By Sean P. Sullivan | March 19th, 2025
Earlier this month, Willamette Valley’s Argyle Winery named Kate Payne Brown winemaker. Brown becomes the esteemed sparkling producer’s third winemaker in the last 38 years, following in the footsteps of founding winemaker Rollin Soles and Nate Klostermann.
“As someone who has centered my career on sparkling winemaking, it’s a chance to put my thumbprint on sparkling wine in Oregon,” Brown says. “It’s an incredible team, and I’m looking forward to shaping the future of this incredible legacy brand.”
A fateful Harley ride
While Brown has already been making wine in Willamette Valley for 18 years, she was not always destined for a career in the industry. Brown grew up primarily in Salt Lake City, Utah. She attended the University of Oregon and received a B.S. in biology, with plans of becoming an optometrist.
“I was working for a wonderful clinic in Beaverton, [Oregon] doing FDA trials and thinking a lot about eyeballs,” Brown says.
That was about to change. Brown and her boyfriend, now husband, Griffin Brown, lived in Eastmoreland, Oregon. They rode bicycles around town and stopped by an urban winery one day. Soon, Brown started volunteering at the winery.
“Life has this funny way of intersecting and pointing you in a direction,” she says.
That pointing continued. Concurrent to volunteering, Brown went on a Harley ride with her husband and others. One of the participants told her he had met a consultant who travelled all over the world assisting vintners with grape growing.
“That planted the seed for exploring wine in a professional way,” Brown says.
Proselytizing Oregon Pinot Noir down under
Brown started looking at Masters programs in enology. Wanting a perspective outside of Oregon, she chose University of Adelaide, an extremely competitive program that at the time only admitted 20 people each year.
While in Australia, she worked at Tintara Winery in McLaren Vale as a technical assistant. Her husband also became involved in the wine industry, working at Petaluma Wines.
“We were proselytizing the good word of Oregon Pinot all over the Australian hills,” Brown says.
The couple returned to Willamette Valley in 2007 to work harvest. Both interned at top spots, Brown at Archery Summit and her husband at Domaine Serene. Though they intended to return to Australia after harvest, both were offered permanent positions at the wineries where they interned, Brown as enologist and her husband as cellar master.
Brown remained at Archery Summit for almost seven years, most of that time as assistant winemaker. At the winery, she worked with winemaker Anna Matzinger and vineyard manager Leigh Bartholomew.
“I’m so grateful and fortunate to have worked with them,” Brown says. “It’s really where I was able to learn so much about winemaking, being patient, and making beautiful wines that reflected a sense of place and a time.”
A gravitation toward sparkling wine
In 2013, Brown left Archery Summit to work at Burgundia Oenologie for international consultant Kyriakos Kynigopoulos. She worked primarily with Kynigopoulos’s North American clients but also with clients in Burgundy and Champagne.
“He’s been a huge mentor and influence on my wine making career,” Brown says of Kynigopoulos.
Melissa Burr, founding winemaker at Stoller, reached out to Brown In 2014 about starting a sparkling wine program at Stoller. Brown consulted at first and then joined Stoller full-time in 2015. That same year, she and her husband started their own micro-winery, Dolores Wines.
During Brown’s nine years at Stoller, she built the winery’s sparkling wine program from the ground up. Brown was also responsible for the reserve wines at the winery, including all of the direct-to-consumer and club wines.
Brown helped launch Ambar Estate and made the inaugural vintage, working with the winery until the beginning 2025. She also served as winemaker and partner at Vinovate, a custom crush facility in Newberg.
When Argyle approached Brown, however, it was an offer she could not refuse. Brown loves sparkling winemaking through and through.
“It’s a wine that I’ve always gravitated toward drinking and learning about since very early on in my career,” Brown says.
Shouting Oregon sparkling wine from the rooftops
Now at Argyle, Brown will be working at Oregon’s original sparkling house. Founded in 1987, Argyle has nearly 500 acres of estate vineyards in Willamette Valley and produces approximately 100,000 cases of wine per year. Interest in sparkling wine from the valley has been increasing in recent years.
“There’s such a groundswell of interest and energy around sparkling wine from Oregon at the moment,” Brown says. “But we need to have enough wine out there for people to recognize sparkling wine from Oregon as a category.”
That is where Brown’s work at Argyle comes in. Argyle makes more sparkling wine than any other winery in Oregon. About half of the winery’s production is bubbles.
“I really want to continue to amplify the message out into the world how important and incredible Oregon sparkling wine is,” Brown says. “From my perspective, with Argyle, the sky’s the limit. I’m ready to shout out from the rooftops.”