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Before I ever stepped into a tasting room, I rode a BMX bike through the backroads of the mid-Willamette Valley. My friends and I would cross the ferry—no helmets, no plan—and ride all the way to Newberg, hopping fences to sneak a few grapes off the vines. They weren’t the best grapes, definitely not table grapes, but we didn’t care. We’d sit in the dirt, grape juice on our hands, feeling like we’d discovered something important. I guess, in a way, we had.
Fast forward a few decades to the summer of 2020—mid-pandemic, pre-wildfires—and I found myself back in those same regions. This time, I was towing a 1961 Shasta trailer, with my wife and kids in tow, on a mission to help rebrand Oregon wine. We spent a full month on the road: 24 days, 21 wineries, 1,240 miles, and one lonely fish caught somewhere along the way.
It was the height of global uncertainty, and yet somehow, this project offered us a kind of clarity. A chance to breathe. A reason to listen. And a moment to fall even deeper in love with this place. This wasn’t just a work trip. It was a rare opportunity to witness what makes Oregon wine truly Oregon—something you can’t understand from behind a desk. We played, we tasted, we interviewed, and we wandered. And those family memories? They’re stitched into every decision we made on the creative.
The Oregon Wine Board engaged us to solve a familiar but uniquely regional challenge: how do you build a cohesive brand system for an industry that spans volcanic soils, coastal rains, high plateaus, and desert heat?
At the time, the Willamette Valley had long been the crown jewel—famous for Pinot Noir and recognized globally. But our client wanted more than a spotlight on one region. They wanted an identity strong enough to carry all of Oregon’s AVAs. That meant helping lesser-known areas find their voice while protecting the soul of the overall brand. It also meant navigating passionate opinions from growers, makers, and stakeholders with very different needs.
We started with research. Thirty virtual workshops. Fifty-six interviews. Dozens of surveys. Nine wine regions. Then we hit the road. From the Gorge to the Rogue, we listened—not just to what people said, but how they said it. We mapped personality traits. We documented tone and texture. We studied the behavior and motivations of visitors and vintners alike.
That research didn’t just inform strategy. It earned trust.
Out of that groundwork came a simple idea with depth: True Character. It’s more than a tagline. It’s a guiding philosophy. Oregon wine isn’t defined by sameness. It’s defined by intention. By openness. By doing things the hard way, on purpose.
We developed a full-scale brand system rooted in this truth—from logos and typography to regional marketing toolkits and messaging frameworks. The visual identity nods to Oregon’s rugged grace, mixing heritage-inspired elements with modern flexibility. It’s designed to work in tasting rooms and trade shows, social feeds and shipping boxes. But the heart of it is human.
At the center sits a manifesto—a narrative of place, power, and purpose. We wrote it to reflect the character of the land and the people cultivating it. The honesty. The grit. The patience. The hope.
Behind the scenes, we built tools to help the brand live beyond the campaign. A new website strategy, storytelling templates, ad creative, and stakeholder alignment decks all helped operationalize the brand for day-to-day use.
Most importantly, we helped every region—from Applegate to Walla Walla—find themselves in the story. They didn’t have to change who they were to participate. Instead, they were invited to own their truth and connect it back to a unified Oregon.
The impact? Oregon Wine gained a flexible, scalable brand identity that elevates not just product, but place. And the global wine community got a clear, compelling reason to look north.
