TO GET HERE,
DRIVE EAST OUT OF MOSIER, OREGON ON OLD HIGHWAY 30 FOR A LITTLE MORE THAN A MILE.
FOLLOW THE BLUE SIGNS. TURN RIGHT AT:
TASTING ROOM
WINTER HOURS
Monday: 11:00 - 4:00
Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: 11:00 - 4:00
Friday: 11:00 - 4:00
Saturday: 11:00 - 5:00
Sunday: 11:00 - 5:00
Please note: the last call for tastings is 15 minutes before close.
Children & leashed dogs are both welcome at our tasting room, although we ask that dogs stay outside.
We offer inside and heated outside seating in the winter months.
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Walk-ins are welcome, but we accept reservations. If you have a party of eight or more, we ask that you make one before arriving.
To do so, call the tasting room at 541-399-5259 or email us at tastingroom@idiotsgrace.com
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We serve a menu of small bites on Saturdays & Sundays. The highly seasonal menu draws on super-local organic produce, like the vegetables grown on site by Stepping Stone Farm. Our winter menu includes soups, preserved fruits, cheeses, and local charcuterie.
If you would like to bring a picnic from home, that’s fine with us.
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For Thanksgiving weekend (the 29th of November through the 1st of December), we encourage you to give the gift of Idiot’s Grace:
Buy two bottles in our tasting room to give away to a friend or friends, and take 50% off a bottle for yourself. Any wine on our tasting flight is eligible. We’ll wrap the bottles if you like.
Further in the future: we will be hosting two events this December: a wreath making workshop and our annual holiday market. We will post updates in advance of each event on social media.
Our wreath-making workshop will take place on December 8th. If you are interested, please call or email to reserve a spot. For the cost of admission, we will provide the locally grown and foraged materials and the tools, but you are welcome to bring your own decor to add. This event will be held on our heated patio, but December will be cold, so bring warm clothes!
On December 22nd we will host our annual holiday market. Darryl Frank will provide the ambiance in the form of some holiday music, and local artisans will offer the opportunity for last-minute Christmas shopping. This is also your chance to pick up a “mystery case” of Idiot’s Grace Wines.
Idiot’s Grace is a small farm and winery in Mosier, Oregon, established in 2001. Our wines are produced with grapes farmed on our organic vineyard in Mosier, and on a small handful of sites we manage elsewhere in the Columbia River Gorge. The aim of our operation is to experimentally determine the material conditions (e.g: plant genetics, ecosystem management, farm & cellar practices) that have the best chance of producing very good, even great wines from our site, wines which embody the terroir of the Columbia Gorge, particularly our hillside in Mosier.
This enterprise is an ongoing experiment in the de-industrialization of modern agriculture, the return to sanity, and the making of original, American wine. It is an experiment now in its third decade and third generation, and it was established with the expectation that the project would outlast those who conceived it.
Each wine is the wild-fermented, singular expression of the land, the climate, and the craft of the farmers and winemakers; each wine is meant to be paired with a good meal. Idiot’s Grace farm is certified organic.
PATRONS
This is an ambitious undertaking— we say that with trepidation, not arrogance. Our 50 acre certified organic farm is planted primarily to grapes, pears, and cherries, but it becomes a more diverse, less typical (some would say less prudent) operation every year. Every decision is made to encourage complexity in both the wild and agrarian ecosystems that we manage. We are effectively transitioning this land away from industrial, factory-style agriculture to something at once more traditional and, we believe, necessary for a changing world. There are more than 100 varieties of fruiting trees and vines at Idiot’s Grace, many of which are rare, old varieties with little commercial value.
Needless to say, we are not farming for maximum profit. In order to make the right choices, for both our land and the people who work it, we count on our group of Patrons, our version of a wine club.
We have a lean, simple model; we will not pepper you with perks. Patrons receive a 20% discount on all our wine, and choose to receive a shipment of two, four, or six bottles, four times a year. Tastings for up to four people are complimentary with your patronage.
As a Patron, you will be the first to hear about and taste new releases and small batch projects.
Our Patrons are our lifeblood, and we do not forget that. Thank you for making this possible.
BECOME A:
THE WINES
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Brian, the founder, farmer, & winemaker here, is a mostly friendly, relatively modest, and very thoughtful man whose avidity in rooting out preconceived notions can sometimes be exhausting. I say this with a hard-won expertise that comes from years of being his son. The following descriptions of our wines were written for our patron releases by Brian, who, curmudgeonly and reclusive after years in the wine industry, is generally wary of bottle shots or tasting notes; so these notes, although lovely, can read as obtuse, especially if you are looking for the lingo current to the wine world. You will notice that they are often more informative about the vines than the wines themselves— but this is how it goes at Idiot’s Grace.
If a traditional description is what you’re after, we encourage you to make your own tasting notes, but to do so you will first have to taste the wine, which you can purchase on our online store, here.
Our grapes are all hand-harvested, our wines are all fermented by naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria.
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100% Barbera; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon; planted 2003; Columbia Gorge AVA; 137 cases produced; grown in soil from volcanic ash and loess over old flood deposits; brought up in large, veteran barrels; 14.5% ABV.
I was prepared for Barbera to fail us every few years here in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe it just wouldn’t ripen sufficiently to be much fun to drink, bottled on its own. But the grape’s record here has been much better than expected. Admittedly, it is a sensitive interpreter of the seasons; the bottlings from our site display the scattered temperaments and inclinations of siblings from a large family. Certainly don’t expect the same thing from one vintage to the next.
The 2021 Barbera has an expressive, ripe fullness that is as savory as it is sweet. If we think of a spectrum that puts fruity notes on one end, and feral ones on the other, Barbera falls somewhere in the middle. It is concentrated like fruit paste, or maybe like something confected from whole plums and rosehips.
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100% Barbera; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon; planted 2003; Columbia Gorge AVA; 145 cases produced; grown in soil from volcanic ash and loess over old flood deposits; 13.9% ABV.
I should maybe stay quiet on this, but I confess I don’t really care all that much about bubbles in wine. But I care quite deeply about Barbera, and have long been intrigued by accounts of how this grape has been handled in diverse ways, in various regions of Italy over the years. We are not the firstto capture the last CO2 from Barbera’s primary fermentation to create a fizzy wine in bottle.
We have not applied the technical prowess required for Champagne-style wines, and the pressure is not as high as in those bottles. We did “disgorge”—what an extremely messy day that was!—so the bulk of the yeast has been removed, but the wine is purposefully rustic. If a simmering pot is said to smile, and to laugh as it boils— this is joyful fruit indeed! Barbera off leash.
(Aim to serve the wine cool, at true cellar temperature—i.e. not chilled, but definitely not “room temperature,” which is too warm for almost any bottle of anything.)
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100% Cabernet franc; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon; planted 2004; Columbia Gorge AVA; 415 cases produced; grown volcanic ash and loess over old flood deposits; brought up in steel and veteran barrels; ABV 13.7%.
Cabernet franc has found its voice in Mosier. It is, of course, Cabernet-y, but we say that with caveats. The word “Cabernet” on its own will bring to mind the big, fruit-bomb Cabernet Sauvignons of Napa, or, if you aren’t so American, a purely sensuous appeal of cedar, leather, cigar boxes, and ripe fruit. Cabernet franc is the Oregon to Cabernet Sauvignon’s California. Genetically the parent of Cabernet Sauvignon, on a spiritual level Cabernet franc is its cool, anti-authoritarian relation. It is delicate and perfumey when not pushed to Napa ripeness. The body is never brought to the massiveness and tannin of the other Cabernet, so it maintains an herbaceous quality, but this herbaceousness has more to do with flowers than it does wood.
We have made several vintages since 2019, and as a wine like this ages, it takes on the relative character of bone china to an earlier stoneware. There is now a restrained animation at play; its baby fat is gone. It moves like a stream across the palate, grippy in just the right way, with modesty.
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85% Cabernet franc, 15% Malbec; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon; planted (?); Columbia Gorge AVA; 104 cases produced; grown volcanic ash and loess over old flood deposits; brought up in steel and veteran barrels; ABV 14%.
This bottling is produced from an old-fashioned block we planted here in 2015, designed such that the vines would require no irrigation. We admire their thrift and appreciate their resilience in this arid place, but we’re also interested in the story they might tell, having had to provide for themselvesin this soil. The vines are trained as tiny trees, each supported by a single juniper post without trellis wires. The lollipop shape of the mature vines provides helpful shading for the ripening fruit in our warm, eastern Gorge location, though the vagaries of each vintage leave their mark. This planting is younger than our main Cabernet franc vineyard, and there is a subversive bit of Malbec in the blend (from our two-and-a-half rows).
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100% Chenin Blanc; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon; planted 2012; Columbia Gorge AVA; 142 cases produced; grown in soils from volcanic ash and loess over old flood deposits; brought up in steel and veteran barrels; 12.3% ABV.
I’ll remind you that one of our primary objectives here on the farm is to choose grapes for our plantings which will prove to feel at home in the Gorge, grapes which will produce wines of distinction as both an indication and a result of their being suited to this place. Success does not imply imitation, no matter how great the thing you admire, and so “wines of distinction” may well mean something fully other than anything any of us might expect.
This vintage finally includes significant quantities of fruit from all three parcels of our Chenin, including the one that sees no irrigation. That block made for tricky vinegrowing in its early years, as the vines were being trained like small free-standing trees, and it’s hell to pick. But a white grape handles its adolescence with more aplomb than a red grape does, and we were pretty excited by this portion of the blend.
I believe this bottling may be our most compelling yet, with good intensity, fragrance, and poise. Chenin blanc is, in the wrong place, boring. Ours is not boring. It has verve, acidity, and is altogether a dry & focused wine. Early on we had more trouble with it: the wine was too alcoholic, because the vines were unable to provide enough leaf cover, and this resulted in something indelicate on the tongue. Today things are different: green fruit & white flowers; lightly leesy; opulent. A lean and textured wine that is not too heavy, and slightly round, with toasted notes.
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100% Dolcetto; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon; planted 2003; Columbia Gorge AVA; 152 cases produced; grown in soils from volcanic ash and loess over flood deposits; brought up in veteran barrels; 12.8% ABV.
Dolcetto is a minor variety, no matter how much we might dote on it here at IG. In exchange for the limited name recognition and negligible collector value, I’d really like the fieldwork to be more straightforward than it is. With large and long, complex bunches, thin and dehydration-prone skins, and rather poor attachment of berry to bunch (especially as harvest draws near), this grape demands diligence and extra care in the vineyard. The payoff is that the wine wanders into something completely distinctive here in Mosier.
My records of the latter half of 2022 are regrettably limited. I use my phone extensively during the season to record impressions, data, and images, and I managed to pinch it in the hinge of an old Subaru just after harvest. (It curled like a Frito). I had neglected to back up the device in the mayhem and weariness of the season, and much useful information was lost. So I can’t now connect precisely with the circumstance of the vintage. But the old Dolcetto block delivered a clean and full crop, and we picked a bit later than we usually do. I find a melon-y quality to the wine’s fragrance right at opening, floral and a little heady. ON the tongue, the wine is light and airy, less concentrated than in years when the yield is lower. But I no longer recall whether the vines felt properly laden at harvest, or whether I wished, on that cool morning, that we had cut more bunches to the floor in our earlier, August crop-thinning.
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100% Gamay; estate-grown in Mosier; planted (?); 62 cases produced; brought up in veteran barrels; 12.7% ABV.
A bulkier Gamay than we’ve produced before. Dressed for fall weather.
Cellar work on this was a bit different. When a cluster of grapes is left whole to begin fermentation in the absence of Oxygen (e.g. in a CO2-flooded vessel, intact berries begin to produce alcohol all by themselves (no yeast), intracellularly. The process is neat-o, if slightly brutal; the grape finds its condition increasingly uncomfortable. Only a couple degrees of alcohol can be accumulated this way before the microbes take over. The process (called carbonic maceration) produces distinctly alluring aromas, and pressing at this moment yields an unutterably lovely liquid known as ‘paradis.’ Unlike most years, this Gamay did not evolve from paradis, but was at that moment stomped instead of pressed, and left to continue fermenting on both skins and stems. This decision was expected to conjure a more “serious” rendition of the grape, in density and texture. Just to see.
Pouring a glass reveals a very charming, pile-of-flower-petals aspect overlain with a botanical, balsamy trait. Wet clay is also evoked. On the tongue, the wine possesses a youthful urgency, true to the variety.
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100% Grenache; Hannah’s Bench estate vineyard in Lyle, Washington; planted 2003; Columbia Gorge AVA; 120 cases produced; grown in high-elevation flood deposits and basalt colluvium soils; brought up in large, veteran barrels; 14.8% ABV.
The wine is characteristically imposing. You are met with a resinous, fresh-pencil scent above the dark red fruit. Certain famous Cabernets from Napa are known for their eucalyptus presentation; Lyle shows juniper. In the mouth this is provocatively tannic— not difficult, but robust and salty. The site always ripens its crop fast, but the resultant alcohol here plays as sweetness more than heat.
In 2021 we bottled two separate Lyle vineyards, so you can test your senses and observe the differences which manifest in the bottle from differing elevation, aspect and soil, despite the proximity of the blocks to one another.
We have lost our lease on this parcel, which we planted in Lyle back in 2003, so there will not be many more bottlings from these vines.
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100% Grenache; estate-grown in Lyle, Washington; planted (?); growin in (?) soils; 50 cases produced; brought up in veteran barrels; 14.8% ABV.
My immediate impression is that this wine is unusually extroverted, even flamboyant, and dressed for an evening out. The fruit is vivid and very stylish. The rugged Lyle identity has “cleaned up” nicely, those characteristic juniper notes here less day-in-the-woodsy, more like you’re picking up a certain note in a fragrance the wine is wearing. A glass smells of celebration, the day’s worries put aside.
It is also rather massive, highly textured on the tongue, fit to accompany roasted meats and such– which is not exactly typical around here. The grapes come from a small, long-suffering block we planted on the flood-scoured syncline, and the small harvest was simply stomped on arrival. The cool fermentation ensued with the bunch stems left in the mix, along with the skins, and that tangle of slender wood provided the tannic framework for the finished wine like a new barrel would have.
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100% Muscat; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon; planted 2006; Columbia Gorge AVA; 23 cases produced; grown in soils from volcanic ash and loess over old flood deposits; brought up in steel; ABV 11.9%
We have a very small crop of Muscat, and over the years we have done all kinds of things with it– given it away, sold it, made it into gelato. Recently we’ve started concentrating on it a little more. We wanted to try some skin contact with it this year, so fermented it whole cluster for a week, then foot stomped it to break up the skins, then pressed it. That time with the skins gives a certain thickness to the aromatics of the wine. It has real tongue presence– not a particularly delicate creature– but is entirely lovely.
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100% Primitivo; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon; planted 2003; Columbia Gorge AVA; 112 cases produced; grown in soils from volcanic ash and loess over old flood deposits; brought up in veteran barrels; 15.2% ABV.
Primitivo either is or isn’t exactly the same thing as Zinfandel, depending on who you talk to. It is a standout source of wine pleasure, without the expectations other, more obviously borrowed grapes bring to your table. When I first began drinking wine in earnest (a funny expression but exactly right here), I lived over where Pennsylvania rubs against Delaware, where it was often easier to find a good selection of European wines than domestic ones, though both felt exotic at the time. We were all serious about wine, food, and gathering around a table, and while we ardently scrutinized the imports, we were equally avid about distinctive California Zin, especially at mealtime. My lingering affection for the grape drove the decision to plant Primitivo here. Some years—like this one—are more Californian than others, though the others are absolutely interesting in their divergence. The 2021 is perfumed, berried (black-, not rasp-), properly spicy, with a cool licorice root trait.
For all that, I don’t believe the variety really wants to be here. The vines took this winter badly—not the first time—and this time they won’t be replanted.
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100% Sangiovese; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon & Hamm’s Vineyard in Lyle, Washington; planted 2007-2016; Columbia Gorge AVA; 66 cases produced; grown in soils from volcanic ash and loess over old flood deposits (Mosier) and basalt colluvium (Lyle); brought up in veteran barrels; ABV 11.9%.
I worked for a season in Alsace, in France, and among the many blocks of vines we farmed there was one just across a graveled road from an old cemetery, which sat by itself part way up the vast, vine-clad slope. The specific rows this grower tended ran just below the walled graveyard, and by at least one of the winery staff members the wine made from this block was never drunk–despite its lofty reputation–since the deep roots of those old plants had spent their many years drawing water which would have surely percolated through the remains of those who lay just uphill.Most of the Sangiovese grapes for this bottling grew in proximity to the old pioneer cemetery in Lyle but–worry not–our vines are established upslope from the cluttered gravestones and their rattlesnake guards. They are upright and tidy plants (in a certain atmosphere they bring to mind The Day of the Triffids, if you’re familiar); each plant is trained to a single wooden stake. It is old-fashioned viticulture, hand-worked, organic and low-yielding, and it seems reasonable that the musculature displayed here is an inevitable mark of this challenging location. A smaller amount of Mosier fruit is included this year, the first red wine harvest from that young block. This wine is something we look forward to, those years when it gets bottled separately. I find it to be rugged and pretty, and a very good storyteller.
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100% Sauvignon blanc; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon; planted 2006; Columbia Gorge AVA; 72 cases produced; grown in soils from volcanic ash and loess over old flood deposits; brought up in veteran barrels; 11.8% ABV.
A black-glass wineglass is a cool tool, (too) infrequently employed in the evaluation of wines. It is fascinating and a little unsettling to taste without any visual cues. (Sipping in the dark is an even sexier means to the same end.) When you force your brain to wait for the data from your nose and tongue, you may find you don’t quite know your surroundings—or what’s in your glass—as well as you think.
This Sauvignon was produced from the younger block of vines here on the farm. In a departure for us, the juice and skins, stems and seeds were left together as the fermentation got underway, and then throughout much of the microbial riot which ensued. In sum, this wine was handled in the same way most red wines begin their lives. For whites, we typically drop every bunch—entire and unmolested—promptly into the press for slow juice extraction. The contrasting approaches lead to surprisingly distinct outcomes. Completely different personalities… twins separated at birth.
A black glass lets you better scrutinize the effects of winemaking on fruit. You might find you’re not even all that confident about the color of a wine (red? white? pink?), which suggests an amusing party trick, and which here may lead you into a conversation on the merits and possibilities of orange wines. We haven’t pushed this too far in that direction, but I’d like to hear what you think about the consequences, and food pairing highlights.
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62% Sauvignon blanc, 38% Sémillon; estate-grown in Mosier and Hood River; planted 2005-2008; 144 cases produced; brought up in stainless steel & both new and veteran barrels; 13.3% ABV.
When we combine Syrah and Grenache, the result always feels startling. It behaves exactly like a true blend would— as convergence, like a meeting of energetic rivers. My delight is like, wait, I put blue in the yellow and now it’s green? In contrast, Sauvignon blanc and Sémillon come together in a much more dancerly way. The two bodies are complementary, eminently harmonious but gratifyingly distinct. You can appreciate the choreography because you can actually discern it.
This vintage gave emphatic whites. This wine is thoroughly drenched with the scents and flavors of these grapes, pointed and rich, citric and summer-ripe, slyly spicy, and complexly textured.
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100% Sémillon; estate-grown in Hood River, OR; planted 2008; Columbia Gorge AVA; 100 cases produced; brought up in WHAT; 13.1% ABV.
I can’t think of anyone I’ve met who claims Sémillon to be their very favorite variety, but that may just be because we live in the wrong place. There’s not much of it around; when we planted this bit in Hood River years ago I knew of no other vines in the area— if there are any even now. Yet the variety is an excellent supporting actor, is particularly suited to intensely sweet, late-harvest wines, and creates very distinctive dry bottlings in the hands of certain Australians. Very worth getting a little obsessed with.
We decided to bottle our Sémillon on its own in ‘22, as we sometimes do. This is textured and ample and feels extremely energetic, owing to the hugely appetizing interplay of crunchy acidity and the smidge of unresolved sugar. The aromas are tight (beeswax, preserved white fruits, struck flint?) and unwind over time. I usually think of our wines as they might accompany and “converse with” food, but just now, as the impressions of a sip ebb in my mouth, I have the feeling that I’ve just experienced something very good, self-contained, and complete… and I just want that again.
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What percent Syrah and what percent Grenache?; Idiot’s Grace and Hannah’s Bench estate vineyards; planted 2003-2008; Columbia Gorge AVA; grown in loamy sand (Mosier) and flood deposits & basalt colluvium (Lyle); 220 cases produced; brought up in veteran barrels; 14.4% ABV.
Sometimes, the assembling of a blended wine can be a somewhat simple, additive process, in which the components “stack” and constructively augment each other. The 2019 Syrah/Grenache is (as always) an example of a more complete union: here, the profiles of the individual grapes are nearly lost as the components instead interpenetrate and surrender to the whole. The Lyle Grenache brings density and darkness, while the airier Mosier Syrah provides lift and the impression of sweetness. These grapes are, like our franc, farmed without supplemental irrigation— but here this potential was revealed to us, not built in.
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80% Sangioese, 20% Cabernets Sauvignon & franc; estate-grown in Lyle, Washington; Columbia Gorge AVA; planted 2003-2006; grown in pre-flood hilltop soils and flood deposit & basalt colluvium; brought up in veteran barrels; 127 cases produced; 13.8% ABV.
Though the label is mum on the subject, you insiders may recognize this as the “missing” 2021 Sangiovese bottling. That harvest season, the portion we farm in Mosier was pressed immediately for rosé, while our Lyle harvest went this way, tucked in alongside a single barrel’s worth of Cabernets Sauvignon and franc.
Maybe beautiful wines come two ways. Optically speaking, the first might be described as prismatic, the second lenticular. Of the first type are those complex wines with many planes, reflecting and refracting, changing as you shift your perspective, inviting multiple interpretations. This wine, Whimsy, delights differently. It is more like a lens–an essence, super pure, is revealed in the glass rather than projected from it. Not faceted but magnified; you seem to view it from inside, looking out. Some imaginary new fruit is debuted (from grapes though– yes!), suggesting something of pomegranate, maybe, or the work of obscure plums, becoming more berry-ish with time open.
Part of the greatness of Sangiovese lies in the genius of its particular (and un-showy) tannin structure. I can’t tell you why, but the specific character of exemplary Sangiovese wines is exactly adjacent to the sensory experience of opening a beautiful old book. No other grape has so strong an association for me. Wine is strange.