Web Winery
Since 1995

Byington Vineyard & Winery

Los Gatos, Santa Cruz Mountains. A hilltop winery on Bear Creek Road, founded in 1987.

OpenChecked Nov 15, 2026, source1,2

Visit byington.com

About the winery

Byington Vineyard & Winery is a mountain winery on Bear Creek Road south of Los Gatos, about 2,000 feet up, looking over redwood forest to Monterey Bay1,3. Wine collector and businessman Bill Byington founded it in 1987. Its 1998 page on Web Winery described an 18,000-square-foot chateau that held the winery, the tasting room and rooms for weddings and dinners, above an estate vineyard planted only to Pinot Noir3.

In the late 1990s the winemaker was Don Blackburn, an American trained in Beaune who had worked in the cellars of Bordeaux and Burgundy estates, and who, his Byington page said, had been the first foreign correspondent for The Wine Spectator4. The winery's pages of the time also carried one of his trade-magazine articles and a Weddings West feature on a wedding at the chateau5,6.

Los Altos Vineyards bought Byington in 2013, and in 2014 added Tin Cross Vineyards, a 240-acre ranch with 30 acres of vines1. The winery makes Pinot Noir from its 8-acre estate vineyard and Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and other Bordeaux varieties from Tin Cross1. Tours visit the wine cave beneath the villa2.

Known for

  • Estate Pinot Noir
  • Chardonnay
  • Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Tin Cross Vineyards wines

In the press

From the archives

Pages Byington Vineyard & Winery published on the original Web Winery, from December 1998. Visiting details in them are long out of date.

Byington Vineyard and Winery logo: 'Byington' in spaced serif capitals above a small red shield.
Byington's logo on Web Winery, 1999.
  1. Byington home page: the chateau and the estate Pinot Noir. The winery's December 1998 home page: founded in 1987 by wine collector and businessman Bill Byington, an 18,000-square-foot chateau at 2,000 feet holding the winery, tasting room and event rooms, and a closely spaced, hand-harvested estate vineyard planted only to Pinot Noir. Don Blackburn was the winemaker. Wayback copy
  2. Winemaker Don Blackburn. The winery's 1999 page on its winemaker, McDonald D. (Don) Blackburn: a University of Montana forestry graduate trained in viticulture and enology at Beaune, who worked in Bordeaux and Burgundy cellars, wrote widely on French winegrowing and, the page said, was the first foreign correspondent for The Wine Spectator. Wayback copy
  3. Weddings West: a wedding at the Byington chateau. A Weddings West magazine feature, reprinted by the winery by December 1998, followed one June wedding at the chateau: the hilltop gazebo ceremony for 200 guests and the reception upstairs among the winery's oak barrels. It described an 82-acre property with nine acres of Pinot Noir. Magazine text: summary only. Wayback copy

Nearby in Santa Cruz Mountains