Iterum Wines

Joe Dobbes started with $50,000 and a stubborn belief in Oregon wine. His path began in Germany in 1985, learning to make single-berry botrytis selection Trockenbeerenauslese, then ran through head winemaker at Willamette Valley Vineyards — which he calls his graduate school — before he launched Wine by Joe and Dobbes Family Estate in Dundee in 2003. Within seven years it was Oregon’s second-largest wine producer.

In 2017 he was ready for a reset. He stepped back from day-to-day operations, took a two-year hiatus, and spent it tasting through his peers’ wines and revisiting four decades of his own. Iterum came out of that. The name is Latin for again, afresh, once more, and Dobbes calls it the crescendo of his career — his smallest and most personal wines after building one of the state’s largest wineries.

Patricia Dobbes co-founded it. Born on Colombia’s Caribbean coast in Sincelejo, she earned a law degree from Universidad Externado in Bogotá and left in 1999 when the political situation made staying untenable. She came to Salem in 2002 to visit her sister, met Joe, and he introduced her to Pinot Noir.

The wines are small-batch, estate-grown, low-intervention, and organically farmed at Orchard House Estate Vineyard on the west slope of the Eola-Amity Hills. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay anchor the range, and Dobbes has taken up a particular mission with Sauvignon Blanc — arguing it can be every bit as good here as the varieties Oregon is known for. He was also the first winemaker in the state to bottle Grenache Blanc.

Tastings are private, by appointment, and hosted personally by Joe and Patricia at their own home overlooking the vines. Locally catered seasonal bites, a tour of the estate, and a walk through the current portfolio, unhurried. A kitchen tasting with multiple courses is also available. Guests describe hearing forty years of Oregon wine history from someone who lived it.