Belle Pente Vineyard & Winery

Brian O’Donnell is from New York City, Jill from St. Cloud, Minnesota. They met in California, both worked in Silicon Valley, and both were award-winning home brewers. Brian started making wine for family and friends in 1986 after taking extension classes at UC Davis.

On the night of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, they resolved to get out of the tech business and start a small premium vineyard and winery. They moved to the Willamette Valley in 1992 and bought a historic 1840s farmstead two miles east of Carlton. Brian had to learn farming from the ground up; he credits the neighbors for helping him do it.

The name means beautiful slope. The vineyard rises from 240 to 500 feet with south, southeast, and southwest exposures, planted on the site of an old Italian plum orchard destroyed by a windstorm in 1962. First vines went in the ground in 1994, and the three-level gravity-flow winery was finished in 1996, in time for the first harvest.

They farm roughly 16 to 18 acres organically and biodynamically, and they dry farm. Production averages 4,500 cases, two-thirds Pinot Noir and two-thirds estate grown, with the rest from Yamhill County vineyards grown to their specifications — including old-vine Riesling from Hyland. Beyond Pinot there’s Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Riesling, Gamay Noir, and a Muscat blend that started as something Brian made for himself and became popular enough to bottle.

The wines have a reputation for elegance and for being priced with unusual modesty for the quality. Vinous called them some of the Willamette Valley’s most graceful Pinot Noirs.

The farm is a farm. Cherry, apple, and pear trees, goats, sheep, exotic cattle, and Dolly the llama, who guards the rest of them.