2259 McNell Road

McNell Road runs through the East End of the Ojai Valley, the farming end, where the land has been in citrus for over a century and the roads are named for the creeks and ranches they serve. The road appears in the Ojai Pixie growers' own written history: it was on McNell Creek Ranch that Tony Thacher, son-in-law of Pixie pioneer Elmer Friend, partnered with Bob Davis to pull an old block of Navel oranges and replant it with the tangerines that became the valley's signature crop, and when the freeze of 1990 came through, the growers logged 18 degrees at McNell Road. This is ground farmers have kept books on for generations, which is the right pedigree for a property whose working vineyard is part of the offer.

The Ojai Valley runs east to west, one of the few on this coast that does, and the geometry produces a documented local phenomenon: at sunset the Topatopa Bluffs at the valley's eastern head catch the low light and hold a rose-colored glow for ten or fifteen minutes after the sun is gone. Locals have called it the Pink Moment for generations. This house sits on a private knoll in the East End with its great room and veranda set toward the bluffs. The name the brokers gave the estate is not a metaphor; it is the site plan.

The parcel last changed hands in March 2017. The estate that came out of that sale was completed in 2023 by a fully named team: architect Martha Picciotti of Ventura, whose custom residential work runs through Ojai and the Ventura coastline, designer Blair Moritz, builder Mike Nicholls, and landscape architect Wendy Fisher. The great room rises twelve feet under groin-vaulted ceilings, with hand-plastered walls, white cement floors, arched passageways, and a circular stair, and floor-to-ceiling French doors open the room to the veranda. Four bedroom suites each carry a spa-style bath and a private terrace. The kitchen runs Sub-Zero refrigeration, Fisher and Paykel double ovens, and Waterworks fixtures, all of it under a Spanish clay tile roof behind a gated entry.

The working acreage is the record's newest entry: 1,300 mature vines, organically farmed and fully licensed, with the next vintage already aging in barrel. They share the 1.86 acres with mature oaks, an olive allee, and drought-tolerant gardens around the heated pool and spa, and the house was built with fire-resistant features, the practical detail every hillside property in Ventura County should carry. On a road where the farmers once logged the frost, the vines are back in the ledger.

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