Winemaker and proprietor
Piper Underbrink
Piper studied geology before she studied wine, and she still reads a vineyard from the soil up.
The road to Newberg
Piper’s love of wine came from her father, a lifelong collector of wines from around the world. She grew up between a Minnesota lake, where he restored wooden boats, and the Florida coast, and studied geology at Middlebury College.
Her first harvest was in 2015, at Flowers Vineyard and Winery on the Sonoma Coast. She took classes through the UC Davis Enology and Viticulture program, worked a harvest at Joseph Phelps in St. Helena, helped open an urban winery and spent time in the distillery world.
In 2020 she found Privé through mutual friends. Mark and Tina Hammond, who started the estate in 2000 and built a family of members around their table, welcomed her as family. She and her husband, Ben, took on the estate that year, and in 2021 they added West Wind. Piper is now its winemaker and vineyard steward.
How she makes Privé
She picks when sugar and acidity come into balance, not by the calendar. In the cellar she destems, ferments and extracts gently, and ages in French oak, building wines with complexity and the structure to age. Alcohol usually lands around 13 to 14 percent.
L’ouest is the best barrels from West Wind, blended across all five clones so it shows the whole vineyard. For the wines made from other sites, she works with growers who share the estate’s commitment to sustainable farming and minimal intervention, including Les Collines Vineyard in Walla Walla.
Alongside Privé, Piper makes the wines of Sealionne, her workshop label. When she isn’t in the vineyard she is usually on skis or a bike.
“At Privé you have our complete commitment to thoughtful, loving care for every vine at every stage of development.”
Piper Underbrink