Discover Bells Up Winery in Newberg, Oregon—a micro-boutique winery offering exclusive winemaker-hosted tastings. Call 503-537-1328 for your private experience.
In an era where wineries compete through Instagram aesthetics, online booking platforms, and algorithm-driven marketing, one tiny Oregon producer is proving that the old ways still work—and work beautifully.
Bells Up Winery in Newberg, owned by Dave and Sara Specter, has built a devoted following by rejecting digital convenience in favor of something increasingly rare: genuine human connection, one phone call and one pour at a time. This “micro-boutique” winery (they playfully call it “un-Domaine”) produces just 600 cases annually across nine wines and offers exclusively winemaker-hosted private tastings limited to one group at a time—no walk-ins, no online reservations, no impersonal commerce.
For upscale wine collectors and enthusiasts from Beverly Hills to West Hollywood to Santa Monica planning Oregon wine country trips, Bells Up represents the antidote to assembly-line tasting room experiences. At $50 per person with maximum party size of six, these intimate sessions with Dave and Sara create the kind of personal connections that transform visitors into ambassadors who can’t stop talking about their Oregon experience.
Here’s why this intentional throwback to more personal wine commerce deserves a spot on your next Willamette Valley itinerary.
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The Bells Up Philosophy: Relationship-Based Wine Sales Still Work
Dave and Sara Specter didn’t stumble into their business model—they designed it intentionally based on what they loved most as out-of-state wine country visitors themselves in 2008.
“We were out-of-state visitors ourselves in 2008, and this type of one-on-one owner/winemaker-hosted wine experience was what we loved best, but you hardly see it anymore,” Sara explains.
That observation became their entire business philosophy. Their strategy—producing a scant 600 cases per year across nine wines and offering winemaker-hosted private tastings exclusively to one group at a time—may sound retro, but it’s an intentional throwback to simpler times when communication and commerce were far more personal and intimate, and far less digital.
Related: Williamette Valley’s Bells Up Winery is Oregon’s answer to music in the bottle
Bells Up Winery is one of the few that do not embrace online sales, online reservations, and SMS text marketing. Instead, they’ve proved that old-school relationship-based wine sales can not only work, but customers actually find it refreshing—a welcome break from the transactional, algorithm-driven experiences dominating modern commerce.
The only way to buy Bells Up wine is directly from the winery, either in person or by phone. Once Dave and Sara have gotten to know you and your wine preferences through tasting together, repeat orders can be made by phone or email. If you’re uncertain about a selection, they can reference your previous tasting or discuss your preferences, then describe available wines directly to you—real conversation replacing shopping cart algorithms.
For wine collectors accustomed to navigating crowded tasting rooms where staff rush through pours while managing multiple parties simultaneously, this personal approach feels like discovering how wine country used to be—and arguably, how it should be.
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