Hazelfern

Bryan and Laura Laing made their first wine in 2006: five gallons of Pinot Noir in a dimly lit Portland basement, using fruit from Trudy and Keith at Kramer Vineyards. The house sat on what had been Hazel Fern Farms, established around 1895, which is where the name came from.

In 2014 what they call a quarter-life crisis pushed them to pack up the basket press, their two daughters, and a ping pong table, and move to a wine farm in the Chehalem Mountains above Newberg.

Laura is Canadian, born in Vancouver and raised near Toronto. She runs the operation as general manager while co-winemaking, handling the finances, planning the events, and hosting in the barn. Her framing is that Hazelfern is an experience — a family that wanted farm-to-table life and put the same passion into the wine.

The tasting room is a converted horse barn surrounded by the estate vineyard, and tastings happen around an eighteen-foot reclaimed farm table. Guests describe it as feeling genuinely remote despite being minutes from Newberg and just up the road from The Allison.

Production runs around 4,000 cases. The house style is deliberate: Laura describes aiming for drinkers who want less alcohol and less richness than the previous generation’s wines. James Suckling has scored them well, singling out the Laurelwood District Three Cedars Vineyard Pinot Noir for rose petal, cedar, and spicy raspberry, and the Prime Cut, a blend of top lots from across the valley, as the more generous and ageworthy bottle.

The atmosphere they aim for is good people, great stories, loud music, and Tuesday night farm dinners.