Cutter Cascadia

Columbia River Gorge, Oregon

Michael Garofola spent his early life working in restaurants on the West Coast, until finally making the jump to winemaking. While working as a Sommelier/buyer at Naomi Pomeroy’s Beast, Michael put himself through viticulture school before starting Cutter Cascadia in 2017.

The Vineyards are surrounded by the cherry orchards and wheat fields central to Wasco County agriculture, Hillside Vineyard is an arid, warm and windy locale. Planted in 1983-5 by Harold Haake and Lonnie Wright, Hillside is 80 miles east of Portland along the Columbia River in the loamy, sandstone foothills south of The Dalles. Approaching the high desert of central Oregon and the Columbia Basin, there is a rugged beauty here that few connect with the image of Oregon, or at the very least, Oregon viticulture.

From the start, Michael, has always had a vineyard first approach. What that means specifically is that he only buy fruit that he has a hand in the farming aspects from pruning to harvest.  Michael works with two vineyards in the Columbia Gorge currently and does much of the hand work in the blocks himself. For for certain wines he does 100% of it, so Michael has intentionally handicapped himself to only grow as much as he can handle from the vineyard work aspect. He spends far more time in the vineyards he lease than he does in the winery.  With this said, he has long term leases in the one particular vineyard he buys 90% of the fruit from thus having access to the same fruit source so its as close to "estate" wine as possible.

Both vineyards are sprayed organically (not certified), and there are no use of herbicides. Weed control is manual. The vineyard Michael buys the most fruit from (Hillside in The Dalles) is a 40 year-old own-rooted vineyard with some interesting genetic material, while the other, von Flotow, is a small 1/2 acre block of Dolcetto planted in 2011 that is surrounded by apple, cherry and pear orchards in Hood River.