Join winemaker Brendan Stater-West on Monday, November 25 from 4:30-6 pm. Brendan will be pouring his French Chenin Blancs and Cabernet Francs. Brendan was born and raised in Eugene, OR but has lived in Saumur, France in the Loire Valley, making incredible wine. It’s a rare moment to have him home for the holidays and we are very excited to have him in the shop with us! Great wines for the holiday!

With that infectious smile, a humble disposition, and a willingness to "trust the process," Brendan Stater-West is intuitively built to be a great vigneron.  One might ask how a young American guy from Eugene, Oregon with no winemaking background ends up in Saumur as the right hand man to Romain Guiberteau, one of the benchmark producers in the Loire Valley. It started while Brendan was working at a hip Parisian wine shop, where he first encountered a bottle of Guiberteau and fell hard for the purity and laser- focused expressions of Chenin Blanc.  After a move to Saumur, he pestered Romain until he finally gave in to that all-American charm and gave him a job chez Guiiberteau.

When his current boss and mentor Romain Guiberteau suggested he could help him launch his own project by leasing him a single hectare of vines - Les Chapaudaises- a plot next to Romain’s famous lieu-dit in the town of Bizay, Clos du Guichaux - there was zero hesitation. His first vintage in 2015 turned heads, especially the team at Becky Wasserman who kindly made our early introduction to Brendan. 

His luck and hard work continue to pay off, as he has since taken over farming in some choice old-vine parcels in Brézé for Chenin and La Ripaille for Cabernet Franc.  Needless to say, Brendan's story makes the case that in fact, "nice guys don't always finish last."