* Read More From our shop’s small space, we strive with wide and longish reach. Our "Rolling Thunder" team - is composed of seven articulate (two winemakers), savvy, wildly talented and steeped in vinous experience women and men. Our mission sharing our passion about the people and the places of the wines we adore, comes with desire to speak to the work and personality of the winemakers. We aim to express essential elements of wine we love best - the grape and the ground. We leave it to others to focus on comments of critics and prefer providing our views about the wines and those who make them.

To best appreciate wine, one must go to walk the ground, talk with the winemakers, learn the how and why of their work - and always - taste with them. In 2006 this led us to morph our experiences and friendships from many Italy and France trips prior to the shop’s opening, with our own independent and ongoing travel. These visits forge the heart of our work.

We’ve been learning on our journeys, now having visiting over 1000 wineries. From our travel and desire to bring back wines we fell in love with, emerged our “almost direct imports” program. Though Oregon law prohibits us - as retailers - from importing wines, nothing has or will prevent us from doing our own work via our travel and visits. When we’ve found winemakers and wines we respect and enjoy (those not available in our market) we’ve partnered with Oregon importers to bring the wines directly to our market for us and others.

Over these years of exploration, we’ve had over 150 producers we’ve worked directly with. A number of these producers are/were represented in America for the first time, while virtually all of them are being represented in Oregon for the first time. That said, the shop offers many wines from all over the world, including individual and specialty work right here at home in Oregon, California and Washington.

All our effort is channeled to provide well made, unique and interesting wines at fair prices. Oftentimes our featured wines are lesser known and are never importer close outs, or deals from someone not making wine. Of our few mantras - *a good deal on a bad wine is not a good deal. We are not looking to offer the lowest prices in the country: our mission is our work, our tasting and our research to provide interesting, compelling wines.

We strongly believe in education for as many customers as possible. Along with providing frequent free tastings, our philosophy with larger events between winemakers, importer’s independent tastings and tastings of old wines have all been presented not for profit, but to provide opportunities to experience wine and winemakers in an informal setting.

Over the years our shop has hosted importers like Kermit Lynch and the late, beloved Joe Dressner, along with winemakers like Bernard Raveneau, Cedric Bouchard, Jean-Louis Chave, Roberto Conterno, Sylvia Altare, Olivier Humbrecht and Mathieu Deiss as well as local greats like Rick Small, Jason Lett and Cameron’s John Paul. In our case, as Hamlet deftly said to Lord Polonius when asked “what do you read, my Lord?”, “words, words, words,”, and too photos, with our wish to raise your interest in exploring along with us.

*(E for Ed, R for Richard. In mid 2019 Richard moved out of state and is no longer part of the operation. His role as a founding member of the shop is appreciated and significant. Our team moves forward with still greater intention in joy and the will to more broadly continue our unabated explorations.

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In Penn Yan, Napa, and Oregon, a number of patient people were kind enough to take me on as an apprentice in their cellars and vineyards. Even though these winegrowing regions all are in the United States, they are all climatically and socioeconomically vast from each other. “Wine” is broad and the work of making it is varied. I hope we can come to respect those working hard every day to make wines of integrity - now in my work at E&R it is my job to tell you their stories.

I started at E&R since the middle of harvest in 2017. In Oregon that year, “the middle” meant September. At this time I recall early mornings of stickily dousing sauvignon blanc grape skins with their own juice to saturate them with their own yeast and their own moisture, in order to ferment, the thing that wine must do. Then, after, in the evening driving to an Alsatian tasting at E&R with a small plastic bag bulging with a cluster of pinot gris grapes. Telling all those coming to taste (as I was also finding out) that pinot gris is a pink grape variety! To be more precise, it is fading brown lacquer on pink wood colored and the grapes smelled like garnet and bark. On the drive (one hour) me laughing about that funny quality of words where grey is grey, but the reality is pink, and yet still people consider it white wine. It is white wine.

The many words to use to talk about the white wine and the red wine and the many colors in between don’t touch the number of words about the evenings you spend drinking them. The words about white wine don’t tell you about the many mornings of (sometimes) my life and other peoples’ lives spent laboring over big vats of liquid, tendrils, or the thud of fruits.

I think I will describe better the landscape wine plays out in when I focus on the words there are to say about people.

At E&R I work with more wines from more corners of the world. I find it to be a place of curiosity. As part of my work, I have made several trips to France and Italy to visit, research, and write about winery partners of E&R's. It has been thrilling to see how new wines are experienced by our customers.

I love Italian wine, especially Lambrusco, for its beautiful colloquial expressions. I like chardonnay that tastes like it's from somewhere windy where it's been let to have ripe seed tannins. I am always ready to try more of everything.

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As fortune would have it the wine shop in downtown Jackson was hiring, and although I possessed no real knowledge of wine beyond the simple enjoyment of it, they took me on. Over the next four years of tasting, reading and asking every imaginable question, my fascination grew. But what was it like to actually craft wine? To grow a crop - taking into consideration soil, and weather, and style - harvest it and then magically transform it into something that people could enjoy together in one of the most ancient acts of communion? I had to find out.

In 2011 I moved to Oregon for a two-year degree program in winemaking, and a whole new world opened. Following vintage positions at Soter, Kosta Browne, Hunters Wines in NZ, and Chapter 24, I accepted a position at Analemma Wines in the Columbia Gorge and launched my own tiny Gamay-focused project called The Color Collector. With a new opportunity to grow my small business, I have recently planted a tiny acre of high-elevation Chasselas on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge, and am beginning to learn the heartbreaks and joys of farming.

My collaboration with the incredible team at E&R continues to feed my curiosity and inspire my endless exploration of the world of wine. I’m eager to contribute my experience to the long-standing history of the shop and to serve you. (Maybe there isn’t always a catch after all).

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Italian wine regions such as Cinque Terre, Piedmont, and Tuscany were some of the first places I traveled while stops in Spain, New York, and Chicago continued to inspire me along the way. Since wine and food is best viewed through the lens of cultural history and looking more closely at the parallels of grapes and grains, we can see how they both express places, but perhaps more importantly, the people.

Bakers and vigneron both carefully manage their craft through time and what the earth provides them. Along with quality root products, the cultivation of yeasts and bacteria help promote the idea of terroir, but their decisions along the way are what give life and character to the final product.

I’m excited to be in Oregon and at E&R to continue exploring wine along with our shared ethos for education and all things tasty and distinctively original.

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I decided to go back to school and complete my bachelor's degree in Sociology from PSU. Armed with a sociological lens, I fell back into the wine industry with a mind full of radical ideas. I have positively positioned myself into decision making conversations surrounding wine that protect and better reflect priority communities (BIMPOC/AAPINH, LGBTQ+, Deaf, and communities with disabilities). From production, vineyard management, consulting, and working in retail, I am committed to breaking down barriers and making wine accessible. I have the opportunity to be an advocate for priority communities within the wine industry in various situations including Burgundy, Oregon state funded organizations, local wine boards, nonprofits, fundraising, as well as hosting my own events. My motivation to write has bloomed under the foundation of accessibility that pushes the conversation towards social justice equity and how we interact with fermented grape juice.

I am so excited to be a part of the team at E&R and continue to learn about wine through stories and community.

My favorite wine pairing? Champagne and revolution.

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The focus on amazing local and seasonal ingredients (still more of a novelty at that time) and all of the fine dining techniques employed in that kitchen were a bonafide epiphany for me.

After an immense (like, 90 degrees) learning curve I had worked my way through the various stations of the kitchen and I had an opportunity to barter some free labor with the restaurant's Somm. I lugged wine boxes and made checks on checklists in exchange for the opportunity to sit in for the once-a-week-cattle-call of Wine Reps, some 60-80 wines per sitting. There were lights....and then some more lights....

In just under a year into this massive exposure to the wines of the world, my interest and commitent to fermented grape juice has been a one-way road that has led me to here and now.

After about seven years of managing restaurant wine programs (I still do) and preparing for the arrival of my baby (Dylan Coltrane, now a four year old full of verve), I wondered and worried: how will I keep the juice flowing if I'm not buying and selling in restaurants?!” Gulp.

Quite organically, I found myself with invitations to represent the wines from the Neal Rosenthal, Vom Boden and the Becky Wasserman portfolios over the last half decade.

I am so grateful to have interacted with all of these winemakers and the lands they come from.

So many perks and pleasures have been had, one of which has been meeting so many inspired, interesting and engaged people in the industry. Ed, Laura and the rest of our multi-faceted team are a perfect example. Another very organic opportunity come about to work, learn and share my "skills" here in the shop.

Cheers to what is to come and come and say hello (please note, I will likely try to sell you a bottle of wine).

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After returning to Oregon, I followed the proverbial rabbit and tried to learn everything I could. I leaned on local wine shops for insight and education. I spent my free time reading, tasting and visiting with winemakers all over Oregon with my wine-loving fianceé and partner in vine.

My professional and educational background is in photography, journalism and web design. When I came home from Italy, I wanted to see if I could combine some of my skills with my newfound love for wine, so I started looking for clients in the wine industry. I had some luck, photographed a few harvests, built a few websites and met a lot of wonderful people.

I figured out pretty quickly I had the a strong interest in how wine was made and how it was grown. I needed to know more and I had a lot of questions, so I enrolled in a viticulure and enology program here in Oregon. I learned after one semester the program I was in was not the one for me. It was geared towards larger scale production methods and was not designed to answer the questions I was asking. I also learned I was not looking for a professor. I was looking for a mentor.

One day I was buying wine at one of the local shops and asked the shop owner what made a particular wine smell the way it did. He replied "Ask the guy behind you, he used to work there". The guy behind me was Chris Dickson, the winemaker at Twill Cellars. He answered my questions for a good half an hour. He also extended an invitation to taste in the cellar and gave me his card. He may have regretted this. Fast forward 5 years; Chris was exactly the mentor I was looking, the winery brought me on in 2019 and we completed our fifth vintage together this last fall.

Another serendipitous connection came during my hunt for some Beaujolais. I was looking for the wines of Jean-Louis Dutraive and hit the phone book to call every wine shop in PDX. Laura answered the phone at E&R and let me know they had a few bottles and would I like to set them aside. I said heck yes and hopped in the car. I figured out pretty fast that E&R was a treasure trove of not only great wines, but stories, education, and Bob Dylan references. The next thing I know I am working with Ed and Laura on new business cards for the shop, then a website and then, last fall there was opportunity to be a part of the team at E&R and I accepted in short order.