Remy Wines

Remy Drabkin knew at eight years old that she wanted to make wine. She grew up in McMinnville when the industry was small enough to be a family — her mother worked at Nick’s Italian Cafe, everybody spent holidays together, and by sixteen she was working harvests for some of the valley’s heavy hitters, apprenticing at Ponzi and Erath.

She took her first wine job at Ponzi in 1995 after graduating from Linfield, then went looking. Israel, France, the Lycée Viticole in Beaune. Back in the States she managed an Italian restaurant in Pittsburgh and spent her free time making wine from Italian varieties in the basement. That’s where the direction came from.

Remy Wines opened in 2006 in an early-1900s farmhouse in the Dundee Hills, about ten miles from McMinnville. The estate covers 29 acres with seven planted, including Three Wives Vineyard.

The portfolio is genuinely unusual for this valley: single-varietal Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, Dolcetto, and Lagrein, made in an Old World style — structured, food-friendly, built to age. Alongside those sit Willamette Valley legacy grapes and emerging varieties. Drabkin’s observation is that queer winemakers tend to experiment more with unusual varietals, and her own work is the clearest evidence.

The winemaking facility next door is 5,000 square feet, built with a carbon-neutral concrete formula.

The community work is inseparable from the wine. Drabkin co-founded Wine Country Pride, a nonprofit bringing Pride celebrations to rural Oregon, and hosted the world’s first Queer Wine Fest here in 2022 — eighteen queer winemakers and owners pouring for the public. She served over twelve years in public service, on the planning commission, two terms on city council, and then as McMinnville’s mayor, the first woman and first queer-identified person to hold the office. She appears in the documentary Red, White and Black. In 2024 she received the Governor’s Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion Award for Tourism.

The tasting room is a warmly lit farmhouse with a tree-shaded lawn that hosts opera performances, the Portland Lesbian Choir, and picnics. The winery functions as a nonprofit incubator and community space.