Winderlea Winery: An Old Dundee Vineyard, Reborn

Winderlea is a Dundee Hills estate built on vines planted in the 1970s, and one of Oregon’s clearest examples of how far Willamette Valley wine has come.

The estate pairs some of the Willamette Valley’s older Pinot Noir vines with a thoroughly modern approach to farming.¹

An old Dundee vineyard

The land was first planted in 1974 as the Dundee Hills Vineyard, in the early wave that followed the region’s pioneers.¹ It was renamed the Goldschmidt Vineyard after a former Oregon governor bought the property in 1998. By the time it changed hands again, the site held mature, low-yielding vines of real pedigree.

Winderlea is born

In 2006, Bill Sweat and Donna Morris left careers in finance to buy the roughly 20-acre property and renamed it Winderlea.¹ Their first vintage came the same year. The winery focuses on what the Dundee Hills do best: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, made site by site.²

Farming as the point

Winderlea made sustainability central rather than decorative. The estate earned LIVE and Salmon-Safe certification in 2008 and adopted biodynamic practices from 2009, later gaining Demeter Biodynamic certification.² In 2015 it became one of the first wineries in the world to earn B Corp certification, a standard for social and environmental performance.² Today the estate farms about 42 acres across two Dundee Hills sites.

A new chapter

In early 2026, the Ricci family bought Winderlea from Sweat and Morris, taking on an estate whose reputation was already made.¹ The vines planted in 1974 keep producing, now under their third set of stewards.

Read more

• Willamette Valley: how Oregon became Pinot Noir country
• Dick Erath, an Oregon wine pioneer
• A history of Pinot Noir

References

1. The vineyard first planted in 1974 (later the Goldschmidt Vineyard), bought and renamed Winderlea by Bill Sweat and Donna Morris in 2006, and acquired by the Ricci family in 2026: Winderlea Vineyard & Winery (official); Oregon Wine Board; Wine Spectator. ↩
2. Winderlea’s focus on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, its LIVE/Salmon-Safe and Demeter Biodynamic certification, its B Corp certification (2015), and its ~42 acres across two Dundee Hills sites: Winderlea (official); Dundee Hills Winegrowers Association; B Lab. ↩

Want to read more? Try these books

The Oxford Companion to Wine Jancis Robinson (ed.)

The Story of Wine Hugh Johnson

Ancient Wine Patrick E. McGovern

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