HEALDSBURG, Calif. — On Moore Lane, well off Healdsburg’s usual visitor path, Sharon Cohn and her sisters built Breathless Sparkling Wines alongside Rack & Riddle, the custom-crush sparkling wine business that gave the family its production base. They built the Breathless tasting room from four steel shipping containers set around a terraced garden. Inside, the space has a 1920s look, with vintage glassware, antique hats, champagne sabers and books by recent guest speakers. The same mood carries onto the label, where a woman rides forward on a flying cork.

“I want to go where she’s going,” Cohn said.

Cohn said the room reflects the sisters’ interest in an earlier era, but the business itself grew from practical roots. The three eventually decided they needed a label of their own, one that could build on the production base already around them while carrying a more personal story.

“It’s an industry that pours their heart into it,” she said.

She was not talking about branding. She was describing wine as agricultural work — vines planted and farmed over years, fruit harvested and handled, cellar crews guiding fermentation and aging, and hospitality workers translating that labor into a finished glass. In sparkling wine, she said, that work often ends up inside a beverage people use to mark anniversaries, gatherings and other milestones.

Family History and the Name

For Cohn, that idea of marking a moment begins with her mother.

Cohn said her parents were teachers who settled in Santa Rosa in the early 1960s after meeting at Chapman College in Orange. Her father eventually taught visually impaired students across Sonoma County. Her mother worked as a substitute teacher and filled in wherever schools and youth programs needed help.

“My parents didn’t drink,” Cohn said. “It just wasn’t in their lifestyle.”

Their mother’s health shaped the story behind the winery’s name as much as anything else. Cohn said her mother died from alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a rare genetic lung disease, and that the family supports the Alpha-1 Foundation. The name “Breathless,” she said, refers both to the “breathless moments” their mother created and to the harder lesson that came later, when breathing itself became uncertain.

Cohn described her mother as a persistent optimist. The family nickname was “Pollyanna,” she said, because she always looked for what was good, even when circumstances gave her reason not to.

That outlook still shapes the business. In Cohn’s telling, Breathless is not only about celebration. It is also about paying attention — to people, to labor and to the work behind each bottle.

Learning the Wine Business

Cohn left Sonoma County at 17 and joined the U.S. Air Force. She spent four years stationed in Minot, North Dakota, then moved to Minnesota before returning to Northern California.

“It was just too cold,” she said, “and I had to come home.”

Back in Sonoma County, she worked as a dental hygienist and met Bruce Cohn when he came in as a patient. The two later married, and B.R. Cohn Winery became her crash course in the wine business.

“That’s where I learned about the wine business and how crazy it was,” she said.

Bruce Cohn remains a recognizable name in Sonoma County, in part because of his longtime association with The Doobie Brothers and in part because B.R. Cohn emerged during a period when the region’s wine business expanded quickly.

Cohn remembered the early 1980s as a time when tasting rooms were packed with people.

“We were 10 deep at the bar,” she said.

What has changed, she said, is not just traffic. It is the structure of the market. There are more producers now, more labels competing for attention and a consistently higher floor of quality than there was decades ago. Consumers have more options and, in her view, have become more deliberate about spending and alcohol consumption.

“There are just so many choices for everyone,” she said.

That reality shapes Breathless’ current strategy. Cohn estimated wholesale accounts for roughly 15% to 20% of the winery’s sales, and she said expanding that channel is now a major focus. More of her time now goes toward placements with restaurants and retailers as the winery looks to grow beyond direct traffic to the tasting room. She said Oliver’s Market has been one of Breathless’ strongest and most consistent retail partners.

At the same time, she said, one of the winery’s most reliable sources of new visitors remains word of mouth.

“We see our members bringing their friends,” Cohn said. “That’s the best referral.”

The Rack and Riddle Backbone

The business side of Breathless is hard to separate from Rack & Riddle. Cohn described Rack & Riddle as an early bet on custom-crush sparkling wine production. Her sister Rebecca co-founded the company with Bruce Lundquist in 2007, building a facility designed to produce traditional-method sparkling wines for other labels. Her sister Cynthia later joined the operation after holding finance roles at several wineries.

Over time, Cohn said Rack & Riddle invested in European equipment and automated systems that reduced the amount of manual bottle-handling during riddling and disgorgement.

“You drop one bottle during the process and it’s an explosion,” she said.

In her account, automation was about safety as much as scale. It reduced some of the more hazardous work on the line while helping the operation handle larger volumes with greater consistency. Breathless, by contrast, remains intentionally smaller. Cohn said the winery produces about 5,000 cases annually, focuses exclusively on sparkling wine and bottles 14 different wines.

The winery opened at its Moore Lane location in 2016 and marks its 10-year anniversary this year. The wine program is led by longtime winemaker Penny Gadd-Coster and centers on traditional-method sparkling wines sourced primarily from Sonoma County fruit.

That range includes core bottlings such as blanc de blancs and blanc de noirs, along with smaller lots such as a pinot meunier and a late-disgorged brut. During the interview, Cohn shared four wines that offered a compact view of the lineup.

  • Blanc de Blancs ($39, 600 cases) — Multi-Vintage, Sonoma
    A chardonnay-based sparkling wine showing citrus peel and green apple with a light brioche note from time on the lees. The palate is bright and direct, with crisp acidity carrying through a clean finish.
  • Blanc de Noirs ($39, 600 cases) — Multi-Vintage, Sonoma
    Made from pinot noir, this wine carries slightly more breadth and a pale copper tint. Aromas lean toward red apple and strawberry, with a rounder midpalate before a lifted finish.
  • Pinot Meunier ($60, 250 cases) — 2021 Sonoma, Dry Creek
    An uncommon stand-alone bottling in California sparkling programs. Orchard fruit and subtle spice lead the aromatics, while the texture shows more weight than the chardonnay-based wine. Cohn described it as one of her favorites and said the grape brings so much to the palate that it can feel almost “chewy.”
  • Late Disgorged Brut ($75, 125 cases) — 2011 Sonoma
    Extended aging on the lees brings deeper notes of toasted bread, hazelnut and preserved lemon. The mousse is fine and integrated, and the finish leans savory rather than fruit-driven.

Breathless is also using events to maintain contact with customers in a slower market. This month the winery is hosting a Women’s History Month luncheon series, with tickets priced at $75 before platform fees through Tock. Reservations made directly through the tasting room avoid that fee. Cohn said the gatherings usually draw between two and four dozen people and are intended to create space for conversation as much as tasting.

Breathless Wines is open Thursday through Monday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

What Breathless Means

For Cohn, the wine itself remains only one part of the story. What matters just as much is the chain of work behind it — growers, cellar crews and the people who move an agricultural product toward a finished bottle.

“It’s not just putting a glass to your mouth,” she said. “There’s so much behind that.”

The name on the bottle returns that idea to where the story started: breath as celebration, breath as fragility and breath as a reminder not to take connection for granted.

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Sonoma County Features, by Tim Carl
March 2026