Stag Hollow Vineyards

Jill and Mark migrated to the Pacific Northwest to attend college in the late 1970s, meeting at the University of Washington while studying forest birds in the Olympic Mountains. Married in 1985 in a subalpine meadow at Mount Rainier, they toured the wine regions of Italy’s Piedmont and Spain’s Rioja on bicycles for their honeymoon. At the time Mark was exploring beer making but together they both quickly discovered that wine piqued their interests more with its intricacy engrained with nature’s unpredictability. An exploration of making wine from purchased grapes in Jill’s parent’s basement blossomed to a desire to pick their own grapes and eventually grow them. In 1989, they bought a sheep farm on a ridge near Yamhill, Oregon that became Stag Hollow Vineyards, built an octagon-shaped home overlooking the Willamette Valley, and harvested their first grapes for winemaking in 1994.