Our friend Michael Garofola is bottling magic out in the Columbia Gorge under the label Cutter Cascadia, and we are so excited to share it with you! Zinfandel? You ask. YES! This bright, fresh, tart, and complex Zinfandel will reframe how you think about this grape. Or at least it did for us. Juicy and structured, earthy and serious. And more than anything, FUN.

The majority of the grapes for this bottling come from Hillside Vineyard—a spot surrounded by cherry orchards and wheat fields central to Wasco County agriculture. The vines here are own-rooted, planted in 1983 by Harold Haake and Lonnie Wright. 2021 was a difficult vintage for Zinfandel (early season frost and intense June heat did a number on the fruit), resulting in yields that were way down. Michael was able to pick some extra fruit from Lonnie Wright’s vineyard at the Pines to balance the ending result in the bottle.

Michael says it better than we could, when he shares his thoughts on winemaking:

“I am an aggregate of all my crushing errors, ennui, small victories, narrow misses and am the metamorphism of said forces. A wine can in its way be this way too if not fussed around with too much or put on an altar. I want it to be fun to drink the wines. I want them to be alive. From my perspective, nothing else really matters, but they aren't mine anymore once they're in your hands.” We are pretty sure you’ll enjoy having this wine in your hands…and mouth