Oregon’s Queer Wine Fest is turning the vineyard rainbow

Winemaker and vineyard owner Remy Drabkin has been steeped in the wine industry since her youth, but she’s still one of only a handful of out winemakers.

She’s looking to change that.

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Last year, Drabkin – who is also the Mayor of McMinnville, Oregon – founded Queer Wine Fest in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The second annual event takes place on June 25.

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“The wine industry can have a bad, well-earned reputation of exclusion,” she told LGBTQ Nation. “[Queer Wine Fest] is about the contribution of queers to the wine industry.”

Back in 2020, while confronting the challenging spring and summer months of that year, Drabkin and her co-organizers realized the time was ripe to start what they called Wine Country Pride. They quickly put together a COVID-safe, outdoor celebration complete with a car parade, drag queens, a raffle, performances and speakers. In the process, they raised $3000 for local LGBTQ+ organizations.

Through events and fundraising, the organization has worked to create a space to uplift and support a diverse community of queer people who call Oregon wine country home. After repeating the event in 2021, Drabkin was ready to go big. Last year, she launched Queer Wine Fest at her own vineyard, Remy Wines, as the feature event of Wine Country Pride.

Drabkin notes that even today, there’s a lack of any formal network for LGBTQ+ people in wine. Queer Wine Fest is Drabkin’s effort to change that. She notes that last year, a queer winery owner used this occasion as an opportunity to come out to customers – but challenges remain. A different queer-owned winery declined to participate last year, saying that it wasn’t yet time for them to come out.

“The wine industry is systemically biased – even back to land ownership, for who could own land,” she says. When selling and promoting their wines, she says owners have reported going back in the closet. “There’s still the struggle – this is why we have to create safe spaces.”

In recent years, Drabkin’s cup has run over with invites in June to trot her out as a token for wine pourings. At one hotel, she was asked to pour her wines in the lobby. She declined, suggesting instead that the hotel offer glasses for sale from queer-owned wines. She didn’t receive a reply. Wine country inherently is a rural place, she notes, which can be a more conservative space.

“Queer Wine Fest is an opportunity to confront latent or unconscious bias,” she says. After all, it’s about the wine.

This year’s event brings together 19 LGBTQ+ winery owners, winemakers, and winegrowers. “They have to have ‘queerdentials,’” Drabkin says with a smile. Pours will include red, white, and rosé from Washington, Oregon, and California vineyards, alongside passed hors d’oeuvres. Portland-based new wave pop band Camp Crush will provide live music. She’ll set up barrels around an old farmhouse tasting room with a lawn and garden to welcome in the “gauntlet of gays.”

Wines on offer will include more traditional offerings like Roco Winery’s RMS Brut Rosé Méthode Champenoise sparkling.“More unexpected” wines include a 2022 Counoise from RAM Cellars, Landmass Wines’ All Eyes Sparkling Tempranillo, and Circadian Cellars’ 2022 Chenin Blanc.

Melaney Schmidt, winemaker and co-owner of Landmass Wines in the Columbia River Gorge, says that her team is “excited to participate because representation is such an important factor in expanding and diversifying the wine community. By letting everyone know we’re here, the doors are open, the channels are clear, and connections can be made to bolster and update this otherwise homogenous industry.”

As for her own winery: Drabkin founded Remy Wines in 2006 in hopes of “honoring Old World-style wines with a progressive voice and undeniable flair,” she says. Remy Wines focuses on northern Italian varieties but integrates Willamette Valley legacy grapes as well as emerging, innovative varieties – keeping it fresh with “a healthy disregard for convention.”

Last year, Remy Wines opened a 5,000-square-foot adaptive reuse winery facility using a new net-zero carbon concrete formula bearing her name: the Drabkin-Mead Formula. Drabkin insists that her winemaking be not only inclusive and representative, but that her agricultural and production processes are sustainable and progressive, too.

And Drabkin isn’t content with stopping at wine: She previously served as McMinnville City Council member, council president, and now, mayor

After two decades in the business, Drabkin is as optimistic and driven as ever. When she was starting out, there were no LGBTQ+ names in wine. She now encourages anyone she meets in the industry to show up, whether that’s through allyship or elevating other queer voices.

“Wine naturally creates community because we drink together,” she says. “Having wine is a shared time. With my wine, I choose joy.” And with Queer Wine Fest, she also chooses rainbows.