Domaine Serene

Ken Evenstad grew up in Baudette, Minnesota, a small town on the Canadian border, in a family of meager means. A local pharmacist convinced him he was college-worthy. He put himself through the University of Minnesota, earned a pharmacy degree in 1967, and went on to found Upsher-Smith Laboratories. He’d met Grace on a blind date the year before.

They fell for Burgundy — specifically for the way those wines communicate the character of a single vineyard — and spent years looking for somewhere to plant their own. In 1989 they settled on the Dundee Hills, buying 42 hilltop acres and founding Domaine Serene. There was no national market for domestic Pinot Noir at the time. They made their first wine in 1990 in an abandoned electric plant in McMinnville.

What followed reshaped the region. In 2001 they completed a five-level gravity-flow Pinot Noir winery, then a dedicated white winery for Chardonnay and sparkling — the first of its kind in Oregon. The Clubhouse opened in 2017, modeled on their Burgundian château, and set a new standard for wine hospitality in the Northwest.

They are the only vintners in the world to have both a Pinot Noir and a Chardonnay rank in the top three of Wine Spectator’s Top 100. James Suckling named them one of the fifty greatest wineries in the world. The 2013 Jerusalem Hill Pinot Noir was named the number one Pinot Noir from America by Decanter. Wine & Spirits has listed them among the world’s top hundred wineries for six consecutive years.

In 2015 they became the first Oregon vintners to buy in Burgundy, acquiring Château de la Crée in Santenay, established in 1431. A Côte de Nuits property followed in 2021, renamed Domaine Evenstad, with holdings in Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, and Nuits-Saint-Georges. All of it now sits under Evenstad Estates.

Ken Evenstad died in October 2020. Grace received the Legacy Winemaker Award from ¡Salud!

The estate has grown from 42 acres to more than 1,000, with 300 planted across seven vineyard sites, all dry-farmed and LIVE certified, all Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Thirty-seven different wines are produced.

The Clubhouse holds a grand tasting room, a members lounge, and a dedicated food and wine pairing lounge, wrapped by a patio facing the valley and the Coast Range. Beyond standard flights, there are private sommelier-led tastings, cave tastings, and comparative flights setting their Willamette wines against Burgundy — a comparison few places can make with their own bottles on both sides.