Argyle Winery

Rollin Soles earned a master’s in enology from UC Davis in 1978, worked at Chateau Montelena in Napa, then went to Australia and met Brian Croser at Petaluma in the Adelaide Hills, where Croser had built one of the country’s defining cool-climate sparkling operations. The two went looking for cool latitudes around the world where Pinot Noir and Chardonnay could ripen late.

They landed in the Willamette Valley. Soles’s insight was that the same marginal, cool conditions that made ripening big red wines difficult here made it close to ideal for sparkling — fruit picked early enough to hold electric acidity while still reaching physiological ripeness.

They founded Argyle in 1987 in a repurposed commercial hazelnut processing plant in downtown Dundee, the first winery inside the city limits. The building gave Soles the cellar space he needed for méthode champenoise, and the first bottles were riddled on those premises. They named it after an Australian diamond mine, and because it sounded Scottish enough for a town called Dundee.

The first year produced 20,000 cases of sparkling wine. In 1990, Cal Knudsen left his partnership with Dick Erath and joined Argyle, bringing his mature 120-acre Dundee Hills vineyard — half of it planted in the early 1970s — with him. Knudsen remains the primary source.

Argyle now farms over 350 acres across the Dundee Hills and Eola-Amity Hills, including Lone Star and Spirit Hill, all LIVE Certified and Salmon-Safe. Production runs around 50,000 cases, roughly 60% Pinot Noir, 35% sparkling, and 5% whites. They were the first American winery to earn Wine Spectator Top 100 honors across red, white, and sparkling categories.

The Riesling program dates to 1988 and deserves more attention than it gets. A two-year study of top producers in Germany, Switzerland, New York, and Ontario led them to the Geisenheim 110 clone, and there are now three distinct styles.

Only three people have ever made the wine here: Soles from 1987 to 2013, Nate Klostermann through 2024, and Kate Payne Brown since March 2025.

The modern Tasting House sits on the footprint of the original Nut House, with a porch, patio, and lawn.