Hannah Wallace

The Futurist: Oregon's Bertony Faustin

I got to profile Bertony Faustin, a fantastic winemaker here in Oregon, for the Makers issue of Food & Wine. See below for the full article. 

When Bertony Faustin opened his Abbey Creek Vineyard tasting room in 2012, he’d regularly greet customers who’d then ask, “Who’s the winemaker?”

“When I’d say, ‘It’s me,’ they’d have this look of disbelief,” Faustin says. Faustin, who is black and hails from Brooklyn, knew he was the first recorded black winemaker in Oregon, but, he adds, he didn’t want to own it. At least, not until 2015, when Oregon was celebrating 50 years of winemaking. “All they were talking about was legacies, pedigree, the past,” says Faustin. “No one was talking about the future.” 


So Faustin—with the help of his filmmaker friend Jerry Bell Jr.—decided to make a documentary about Oregon’s minority winemakers. The film, called Red, White & Black: An Oregon Wine Story, tells the stories of Faustin and several of his winemaking colleagues. Among them are Jesus Guillén, the Mexican-American winemaker at White Rose Estate who passed away in November 2018, but in just his second year as head winemaker, earned a 96 from the Wine Advocate for his “whole cluster” Pinot Noir; Jarod Sleet, now the assistant winemaker at ROCO Winery, who in the film was a cellar assistant at Argyle; Remy Drabkin of Remy Wines in McMinnville, Oregon, who worked her first crush in 1995 (at Ponzi) and is gay; and André Mack, a former sommelier at Per Se who now makes wines in Oregon under the Maison Noir label. A disparate crew, they have in common a desire to reach non–wine drinkers by making wine more accessible and less pretentious than how it is often perceived; the film vividly documents their ambitions and achievements. 


                                                                                    The trailer for Red, White & Black: an Oregon Wine Story 

 

Faustin himself could be called a maverick winemaker, though not because he’s a minority. His 15-acre vineyard is located in the urban West Hills of Portland, Oregon. When he decided to take over his in-laws’ vineyard in 2007, he had never had so much as a sip of wine. “I was like, worst case: I’ll make raisins!” he says, laughing. Now, after 10 years of winemaking, he’s got a sure hand. He works with six grape varieties: Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Albariño, and Gamay Noir. Several of these wines sell out quickly. But Faustin is not much interested in chatting about terroir or skin contact. Geeky wine talk along those lines, he says, alienates the very people he hopes to bring into the wine-drinking fold. Instead, at his tasting room, hip-hop and R & B are the backdrop, creating a mellow, comfortable atmosphere for drinking wine—one where everybody feels welcome.

Three to Try

To purchase Faustin’s wines or plan a trip to the tasting room, visit abbeycreekvineyard.com.

2017 Abbey Creek Chardonnay Best of Both ($25)


This rich Chardonnay has a honeysuckle scent and balanced acidity. A blend of oak and stainless, it can please both camps of Chardonnay drinkers.

2014 Abbey Creek Pinot Noir Cuvée ($45)


Faustin sources the fruit for this elegant Pinot from his top block of estate vines for a wine with hints of blackberries and a silky mouthfeel.

2017 Abbey Creek Gewürztraminer ($29)


Only available on 
tap at the Abbey Creek tasting room, this slightly effervescent Gewürztraminer is refreshingly bone-dry and reminiscent of cider.

Travel + Leisure's It List/ The Hoxton Portland

I was happy to contribute a hotel review for Travel + Leisure's 2019 It List, the magazine's favorite new and radically redone hotels of the year.

A room at the Hoxton in Portland, Oregon 

Walk into the Hoxton in Portland’s Chinatown and you’ll feel like you’ve entered a stylish co-working space. Creatives are tapping away at laptops or taking meetings in oversized lounge chairs. The Portland property, like all Hoxtons, has an open lobby — you’re welcome to hang out even if you’re not staying here. Other famed Hoxton policies are in place here, too: free wi-fi, street pricing for the mini bar, and a complimentary breakfast bag hung on your door each morning. Rooms have a Northwest-chic vibe with wood paneling, vintage furniture from local shops, and art from Portland’s Upfor Gallery. Best of all are the trio of in-house restaurants, all managed by renowned chef Joshua McFadden’s company Submarine Hospitality (known for Ava Gene’s and Tusk). On the ground floor is La Neta, a superb vegetable-forward Mexican restaurant helmed by chef Johnny Leach, who turns out unusual dishes like acorn squash with mole, roasted Brussels sprouts with pomegranate, sunflower seeds, and aged cotija, and kale enchiladas. Ascend to the rooftop for Mexican street food at Tope, a lively taqueria with agave-infused cocktails, a rooftop deck, and — for those cold, rainy evenings — a communal fireplace. In the basement is a sultry Chinese speakeasy that features Soju-and-Baiju-based cocktails mixed with teas and Asian ingredients (pickled ginger, yuzu, wasabi, etc.) and Chinese-American fare like beef and broccoli and chop suey. Doubles from $95.

 

My new favorite Brussels sprouts dish in all of Portland! 

The nifty floor in the lobby coffee bar, an outpost of Aussie café Proud Mary. 

The Next Wave of Sustainability in Wine

By now, the wine-drinking public is familiar with sustainability descriptors like organic, biodynamic, and even natural. They’ve been to LEED-certified wineries, and they may even have heard about a more holistic certification, called B Corps, which takes into account the way a business treats its employees, its environment, and its community. But a new wave of winemakers is working with ultra-sustainable practices—some of which are so groundbreaking they don’t even have a certification yet. SevenFifty Daily spoke with winemakers who are setting the bar with green building and agroecological farming practices to learn why they’re worth pursuing—and how they can help create a more sustainable future.

A “Living Building” Tasting Room

A few years ago, when Cowhorn winemaker Bill Steele was planning a new tasting room at his Jacksonville, Oregon, winery, he had a game-changing conversation with Stephen Aiguier, the founder and president of Green Hammer. Steele and his wife, Barbara, knew they wanted a green building. Aiguier listened as Steele talked about his aversion to chemicals in the field and in the cellar.

“We wanted a building that was consistent with our biodynamic farming philosophy,” says Steele, whose winery is located in the Applegate Valley AVA. “And Stephen said, ‘It sounds like you’re describing the Living Building Challenge.’” Once Aiguier started explaining it, the Steeles were all in.

 

The most rigorous standard for green buildings in the world, the Living Building Challenge (LBC) was formulated by the Seattle-based International Living Future Institute (ILFI) in 2006. It’s designed around seven performance areas, referred to as petals. Unlike other certifiers of green buildings, the ILFI won’t certify a building until a full year after it’s completed. That’s because some of the building’s petals—namely, energy and water—require 12 months of continuous occupancy before they can be shown to work in accordance with the challenge. The Energy Petal requires that the building produce 10 percent more energy than it consumes; the Water Petal requires (among other things) that 100 percent of the project’s water needs be supplied by captured precipitation or other natural closed-loop water systems.

There’s a reason it’s called a challenge.

For Green Hammer and the Steeles, it was the Materials Petal that posed the biggest challenge—it requires the architect to reject materials that contain any one of more than 800 chemicals on the International Living Future Institute’s Red List. Since there are no reporting standards for the building industry, this means the architect of an LBC project has to call each manufacturer to ask if its products contain any of the Red List chemicals. Aiguier spent more than a thousand hours on the phone with companies, asking questions about their products’ components and microcomponents. When making these calls, he says, “you sound like a crazy hippie. A lot of people essentially hang up.”

Barb and Bill Steele of Cowhorn. Photo by Clair Thorington.

But the Green Hammer team persisted. Fortunately, the ILFI has a product database of nontoxic building materials (made without Red List chemicals) called Declare. High-profile companies—Etsy and Google, for example—have publicly signed on to using Declare products in their buildings. As a result, materials vendors are starting to reformulate their products and be more transparent about what’s in them.  

In May 2018, Cowhorn’s tasting room became the first winery tasting room in the world to be named a Certified Living Building. And it’s not that other wineries haven’t tried. Sokol Blosser, which had already achieved a U.S. Green Building Council LEED certification for its barrel cellar in 2002, aimed for LBC with its new tasting room but was unable to achieve certification.  

Continue reading at SevenFifty Daily. 

 

Reversing Bunions without Surgery

 

When I was a kid at the beach with my grandma, I remember staring at her feet, aghast. Her toes were gnarled and deformed. Not only did she have angry-looking bunions—her big toes were torqued almost 180 degrees sideways—her baby toes were permanently scrunched up (what I later learned were called “hammertoes”).  It’s no wonder she had difficulty walking.

 

I always saw my grandma’s Franken-feet as a cautionary tale against heels: don’t wear cramped high heels—as she always did—and you won’t develop bunions. So for most of my adult life, I opted for sensible yet stylish flats—clogs, sandals, boots. I only wore heels to cocktail parties, art openings, and weddings. And yet ten years ago, I was still developing bunions.

But what if running shoes, not high heels, were to blame? 

I ran cross country in high school and college, completed the New York City marathon in ’97—and at age 45, still run several times a week. The Saucony shoes I’ve unquestioningly worn for 30 years—like most running shoes—have a tapered toe box (that is, they get narrower at the toe) and they also have elevated heels. 

Wearing this sort of running shoe year after year is a recipe for bunions, says Portland-based podiatrist and long-distance runner Ray McClanahan. Read my complete article at Runner's World.  

 Wearing Correct Toes and wide-toed shoes will keep bunions at bay  

(model: Ray McClanahan) 

 

The Green Rush

Turns out, there's lots of money to be made by servicing the companies that are growing and selling legal weed.  I wrote this piece for the November issue of Inc. 

 

Marijuana has had a shady past, but it's on the cusp of having a very conventional future. In 2017, U.S. consumers spent $8.5 billion on legal cannabis, a number projected to grow to $23.4 billion by 2022. With that growth has emerged an entire ecosystem of startups that support the less sexy side of cannabis. Not the luxury dispensaries or rose-hued vape-pen companies, but the infrastructure that keeps them going--from software systems to package-design firms. As legalization continues to spread--it's now permitted in 31 states, Washington, D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico--so will the B2B industry solving cannabis's thorny challenges.

The Instagram Effect 

Advertising regulations vary from state to state, but most national publications won't accept ads--and neither will Facebook. Instagram, however, generally does not flag cannabis content, so it has become a critical marketing tool.

Cannabis journalist Ricardo Baca has Grasslands, a well-respected cannabis PR firm in Denver. New York City-based North 6th Agency represents a handful of cannabis com­panies including BDS Ana­lytics and venture fund Canopy, both in Boulder, while San Diego-based CMW Media focuses on pharma­ceutical cannabis.

How High Will You Get? 

In states where cannabis is legal, every bit has to be tested and labeled for levels of THC (tetra­hydrocannabinol, the substance that produces a high) and CBD (cannabidiol, which does not produce a high), along with, in many cases, pesticide residues, contaminants, and fungus. If a farm's crop doesn't make the grade, it's not allowed to sell it.

A handful of regulatory-driven testing labs have launched, including Cascadia Labs in Oregon, Pure Analytics in California, and Evio Labs, the largest publicly traded testing company, with nine sites.

The Future Is Female

Since female plants produce much higher levels of THC and CBD than males, growers always cull the males. Traditionally, cannabis growers "grow out" crops, which takes six to eight weeks, to determine the sex.

Portland, Oregon-based Phylos Bioscience, which is mapping the genome of cannabis online at the Galaxy, sells a DNA "sex test," which allows growers to quickly and accurately identify sex. "It saves a lot of money spent on feeding, watering, and lighting the males," says Phylos co-founder Mowgli Holmes, who has collected samples from 80 countries, making Phylos's database of cannabis genetics the largest in the world.

Continue reading my story at Inc.'s site.