Grape Girls “Your Girl”

Right at the beginning of 2025 I moved back to Portland after spending several years in McMinnville, OR. It had been a fairly quiet, and frankly, lonely time there. Once back in Portland I began to hang around Nil Wine Bar, which is partly an extension of Ardor Natural Wine Shop, and part make-shift club house for what would soon become my core group of friends here in the city. It’s here that we drink, cut up, and laugh our faces off… and at the center of it, more often than not, is a young woman named Taylor Grisham. 

When I first met Taylor, I was struck by her unending curiosity and love for natural wine. She was also throwing really great parties around this new found passion called “Grape Girls”. Sometimes these parties were haircuts paired with her fav wines of the moment, and sometimes it was a fully realized bistro just for just one night…but the one thread I kept noticing no matter what the event, was that people were STOKED to be there.

This past spring Tay visited the cellar with our buddy Austin and we tasted through tanks and barrels. The one tank I was the most concerned about was the one that she loved the most, which I found to be both odd and compelling. I started spending more time at the winery considering this little tank that I felt was problematic, mostly because it was so different from the rest of the vintage. A little bit of a misfit no doubt, it held more VA than I have become accustomed to in my recent wines, but it was also incredibly fruity and reminiscent of one of our favorite producers (shout out to Tricot), as well as early vintages of The Marigny. 

So one afternoon a few weeks later, with a bunch of us fittingly nursing hangovers over brunch after a Grape Girls event the night before, I suggested that we bottle it up as a colab, which was met with screams and tears from all. Aside from the wine itself being brilliant and it taking an outside voice for me to discover that, I see this wine as a document. A document of friendships, of care, of trust and of laughter. And especially a document of the first half of 2025 with the people I love most. 

I often wish that the people that drink The Marigny from all over the world could experience what our little scene here in Portland is like, and now they can. So invite your friends over, or simply stand on the sidewalk with them, pull the cork and start making some memories. - Andy 

Feels:
Friendships, Fruit Roll-Ups, Cherry Bombs

Pairs:
Brat Shit, Food Carts, Another Bottle of Grape Girls

Techniques:
4 days of carbonic maceration on Pinot Noir in two 3000LT foudre. Wine features three vineyards, with one vineyard split between the two tanks and the other two vineyards being separated by tank. Fruit was pressed to stainless steel for one year. 15ppm SO2 added two weeks before bottling.  

Serving Temperature:
45 - 55° Fahrenheit 

Viticulture:
Sites farmed organic without certification 

Labs: 

GF(g/L): 0.13
ML(g/L): 0.01
VA(g/L): 1.41
fSO2: 10
tSO2: 21
pH: 3.44
TA: 8.2
Alc: 12.1%