Pinot Country

vineyardBien Nacido

also: Bien Nacido Vineyards · Rancho Tepusquet

34.50°N34.75°N35.00°NSanta Maria ValleyAu Bon ClimatSanta Maria tri-tipSanta Maria Style Barbeque AssociationDine Out Santa Maria StyleTri-tip over red oakTri-tip over red oakSanta Maria tri-tipBien Nacido20 km
Bien Nacido, and what else this directory knows within 90 km.

Eight hundred acres on the Santa Maria bench, planted in 1969 and farmed row by row for whoever buys the rows. Over 250 acres of it is pinot noir, and the vineyard's name appears on more labels than most wineries manage.

👪 Family-held

When the door opens

Nobody has published this one's days where this project could read them. That is a gap here, not a locked door — write ahead, and see the finder for the cellars that do publish.

The story Cited

Tomás Olivera took the Rancho Tepusquet grant from Governor Alvarado in 1837; Chumash had fished Tepusquet Creek long before that. Juan Pacífico Ontiveros built the adobe in 1857 and farmed grain, stock and wine grapes. The Millers bought in 1969, reunited two parcels of the grant and planted vines.

How it is done Cited

Blocks are sold by area rather than by the ton, so a winemaker who wants to crop hard is not arguing with a grower paid by weight. Some customers have bought the same rows for over twenty years and print the block on the label.

Today Cited

Also one of California's larger sources of certified budwood — a good deal of the state's chardonnay started as cuttings from here.

Facts

countryUnited States
established1969
soilsand, chalk and marine loam
regionSanta Maria Valley, Santa Barbara County, California
where34.9200, -120.2500 (street) · OpenStreetMap · open in maps Cited
confidencehigh · updated 2026-09-16

Numbers somebody published

Planted800 acres — Bien Nacido Vineyards
stated as over 800
Pinot noir250 acres — Bien Nacido Vineyards
stated as over 250
Annual rainfall13 inches — Bien Nacido Vineyards
stated as 12 to 14

Nothing in this table is estimated here. Where a figure is missing it is missing, and the row is not written.

Near here

Straight-line kilometres; the road is always longer. The finder sorts every cellar on the map from wherever you are.

Its kin

regionSanta Maria ValleyThe AVA it helped define.and of this page it says: The bench planting that sells this valley's fruit to half of California.cellarAu Bon ClimatJim Clendenen's winery, on the property.and of this page it says: The vineyard it lives inside and buys from.storyTri-tip over red oakThe same ranch land that fed the vaquero barbecues.and of this page it says: The vineyard planted on the old Tepusquet grant.practiceMassal selectionWhat a budwood block is for.and of this page it says: Where certified budwood gets grown at scale instead.

Who points back

person · says of this pageJim ClendenenWhere it lives.

Sources

Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.

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