Bryn Mawr Vineyards

Jon and Kathy Lauer were both attorneys in San Diego who spent nearly fifteen years hosting a monthly tasting group. Somewhere in that they found Oregon Pinot Noir, and its elegance got hold of them. Jon came up in 2003 with his youngest son David and felt the same swell he and Kathy had felt on a first trip to wine country decades earlier. The Eola-Amity Hills were exploding with potential. He spent the next few years hunting for a small property near Salem.

A rustic little vineyard came on the market in 2007 and sat there until the market crashed in 2009. When the price dropped, Jon drove up to look at it and taste the wines in barrel. The wines shocked him — dense and vibrant at once — and they closed.

What they bought was a small basement winery, a rickety tractor, four acres of established vines, and the name. Bryn Mawr is Welsh for “great hill,” and given the rocky hillsides covered in overgrown forest and blackberry brambles they’d just acquired, it seemed appropriate. They kept it.

Weeks after closing they met Rachel Rose, the vineyard’s caretaker, by chance. She’s been the winemaker ever since and now serves as Winemaker and Vineyard Director.

Together they planted eleven more acres and diversified the site well beyond Pinot — Pinot Blanc, Dolcetto, Riesling, and Tempranillo alongside new clones of the established varieties. Wine was made between Jon’s basement and a former wedding tent for eight vintages. The winery facility was finally completed in 2018, the tasting room in 2019.

Kathy has since retired from law and was named among the Portland Business Journal’s Women of Influence. Both are hands-on, and their children work in the business.

The current lineup runs Estate and Reserve tiers of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, with the more unusual plantings alongside.