Bella Cavalli Farms & Vineyard

Bella Cavalli Farms & Vineyard Bella Cavalli Farms & Vineyard is a vineyard which grows premium grapes for our private wine club. Wines are only available to wine club members.

Our Farm is also a rehabilitation center for perform horses, retirement horses, and foaling..

Every summer, visitors see our horses grazing in their fly masks and ask the same question.“What’s that on their faces?”...
06/18/2026

Every summer, visitors see our horses grazing in their fly masks and ask the same question.
“What’s that on their faces?”

I tell them the horses are in the witness protection program.

Real answer: fly masks. They keep summer flies out of the horses’ eyes — they can see through them fine, bugs can’t get in.

The horse in this photo is JJ. Registered name Gunz in my Bunz. A four-year-old reining horse by Colonels Shining Gun. I started him myself, train him daily, and if he’s ready, we’re headed to the High Roller Reining Classic in Las Vegas this September.

Serious horse. Witness protection just makes for a better story. 🐴

Some moments at the ranch you can't script.A few years back at one of our Kentucky Derby parties, a little girl in a sun...
06/11/2026

Some moments at the ranch you can't script.

A few years back at one of our Kentucky Derby parties, a little girl in a sun hat wandered over to the stone barn to meet a horse for the first time. Sammy leaned down. She looked up. The whole afternoon paused for a few seconds.

Her parents are wine club members of ours. And what that little girl didn't know in that moment was that this is exactly the kind of memory Joanne and I built Bella Cavalli to create.

15 years of Derby parties. Vineyard walks. Picnics on the lawn. First meetings with horses. Members are family. Family makes memories.

Thanks, Sammy, for being such a good ambassador.
🐴

06/09/2026

Joanne wanted to say a quick hello.

Over the last few weeks we’ve had so many people reach out about our wine club. The kind notes, the thoughtful questions, the warmth — it’s humbled us both.

Joanne pulled this together to answer the most common questions in one place: how the club works, what we offer new members, and why we keep things small.

If you’ve been curious about joining, this is the easiest place to start. Free Insider Kit at the link.

🍷
https://join.bellacavallifarms.com/home-1718

That little brass instrument in Joanne’s hand is a refractometer. It measures sugar levels in grape juice — what winemak...
06/04/2026

That little brass instrument in Joanne’s hand is a refractometer. It measures sugar levels in grape juice — what winemakers call Brix.

She crushes a single grape between her fingers, drops the juice on the glass, and the number tells us exactly where the fruit is in its ripening cycle.

Too low and the grape isn’t ready. Too high and we’ve waited too long. The sweet spot is usually a 48-hour window. Miss it and the wine never recovers.
Joanne walks the vineyard with that refractometer every few days in late summer. I trust her readings more than any lab report.

23 years married. 23 years of her telling me when to pick. She’s almost never wrong.
🍇

06/02/2026

Sometimes the best part of running a place like this is the calls you don’t see coming.

A wine club member called a few weeks back and asked if we’d host his mother’s 90th birthday at Bella Cavalli.
Of course we said yes.

She walked in to a bagpiper playing in front of the show barn. Family around her. Ninety years of life and a sound that carries across a lot of it.

We’ve spent 23 years building this ranch into a working winery and a horse facility. We didn’t build it to be a celebration venue. People keep using it as one anyway.

Joanne and I are honored every time.
🎶🍷

05/31/2026

Bottling day at Bella Cavalli.

That’s our Albariño moving down the line. Grown on our 43 acres in Solvang. Picked at first light when the sugars are sitting exactly where I want them.

Fermented in stainless. Aged. Tasted barrel by barrel by Joanne until it earns the green light.Then it goes into bottles.

1,200 cases a year is everything we make. None of it goes to stores. None of it ends up in restaurants. Every bottle on this line is destined for a wine club member.
If you’ve been wondering what it looks like when a small ranch in Solvang turns its own grapes into its own wine, this is it.

No middleman. No distributor. Just a vineyard, a cellar, a bottling line, and the 250 people who’ve earned a seat at the table.

Here’s how to be one of them:
👉 Free to join. No signup fee, no annual dues.
👉 You pick your wines. 12 styles a year.
👉 Standard shipping every other month — adjust however you like.
👉 Cancel anytime, or pause. Just drop us a quick email.
👉 New members get a 6-varietal sample pack for $50 to start.
Every bottle on this line is going to a member. The next batch could include you.
🍷 https://join.bellacavallifarms.com/home-1718

We teach them young.Hayden’s at the wheel. Brixton’s riding shotgun. Cowboy hats on. Western shirts buttoned. Both of th...
05/30/2026

We teach them young.

Hayden’s at the wheel. Brixton’s riding shotgun. Cowboy hats on. Western shirts buttoned. Both of them staring out across the arena like there’s a job to do and they’re the ones who need to do it.

There isn’t, of course. Not really. Their in our John Deere and the most serious work happening today is making sure the Gator gets parked back under the lean-to before lunch.

But this is how it starts. With a hat that’s slightly too big. A steering wheel that bigger than them And the look on a kid’s face that says I’m doing it. I’m part of this.

Twenty-three years on Highway 246. Four generations of this family have now ridden, driven, or otherwise commanded a vehicle on this property. The youngest two are just earlier in the curve than the rest of us.
Tag the kid in your life who’s already practicing for the job they want when they grow up. 🚜

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Throwback to last Albariño harvest.Slide 1: The work. First light at Bella Cavalli. The crew moving down a row, loading ...
05/28/2026

Throwback to last Albariño harvest.
Slide 1: The work. First light at Bella Cavalli. The crew moving down a row, loading the morning's pick into the bin behind the tractor. This is the part most wine drinkers never see — bent backs, cool air, hands cold from gripping the clusters, somebody calling out from three rows over.
Slide 2: The result. One bin. A few hundred pounds of Albariño. Picked at first light when the fruit is still cool and the sugars are sitting right where I want them.
Albariño is one of the trickier whites we grow — Spanish in origin, thin-skinned, easy to lose if you wait one day too long to harvest. The window between not quite ready and too ripe is sometimes only 48 hours. Miss it and the wine tastes flat. Catch it and you get the bright, citrus-forward, mineral wine that's become one of our wine club favorites.
The wine is in those bins somewhere. We just have to coax it out.
Albariño fans — what's your favorite food pairing? 🍇

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This is what wine club really means.That's Joanne pulling a sample of our Grenache straight from the barrel. The long gl...
05/27/2026

This is what wine club really means.

That's Joanne pulling a sample of our Grenache straight from the barrel. The long glass tube in her hand is called a wine thief — it's how we taste wine while it's still aging in oak, before it's bottled, before it's labeled, before anyone outside the cellar gets to try it.

I'm the winemaker at Bella Cavalli. Joanne is my palate.

I make twelve handcrafted styles a year. Before any of them get the green light, Joanne tastes through them — barrel by barrel — giving honest feedback no consultant could match. 37 years married. 23 years of tasting my wine. She knows the style we're chasing better than anyone.

Here's what wine club members get that nobody else does: when you come to Bella Cavalli, the day is yours. A picnic on the lawn with friends. A walk through the vineyard. Time with the horses. Whatever kind of afternoon feels right. Joanne and I design every visit around the people coming.

No tasting room. No standing in line. No tour bus next to your table.
Just the ranch, vineyards and the horses, and a few hours that feel like yours.
1,200 cases a year. 250 wine club positions open right now. Membership is the only way in.
🍷 Free Insider Kit — link pinned in the first comment.

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Three photos of the same horse.Slide 1: Abby on her first night. A few hours old, standing up for the first time on legs...
05/26/2026

Three photos of the same horse.
Slide 1: Abby on her first night. A few hours old, standing up for the first time on legs she barely understood. Joanne and I have delivered every foal born at Bella Cavalli for the last 23 years — Abby was one of them.
Slide 2: Same horse, years later, carrying our grandson Brixton through his first ride. She walked the arena like she’d been waiting for the assignment her whole life.
Slide 3: Same horse, Brixton and his little brother Hayden meeting her at the fence. Hand reaching up. Nose reaching down. The patience between them isn’t something we trained. It’s something she came with.
A horse becomes what the people around her are. Twenty-three years on this property and Abby is the proof.
Tag someone who’d understand this. ❤️

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Address

959 East Highway 246
Solvang, CA
93463

Opening Hours

Tuesday 1pm - 4:30pm
Wednesday 1pm - 4:30pm
Thursday 1pm - 4:30pm
Friday 1pm - 4:30pm
Saturday 1pm - 4:30pm

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