Visit Bryn Mawr Vineyards

Culinary Director / Estate Chef

Two-time James Beard Nominee, Chef Jonathan Jones’ cuisine draws from his diverse upbringing across Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Vermont, blending “Amish Soulfood” traditions with regional influences. His menus reflect a commitment to hearty, nutritionally dense dishes that nourish both body and soul, with each plate designed to convey emotion, memory, and story. Jonathan combines his culinary expertise with his background in writing and photography to create experiences that are as visually and emotionally rich as they are delicious.

In charge of our seasonal small plate menu, Chef Jonathan also creates Peak Harvest: A 6-course pairing dinner. Inspired by a seasonal wine flight, he unleashes creative genius to cook up a feast of flavors that celebrates the best of the Willamette Valley’s bounty. Ingredients are harvested at their ‘peak,’ paired to perfection with our wines. The pairing evolves with the seasons and changes monthly.

We’re grateful and honored to work alongside such a thoughtful and creative culinary voice!

Tasting Room Associate

Tim left Oregon in 1999 to pursue a career in the entertainment industry where he rose to head film restoration artist for Sony Pictures. After a nearly 20 year career as a respected film editor, he felt his passion for wine was pushing him to explore a new direction. He began enology and viticulture classes while closing out a career in film and moved back to the Willamette Valley in 2018 to complete his degree in viticulture management.

As his favorite Oregon pinot noir producer, Bryn Mawr Vineyards was a perfect fit and we’re happy to have Tim as part of our Hospitality team coming up on 3 years. Known on our team for his sense of humor, he’s always prepared with a pun or dad joke to lighten the mood!

Tasting Room Lead

Karen Stolberg was born in Los Angeles and raised in Salem, Oregon. From an early age, she knew her path would lead her into the culinary world. With both parents working as bakers, food was always at the center of her life, but it was her mother’s cooking that truly ignited her passion.

In 2007, Karen earned her degree in Culinary Arts from Le Cordon Bleu. She went on to spend nearly 13 years working in professional kitchens, where she not only refined her culinary skills but also discovered a deep appreciation for the exceptional wines of Oregon’s Willamette Valley. While working in downtown Salem restaurants, she was introduced to Bryn Mawr Vineyards.

As a newlywed during the height of the COVID pandemic, Karen began reflecting on where the next chapter of her life would take her. Knowing it was time for a major change, she turned toward the world of wine. Through the relationships she had built Karen found her new home at Bryn Mawr Vineyards.

During her time at Bryn Mawr, Karen has expanded her expertise in the wine industry, earning her WSET Level 2 certification and becoming the leader of the tasting room team. Her culinary background, wine knowledge, and genuine hospitality make her a key presence in creating memorable guest experiences.

Outside of the tasting room, Karen enjoys spending time on Mount Hood snowboarding, or in the kitchen making yummy meals to be enjoyed with her husband, Scott, and their adorable son, Jimmy.

Assistant Winemaker

Raised on the Texas Gulf Coast, where salt air and big skies shaped a life built around flavor, craft, and storytelling, Will first found creative expression through music. After a brief stop at the University of North Texas, he spent nearly a decade touring the country as a guitarist, living out of vans and green rooms, chasing the perfect set. The road instilled timing, collaboration, and an appreciation for creating something fleeting yet unforgettable—skills that continue to shape his work in wine.

When the amplifiers quieted, Will traded guitar strings for chef’s knives. On the Illinois side of the St. Louis metroplex, he opened the kitchen at a wine bar that would grow into a resort destination. There, he met Jill, the love of his life, and together they turned hospitality into a craft of its own. Overseeing the resort’s hospitality and building its wine program deepened his fascination with how food and wine speak to one another. In 2014, he earned his Certified Sommelier credential, but the more he learned, the more he wanted to be at the source—to make the wine himself.

Oregon called in 2017, and the couple relocated to Salem. Will launched a wine tour business to immerse himself in the local scene, and when the pandemic closed that chapter, he seized the opportunity to join Bryn Mawr Vineyards as a harvest intern in 2020. The work was demanding, physical, and deeply satisfying—exactly the way he liked it. By the next year he was on the team full-time, promoted to Cellar Master before harvest, and in 2022 stepped into the role of Assistant Winemaker.

Today, his days are spent coaxing character from fruit, blending precision with creativity, and producing wines that carry a sense of place. Outside the winery, he can often be found hunting truffles with the family dogs, Maeva and Blu, hiking Oregon’s trails, cooking for friends, playing guitar, or reciting Mitch Hedberg jokes—because wine should inspire joy as much as it inspires reflection.

Wine Club & Fulfillment Manager

Shannon Green is a born-and-raised Pacific Northwest native, hailing from the striking landscapes of eastern Washington. After studying Sociology at Washington State University, she crossed over to the greener side of the Cascades. She would spend the next 15 years working for two leading Seattle-based hospital organizations, the latter half as a training specialist on electronic health record software with a focus on inpatient RN and Emergency Department Physician training. But while many would be happy for a stable career in a major city, she found herself pining for open space to foster her rescue dogs and reconnect with the land. A passionate organic gardener and a developing wine enthusiast, she decided to head for the hills – The Dundee Hills, to be specific – with her husband, Travis, to begin their next chapter.

Shannon’s first entry into the wine industry came through a harvest intern position at Hawkins Cellars, where she got hands-on experience with the most tenacious and passionate aspect of the wine industry. She would pivot this passion into a position as Tasting Room Manager at Cliff Creek Cellars followed by a long tenure as the Wine Club & Event Manager at Dobbes Family Estate in Dundee, a significant local operation. She chose Bryn Mawr as her next home for several reasons; the family-owned culture, the dedication to sustainability, the woman in charge of the winery, and the beautiful grit of the Eola-Amity Hills all came together to lead her to our doorstep. After nine years of working in “urban” wineries, she could finally go outside her office to see beautiful vines, thriving soils, and the endless views that make Oregon Wine Country so special. She loves being an active part of the Oregon Wine Industry’s culture of camaraderie and collaboration.

In her spare time, Shannon is a passionate advocate for animals, environmental causes, and human rights. She’s realized her dreams of having a healthy organic garden full of seasonal vegetables to play with in the kitchen year-round. She also fills her home with happy foster dogs, working with the Portland Dachshund Rescue and Underdog Rocks Rescue to provide care for adorable pups of all ages and temperaments. On her days off, you can (hopefully not) find her out on the golf course or tennis court. Her jois de vive is infectious, and we’re so happy she’s part of our team. She’s enormously dedicated to ensuring every bottle of wine finds its home throughout the country and seeing that our club members get the best experience in the Willamette Valley.

Director of Sales

Of all the Lauer children to be a part of the family business, none seemed less likely than David, who was just fifteen when his family made a wild decision to jump into the wine industry. Vocally opposed to participating, he left for college in New York City, determined to be somebody. It turns out that New York City is the perfect place to develop a profound appreciation for food, wine, and open space, and he soon found himself back at the vineyard working summers in the fields and the cellar. Upon graduating in 2016, he came back to work for a bit before figuring out his next step, but as he continued to learn in the cellar alongside Rachel, he found himself being sucked into the passionate, sticky, and wild world of winemaking. Once he caught the bug, he couldn’t shake it, and he quickly became Bryn Mawr’s most visible and vocal storyteller.

When David joined, he was one of three full time employees alongside his dad and Rachel, so he found himself filling any gaps, jumping from position to position as the winery needed. Over the next five years, he would fill nearly every possible role at the winery, from tasting room manager to cellar assistant to forklift operator to running the entire DTC program at just 24 years of age, and sometimes all of those in the same week. He was instrumental in growing the tasting room from his dad’s basement into our new facilities, enduring every speed bump along the way. When COVID struck, he left hospitality and found himself back in the cellar for a stint during the difficult 2020 vintage, an experience that would fundamentally reshape his view towards the role of winemakers and the purpose of the wine industry. Bit by a newfound enregy, he returned to hospitality and sales in full force, developing our experiential tasting program and diving into the tumultuous yet exciting world of national sales.

Though it’s increasingly rare that you’ll find him in the tasting room, David still makes every effort to tell Bryn Mawr’s story to whichever ear he gets the chance to catch. Whether it’s through a vineyard tour, at a winemaker dinner, or if you just catch him out and about, it’s no challenge at all to get him talking for hours and hours about wine, the Willamette Valley, Bryn Mawr, and his mentor through it all, Rachel. He’s a passionate advocate for sustainability in all aspects of the wine industry, and his extensive houseplant collection and garden are evidence of his love for the botanical world and all of its wonders. His greatest pleasure is getting to be Bryn Mawr’s megaphone nationwide, and he credits his years of working on the ground alongside Rachel with his palpable adoration for wine and the wine industry.

Director of Hospitality & Marketing

Krista didn’t always seem like she would find her way back to the family business. Back in our early days, she assisted in the tasting room while a student at Willamette University. After receiving her degree in Art History, she ventured to Denver, where she received her Masters at DU while getting her feet wet in the art world. That feet-wetting became a whole dive right in as she began working at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

She spent the next six years at MCA Denver developing through a variety of different positions, starting off in Visitor Services as she managed and oversaw the gallery attendant program and as the buyer for the museum shop, a position that led her to be the unquestionable premier gift-giver at family holiday celebrations. She later transitioned into Exhibitions as the Curatorial Associate, aiding in the development and installation of exhibitions. Determined to break the mold of the unemployed Art Historian, she gave her entire self to the position, but ultimately found that the art world wasn’t going to be her final destination.

During the reflective COVID years, Krista felt the pull back to Oregon and was ready to devote her energy to the wine industry and the family business. Less than a week after returning, she found herself working twelve-hour days on the harvest line—an unexpected initiation she met head-on, quickly proving her dedication. She had barely settled into the tasting room when a staffing shift placed the entire Hospitality program in her hands. Drawing on her experience within a larger organization, Krista eagerly stepped up, implementing structure, systems, and lines of communication the team didn’t even realize it needed.

With a unique perspective, a flair for the dramatic, and a clear creative vision, Krista has streamlined policies and procedures while funneling her creative energy into marketing. She looks forward to growing the scope of the events program and continuing the legacy of thoughtful, welcoming hospitality that makes us so proud.

Winemaker & Vineyard Director

Rachel Rose graduated with her B.S in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Fresh out of college and working in a Biotech research lab, she never imagined herself elbow deep in rolling ferments within just a few years; however, wine finds a way. For her, it came through food. Cooking was her hobby through college and her first couple years of professional life, and as she gained a job with stable income, she was able to start pairing her meals with wine. Each wine she tried opened her eyes to new regions and new varietals, and she picked up a job in a tasting room on weekends to grow this newfound interest. Meeting with a winemaker, she realized that not only were geography and climate huge factors in wine, but biology and chemistry as well. Wine quickly became a fiery passion, but unlike most passions, her education was shockingly relevant to this particular one. She realized she might have that chance that every 20-something dreams of, the chance to explore the world with an active, hands-on profession that could lead to a professional future. Already feeling exceedingly restless in the lab setting, she debated what and where to study before taking off for Australia to delve into viticulture for a year.

One year became three years, by the end of which she had her M.S. in Oenology and a postgraduate diploma in viticulture. At the University of Adelaide in South Australia, she had a unique educational opportunity. South Australia has an exceedingly diverse set of converging climates. Hundreds of varietals can grow successfully in a relatively constrained space. The University provided a working winery so Rachel could play with this stunning array of grapes in a hands-on, experiential fashion, with a focus microbiology and soil chemistry. In the Adelaide Hills, Rachel discovered the miracle of cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, igniting a love affair that grows stronger to this day. She knew either Burgundy or “the New Burgundy,” AKA Oregon, were in her future, and as a non-French speaking American woman, the latter seemed to make the most sense. To help that decision to come back to the West Coast were family and a particularly lovely artist & musician named Liam Stary, whom Rachel met just a few months before she left for Australia.

When a charismatic and determined man named Jon Lauer reached out to her about an opportunity to live on his recently acquired vineyard and help develop his property, she couldn’t pass the opportunity. Rachel and Liam moved to a downtrodden triple-wide trailer on the property, which they would laboriously coax into a home for the next five years. She quickly proved herself to the Lauers, who entrusted her with the full direction of Bryn Mawr’s viticulture and winemaking programs. Under Rachel’s leadership, acres were cleared and planted with a diverse set of clones and varietals, production took off, and the world took notice. Her wines, produced in a pop-up tent that would make other winemakers shiver, were quickly being flooded by accolades, and the Lauers knew they had to give her the proper conditions to achieve her potential. After many years, 2018 marked the first vintage of Bryn Mawr wines made under walls and a roof, and her star has only risen with every vintage since.

Rachel is an adaptive and experimental winemaker who bridges the gap between natural and traditional winemaking. She is remarkably prolific. making an array of unique wines that require adept skill and technical knowledge. Her primary winemaking philosophy focuses on minimal use of SO2, judicious use of new French oak, and continual experimentation. Through contemplative intervention in the vineyard and the cellar she aims to express and elevate the unique characteristics of each vintage of wine she makes. She knows how bridge the artistic creativity that’s the lifeblood of the wine industry with a modern understanding of biochemistry necessary for understanding the building blocks of her wines; this allows her to envision what she wants her wines to be while allowing her the tools to achieve those goals. Her appreciation for many different winemaking philosophies combined with her refusal to be dogmatic makes her one of the most exciting winemakers on the West Coast, reminding us that wine can be fun, serious, educated, and pretty wild!

Owners

When they met at a hearing in Yuma, Arizona in 1986, Jon, a young attorney, and Kathy, a summer clerk still in law school, had no idea their lives were about to take a dramatic turn. Just four weeks later, they were

engaged, Kathy was making plans to join Jon at his new home in San Diego, and a seminal road trip up the California coast was planned. By its end, Bryn Mawr was inevitable.

Both Jon and Kathy grew up in rural Midwestern communities, Jon just outside of St. Louis, Missouri, and Kathy in tiny Frankenmuth, Michigan. Though they both attended University of Michigan for undergrad and law, they were several years apart, never crossing paths. Both came from backgrounds devoid of wine outside of communion and the occasional cooler, so when they saw vines stretching along the Central California coast, they decided to try something new, getting a rare chance to discover a wine region just before it exploded onto the global consciousness. They were drawn into a world of excellent wines made by humble people in a beautiful place. An unshakeable dream to plant grapes and make wine was born.

Watching these wineries they once visited inside garages and small warehouses rapidly grow into the massive tasting complexes dotting California’s coastline was both inspirational and alienating. As they got married, raised a family, and settled into San Diego, the dream had to be put aside. Kathy’s career took off, sending her all over the country to work some of the nation’s largest healthcare fraud cases. Jon, unable to shake the incessant inner nagging to produce wine, planted a half acre of grapes at the family home, tending to it and his family with equal adoration. Though he loved the vines, the vines didn’t love the even, predictable climate of Southern California, and Jon knew he would have to look north to find a place for the dream to continue.

As they delved deeper into their passion for wine, hosting a regular monthly tasting room for nearly fifteen years, they discovered Oregon Pinot Noirs. They found these wines entrancing in their elegance and finesse, and Jon decided to visit in 2003, taking his youngest, David, along with him. While David frolicked amongst waterfalls with his grandparents, Jon was feeling the swell of emotion he and Kathy felt on that first visit to wine country decades prior. In the beautiful Eola-Amity Hills, a neighborhood then exploding with potential, it hit a crescendo, and the next few years were spent desperately hunting for a small property near Salem.

A rustic little vineyard appeared on the market in 2007, where it sat until said market crashed in 2009. When the listing price dropped, Jon couldn’t resist taking a quick visit to see the property and taste the wines in barrel. After being shocked by their dense yet vibrant expressions and falling in love with the site, Jon and Kathy took a massive leap of faith and closed. It came with a small basement winery, a rickety tractor, four acres of established vines, and the name Bryn Mawr, which they decided to honor and keep. Considering the rocky hillsides covered with overgrown forest and blackberry brambles they now found themselves upon, it felt all too appropriate.

Jon & Kathy met Rachel Rose by a stroke of luck just weeks after closing on the property. They knew after a single lunch that Rachel, though relatively inexperienced, had the mind and approach of a world-class winemaker, hiring her on the spot. Jeff, their oldest, and his now-wife Nina joined them early on and helped develop the initial infrastructure needed to grow. And grow they did. In five years, there were 15 acres of vines producing fruit, production was expanding beyond the walls of their wedding tent winery, and the lack of windows and heat in the “tasting room” was becoming more than a moderate issue. It was time to realize Bryn Mawr’s full potential.

The next five years the family expanded operations significantly, acquiring 20 additional acres of land adjacent to the existing property. This allowed them to build a new winery facility, a stunning tasting room, and guest houses onsite. David finished school in 2016, swapping places with Jeff and coming back to the winery to aid with this major transition. Krista, their daughter, recently returned to the winery to continue developing our hospitality program.

Since taking over operations on January 1, 2010, Jon & Kathy have developed Bryn Mawr into a premier destination winery, a major part of why the Eola-Amity Hills are today amongst the world’s most treasured wine regions. They’re hands-on, family-oriented, and still manage to bring laughter and energy through the Herculean task of developing a top-tier winery. Now that Kathy has retired from her career as an attorney, they both look forward to many more years of working with their kids and watching their family continue to grow alongside their dream.