Solely Wine Brings Science, Passion & Community Together in Indianapolis
Photographer / Michael Durr
Ten years ago, Amanda McLaurin was a biotech engineer. Today, she is the owner of Solely Wine in Indianapolis, a wine bar located on the Monon Trail and focused on serving thoughtfully crafted and local wines.
Solely Wine specializes in minimal or low-intervention wines, meaning wines that have very little added to or removed from them.
“Natural wine falls on a spectrum,” she says. “I think as long as you’re having wine producers making wine in a way that’s thoughtful and mindful, you’re probably falling somewhere on that spectrum.”
McLaurin looks for things like native yeast fermentation, organic, biodynamic, unfiltered and unfined wines. Ideally, they also wouldn’t add chemicals or animal products that would require filtering sediment, and makers would minimize use of sulfur dioxide.
Her scientific background has helped her in studying wine and running a wine bar, and she is a certified wine instructor at WSET Level 3, working on her diploma with the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, a globally recognized program for qualifications and accreditation.
“I really loved engineering — the troubleshooting and the design aspect — and I felt my job was very purposeful,” she says. “I used to work in an industry where we made life-saving drugs for children. But the politics involved still make it hard for women. As much as I liked it, I knew that I wanted to do something that I felt very passionate about. It might not be making medication necessarily, but I am in a field now where I get to interface with the community, which I really love. I’m getting the opportunity to grow wine culture here in Indianapolis and I’m doing something that I enjoy.”
McLaurin lived in Atlanta, Georgia, for 42 years before moving to Indianapolis with her husband three years ago. She saw a gap in the wine market here and decided to turn a passion and hobby into a new career.
“I live here in the neighborhood,” she says. “Something that I was very mindful about was picking a location that is centered around community. For me, that was the Monon. Atlanta has the BeltLine there, which is also a commuter pedestrian path that connects all these pockets of neighborhoods throughout the city, and it’s filled with restaurants and bars and it gets people moving and exploring different parts of the city. I wanted to have a location that would be on a pedestrian or biking path where people were going to be riding through. I always felt like business was going to be good.”
Solely Wine’s first anniversary was in September, and McLaurin is proud to reach that milestone with the same staff she first hired. It’s been a learning experience for her.
“You have to be financially conservative, owning a business,” she says. “It’s different to be managing your own money versus managing your company’s money and understanding and learning what it means to be financially conservative when it comes to commercial spending. Moving from an industry where I felt like I needed to have a lot of control, I’m learning what it means to delegate tasks. It’s relying on support around me and trusting my team to be able to carry the weight for me. It’s hard to give up something you kind of built and trust other people, but we’re getting better at it.”
Solely Wine also operates as an event space for bridal showers, baby showers, wedding rehearsals and corporate events.
“On Wednesdays, we do tastings from 5-7 p.m. It gives us an opportunity to get new wines in front of people to try, and producers they’ve never heard of before,” McLaurin adds. “We do bingo the first Thursday of every month, which we love and it goes over very well. We have events with small producers, they will come in and we’ll pour all their wines, and we’ll typically include a food element in those.”
The wine bar is expanding with a new space opening soon for events and education, which will also function as an art gallery and showroom. McLaurin is partnering with Malina Bacon of the nonprofit art organization GANGGANG and plans to host more events focused on art and wine, in addition to teaching WSET classes starting in 2026.
“I feel it’s my responsibility to understand where Solely is located,” she says. “It’s located in a historic Black community, Martindale-Brightwood, and I think having the element of art, especially curated by Mali, her mission is to support underrepresented and underprivileged Black artists — to have that here is going to be such a cool addition to the community.”
Solely Wine is located at 1106 E. 16th St., Ste. 100 in Indianapolis. For more information, call 770-617-6118 or visit drinksolelywine.com.
