Centre grad put her professional skills to work building a passion project

Learning to make good wine is an undertaking that can take years — or even generations.

There’s chemistry to understand, along with the intricacies of grapes and soil makeup, barreling, fermentation, tannins… the list goes on.

If you succeed and want others to enjoy the fruit of your labors, well, that presents another set of challenges.

Sara Pearson Specter ’96 and her husband, Dave Specter, met those challenges head-on by leaning into their respective strengths to build Bells Up Winery into a thriving destination in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

Sara brings expertise in marketing as well as a critical understanding of the logistical challenges faced by manufacturers, earned through years of writing about experts and innovations on the cutting edge of manufacturing. Dave, a “recovering corporate tax attorney,” has expertise in the legal side of business, and it was his love of winemaking that led to the creation of Bells Up over 10 years ago.

After completing her studies at Centre in just 3 ½ years with majors in both French and History, Sara pivoted to graphic design and dove into Cincinnati’s advertising world. She climbed the ladder to become an account manager with a business-to-business advertising firm.

Things suddenly changed when the Dot-Com Recession hit in 2001, and Sara found herself unemployed. That is, until the writing chops that served her so well as a student opened the door to a new career path.

“I had a lot of contacts at that point, and people were calling me and saying, ‘Hey, I know you're sitting around in your bunny slippers and pajamas, why don't you write for me?’”

She launched a freelance career, writing for business and manufacturing publications.  

Wine had been part of Sara and her husband’s lives for several years before they finally tried their hand at making a batch at home in 2006 to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Sara’s interest in wine can actually be traced back to a seminal Centre experience.

“I did a fall semester studying abroad in Strasbourg, France, when Dr. Charles Vahlkamp was there,” Sara said. “His wife, Sarah, and I went out one day, just the two of us, and had a day in one of the little villages, hanging out and shopping and doing the whole wine thing.

“That’s really where my personal wine interest came from. Strasbourg was a great place to be, and I loved all the wines.”

The leap from loving wine to becoming a commercial winemaker is a steep one, but life has a way of providing the push that’s needed. For Dave and Sara, that push came shortly after a wine country trip to the Willamette Valley. In short order, Dave hit an emotional and physical wall in his career path, and Sara lost her professional mentor to pancreatic cancer.

It was a reminder to the couple that life is too short to be unhappy at work and became a moment of inflection that Sara shares on the Bells Up Winery website.

“If you’re this successful in a career that makes you sick, stressed and miserable… how much more successful would you be doing something you love?” she asked Dave. So he began pursuing his passion for winemaking, working at Cincinnati’s Henke Winery and learning all he could from founder Joe Henke.

Dave was a quick study, winning two national amateur winemaking competitions. Sara’s work as a freelance marketing consultant specializing in business-to-business storytelling for industrial and manufacturing companies provided her with career flexibility, so they decided to make the biggest jump yet — moving to Oregon and creating Bells Up Winery.

That’s where the skills from their earlier careers truly came into play. Dave shines when negotiating contracts and fine-tuning the winemaking. Sara is the head of marketing — she jokes that Dave is her “nonprofit pro bono client” — and uses her connections in manufacturing and materials handling to help design and outfit their production facility.

“We really do have complementary skill sets,” she said. “I think that most of what we've done has been kind of the culmination of our experiences, and we've just applied it to wine.”

In the decade-plus since, they have found a niche hosting intimate tastings at the micro-boutique winery.

“We do private tastings by appointment only. Dave sits down with every single guest who comes in,” Sara said. “We want to make the experience really personal, and we’ve built great relationships with our customers.”

The Specters are creating wine, but also an experience — a memory that sparks smiles. Their business model isn’t built on selling expensive wines just so customers can impress their friends.

“That’s not why people come here. They come here because it's really cool to hang out with a winemaker and have that personal experience, make that connection, learn something and feel like you're a part of it,” Sara said. “We treat everybody that comes through the door like old friends that we've just never met.”