not trav­el­ing and spread­ing the word about what we’re up to at the win­ery, Tuck­er resides in San Diego with his wife Sarah, two sons Pre­ston and Park­er and their dog Kinsley.

family

richard & pam niner
founder

Richard Niner grew up as one of eight children on a farm in rural West Virginia. He spent his childhood working on the farm to provide food for his family and eventually became one of the first in his family to attend college. He graduated from Princeton and then Harvard Business School. He then began a long and respected career building small businesses across a variety of industries, from sunglasses to machine tools.

Pam Niner was born and raised in Rye, New York. She graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts and was working as a magazine editor in New York City when she met Richard. The pair married and had two children, Andy & Katy.

In the early 1990s, one of Richard’s ventures introduced him to the beauty of the Central Coast. The people here reminded him of his upbringing in West Virginia, and he saw the high potential for the area to compete with premier wine regions like Napa, which was booming at the time. This return to farm­ing was a return to his West Vir­ginia roots, and in his mind one of the ulti­mate crops to work with. He pur­chased his first vine­yard in 2001 and the rest is history.

Andy Niner
President

After study­ing eco­nom­ics at Col­by Col­lege in Maine, Andy start­ed his career work­ing in finance for Cam­bridge Asso­ciates in Boston. He then moved to Cal­i­for­nia and worked as a prod­uct man­ag­er in a small sun­glass com­pa­ny in San Luis Obis­po, earned his MBA from U.C. Berke­ley and spent sev­er­al years work­ing in strate­gic plan­ning for Levi Strauss & Com­pa­ny in San Francisco.

His love for the cen­tral coast and the impor­tance of the fam­i­ly busi­ness end­ed up being the cat­a­lyst for join­ing the team in 2013. Out­side of work Andy bikes, climbs, wears vests in unsea­son­ably warm weath­er, cooks and spends time explor­ing with his family, including daugh­ter Cora (9-year old nature girl) and son Callan (2-year old wrecking ball).