Brief Introduction
(Newsletter for our September patron release)
From time to time I meet someone who is, like myself, the son or daughter of a farmer. Unlike those who come to farming by choice, these people tend to be strict, unsentimental realists, and most of them learn to stay as far away from farms and farming as they possibly can. They become doctors, schoolteachers, consultants, criminals– anything, truly, anything else– and settle down in the middle of cities, where there is no danger of being tempted to do anything as harebrained as grow one’s own food.
For better or for worse, I lack this good sense. Until recently I believed I’d made a clean break with farming, but Idiot’s Grace is a dreamy place, especially lovely in the spring and summer, and if it is easy to visit then it is still easier, once you’re here, to start imagining what it could be. It does not help that the people working here are always working on something interesting, and that the fruits of their labors can be tasted on a plate or in a glass, and shared with friends who reliably ask: “and when will you go back?”
It is not always easy work, and it is not without disappointment. Much of the 2020 vintage was lost to smoke taint, and the nearby fires this summer have left everyone tense once again. Our bosc pear crop this year is so light it won’t be picked. Just a few weeks ago we lost a dozen chickens to a weasel – a weasel! Add to this abbreviated list of heartbreaks the everyday economic tribulations that come along with farming and making wine in a country not built to sustain small farmers and winemakers, and you may see why so few farm kids become farmers, why so much farmland becomes housing, and why hardly anything good is affordable.
I’ve been back at Idiot’s Grace since the spring. Working on farms in California after college led me to see just how good our farming is here, how Idiot’s Grace is, to a great degree, an unsung experiment on the forefront of progressive, small-scale agriculture. Brian was doing much of what is now considered cutting edge long before it was cool, and certainly before it was economical. The approach here is guided by principle, not by trend or profit. We aim to grow very good food, make very fine, very distinctive wines, pay our employees better than they would be paid anywhere else, and encourage a high degree of ecological complexity. This effort is at once rewarding (the farm is in great shape, and Brian and Rueben make first-rate wines), as well as ambitious and insane, and we have never yet been perfect in our aim. I have come back to my family’s operation not because everything here has been figured out, but because it hasn’t yet, and because I am determined to see ethical, top-notch farming and winemaking prove itself truly sustainable in a market economy.
For at least this next year I will be the voice in your newsletters and on our social media, and I will do my best to tell you what is happening at Idiot’s Grace and why it happens the way it does. Some things will change, but the ethos will not: all three generations here are committed to sustaining this project. Our selections will become only more distinctive, our quality only better.
As members of our wine club, you are our lifeblood. For your support we are deeply grateful; without it, the vision that has been coming into being on this small acreage in Mosier for the last two decades would not be possible. Please enjoy the new selection, and visit us when you can.
Jango McCormick
