Brooks Wine

The Free Bacchus Story

Jimi Brooks came to wine through history and philosophy. A Portland native, he founded Brooks in 1998 to make Oregon Riesling great again, to bring biodynamic farming to the Willamette Valley, and to make wines with enough acidity to go with food. In 2004, just before harvest, he died at 38, and his eight-year-old son, Pascal, inherited the winery.

What happened next is why Brooks still exists. By his sister Janie Brooks Heuck’s account, twelve winemakers took Jimi’s fruit that autumn and made the 2004 wines for free. Janie had spent more than a decade in healthcare and says she knew nothing about wine. She stepped in to run the business, as a volunteer, and still leads it. Pascal owns all of it.

Riesling can be anything from bone dry to sweet, so Brooks shows where Ara, its flagship, falls on the International Riesling Foundation’s sweetness scale: dry. The estate’s oldest vines were planted by Don Byard in 1973, and 10 acres of old Riesling are still on their original rootstocks. The estate sits at 650 feet in the Eola-Amity Hills, and The World’s 50 Best Vineyards, a list that judges the visit as well as the wine, ranks it No. 35.

Demeter lists Brooks as both a biodynamic farm and a winery. It is not certified organic. Its US organic record has been suspended since April 2019, with the certifier shown as in transition. The Demeter certificate covers what Brooks grows, and not every wine is estate fruit: the Ara also uses grapes from Yamhill Vineyard.