The Fizz #39: Christopher Sky, winemaker at Hooray For You, is thinking about sustainability
In this issue, Christopher and I speak to the emerging rise of keg wines, sustainability, being a queer winemaker, and the meaning behind “Hooray For You”.
For the 39th issue of the Fizz, we’re taking it back to the second interview I had at Brianne Day’s facility. See the interview with Colin Shirek of Alto Cirrus here. We’re diving into my conversation with Christopher Sky, co-owner and winemaker at Hooray For You out of Portland, Oregon. Christopher was working out of Brianne Day’s facility, making small batch wines and building his label.
Talking with Christopher was inspiring, as it once again dug into the new landscape of American winemakers. American winemakers today aren’t mostly folks with huge family winemaking traditions or big areas of landed handed down to them over time. Instead, our winemaking traditions are being built today by passionate entrepreneurs—people who fall in love with wine, who work in restaurants and wine bars, and start their labels small, buying the grapes they can get their hands on, using minimal equipment and making it happen one year at a time. I know that not all American wine is like this—there’s plenty of factory wine among us, but the folks I interview, folks like Christopher, show me how much grit there is in American winemaking today, and I’m excited to have a front row seat to that.
In this issue, Christopher and I speak to the emerging rise of keg wines, sustainability, being a queer winemaker, and the hidden meaning behind “Hooray For You”.
Margot: How’d Hooray For You get started?
Christopher: My business partner and I started this label in 2017. We both had worked in the wine industry for years, as sommeliers and wine directors in the restaurant world. We were hanging out drinking rosé in my yard in the summer of 2017 and decided we were going to make some rosé. Initially we were inspired by Loire Valley wines. We were drinking Chinon rosé and talking about how excited we were about Cabernet Franc at that time. We thought “let's buy some Cab Franc and make some rosé”.
The first year we just made fifty cases of rosé and then in 2018, we last minute got offered this Dion Vineyard Chardonnay, so we said sure, let's play around with that. It wasn't part of the original plan, but the vineyard is beautiful and the fruit was too. We were just excited to have the opportunity to work with it. We jumped on it and have been working with them ever since. We've continued working with Cabernet Franc, and then added some Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon in 2020.
Margot: Do you get your grapes from different vineyards?
Christopher: Yeah. So Dion’s coming from Chehalem Mountains in the valley and then we're getting all of our red grapes from Weets Family Vineyard in Rattlesnake Hills, Washington.
Margot: Why Washington state?
Christopher: Actually, the first vintage in 2017, we bought fruit from Southern Oregon from kuati, which was the source that Brianne was working with. That was our first smoky vintage when Southern Oregon was on fire, so we made a smoky rosé. This spot had a listing so we went up and visited. They're not certified organic, but they were practicing organic and it's just a super tiny family vineyard—the vineyard is behind their house on top of the hill.
Margot: How'd you make this wine?
Christopher: For the Chardonnay, we press it. We let it brown up just a little bit in the press pan. The idea behind that is that a little bit of pre-oxidation of the juice helps protect it through fermentation and afterwards. Since we're not sulfuring wines, any natural methods we can use to stabilize the wine are helpful. We generally don't have our wines traveling around the country, so we're not as much worried about the stability.
When the juice settles, we rack it into tanks and let it settle for a couple of days and then rack it into barrel, and that’s it. It stays in barrel until a week before bottling. Then we rack it into tank just to get it off the lees—we don’t do fining or filtering. We just try to do as clean a rack as possible.
Margot: Where do you get those barrels?
Christopher: We've just picked up used barrels from winemakers around the valley. Most of them have been used five or six times. We usually find them around fifty to one hundred dollars, but they're definitely old.
Margot: There's some CO2 on it. I love that. It's sort of zingy.
Christopher: It’s still feeling pretty, zippy and freshly bottled. It was picked a little bit earlier than in the past, so it definitely has the highest amount of acidity.
Margot: Why'd you pick it earlier? Fire issues?
Christopher: Yes. So all around the vineyard, fire was moving up in their direction and just all through the valley everyone was scrambling to get enough pickers when they wanted to, or pick before their vineyards burnt down with all that chaos of the fires last year. It ended up getting picked a little bit earlier than we maybe wanted, but I'm happy with the acidity. All of our wines are super straightforward. That is as natural as they get—grapes come in, we press them, and put them into barrel, nothing added. They’re zero/zero.
Margot: Why is that important to you?
Christopher: We've just been lucky enough thus far to have clean fruit. If something comes up, we’re not against some adjustments or even some sulfur at some point. We've just had a wait and see what happens approach—if you don't need it, you don't need it.
In 2018, we had some Cab Franc that got weird and we ended up having to throw it all away. Maybe if we sulfured it, it would not have done that, but those are kind of the chances you take trying to maintain being as natural as possible. Besides that wine, it has worked out.
Margot: How'd you find this facility?
Christopher: Brianne and I actually worked together years ago at Little Bird. When my business partner and I decided to buy some fruit and play around, we reached out to her and she said “come make wine here”.
Margot: That’s awesome. Is your market mostly in the Northwest?
Christopher: All Oregon so far. I set up some shipping options through our website, but currently just offering on the west coast. Based on weather conditions, it's always changing, but 99% of our wine is sold in Portland—mostly restaurants and grocery stores. We were pretty restaurant heavy to begin, just as we both came from restaurants, so it was fun to be able to get our wine into our favorite spots. Around the last year, we've shifted heavily to retail because there were no restaurants. Now we have pretty solid accounts and we're getting back into our restaurants as they're reopening. It's exciting to have that again.
We were putting some wine into kegs for restaurant accounts. A few restaurants have set up keg programs, which is a really fun way to do a special restaurant cuvée. They can come out and visit to do a barrel tasting, the restaurant will fall in love with a barrel, and we keg up that whole barrel for them.
Margot: Oh, that’s really interesting. So you don’t make wine specifically for restaurants, but they can choose the barrels they enjoy.
Christopher: We will in the future, hopefully, but thus far it’s been more barrel selection or I'll pull samples and they’ll say okay I'll take five kegs of that. It saves us in glass and label and cork and just the whole footprint—it's more sustainable. It saves us time and money bottling and it's a great way to connect with our restaurant accounts.
Margot: That’s awesome. That feels like a no brainer for so many reasons. Do you think that people are going to be doing more of that in the future?
Christopher: I think so. Most of my experience has been in the Portland market and the keg wine scene here is kind of blowing up. I think it's happening around the country, but I’m mostly hearing about it from the West Coast. At Cooper's Hall Winery in Southeast Portland, the owner Joel’s program is all keg wine. Joel has definitely been a huge part of building the keg wine scene in Portland. He buys steel kegs [here’s an example] and rewashes them, and they're just like a beer keg, but the top is a little bit different.
Margot: Is that what you use also—steel kegs?
Christopher: That's what I have been using thus far, but I actually bought some recyclable kegs called “one way” kegs. [Here’s an example of these.] They are single use. You can fill them and then when the restaurant empties them, they can recycle them and they can be broken down and fully recycled. I think the reusable washable steel kegs are still better ultimately, but it's a lot more work to get kegs, clean them, fill them, drop them off, and when they’re empty, pick them up, clean them—it's a whole process. Joel has all the resources for that—I was borrowing kegs from him in the beginning.
Margot: Are the recyclable ones expensive?
Christopher: They're $18 each I think, wholesale. It's a 20 liter keg, which is about two cases of wine. It's pretty great. It has also been interesting to see how the wine ages in keg vs bottle. Cooper’s Hall—Joel picked up a couple of kegs and then they closed around COVID, so he just had this keg sitting there in a temperature controlled environment. I tasted it recently—it was really exciting to see how it developed.
People are still kind of hesitant with keg wine—it doesn't have the romance of bottle and cork and the labels, and I love that too. You're going to a restaurant and they're just tapping into a glass and you're like oh okay, without the visual and the reference, which I definitely appreciate. I enjoy the labels and the physicality of it, but there is a lot to be said for keg wine as well. Currently our keg program is not huge. We're bottling most everything, but we're going to be bottling the next round of wine in about a month and we have some keg accounts over in keg just for them. I think we’ll be doing more keg wines in the future.
Margot: That’s really exciting. I’d love to learn a bit about what inspired you into making wine. It’s one thing to just want to make a rosé one year, and another to become a winemaker.
Christopher: Before I started making wine, I just worked in all aspects of the wine industry. It started as a fun side project for us, and it's slowly evolved and grown into something more, which is exciting. My business partner also owns a wine distribution company now, so he's gotten out of the restaurant scene completely.
Margot: You've made your own distribution channel—that's super cool.
Christopher: Yeah. We're definitely trying to keep it light and fun, still. Our whole ethos is to make approachable glass pour everyday wines and not take it too seriously. Working as a sommelier or a wine director, sometimes it was much more serious than I wanted it to be. Like, wait, wine's supposed to be fun! It doesn't have to be so intense.
Margot: Absolutely. You don't have to write a paper about every single wine you drink.
Christopher: Exactly, and having that connection to wine on this level has helped me be excited about wine again. I got pretty burnt out in the restaurant world. Now I'm working on new projects, working on opening a bar—a queer space, and finding ways to incorporate our wine company into that organization.
Margot: That’s so exciting!
Christopher: I'm so excited about it. It started out as a monthly party—we’ll add in more and maybe do a weekly event and just see where it goes. I had the first event before COVID hit and it was such a success and I had a lot of support. Now I'm getting it going again, which is super exciting. I think Portland does not have enough queer spaces. I’m trying to take that old-school gay bar and elevate it just a little bit. We can have nice things. It can be divey and fun, but we can have nice wine and champagne. It can be approachable and accessible and nice and fun.
Margot: That sounds absolutely amazing, I’m so excited for you.
Christopher: You’ll have to come visit! It’s called Jacques Strappe, and then Hooray For You is the name of our wines. Have you seen the documentary Paris Is Burning? Towards the end of the film, Dorian Corey is in her dressing room, giving out her advice or wisdom. She has this quote—she says, if you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you. This is after she goes through her monologue of talking about life and what she's been through, and how she sees the world. I love the way she delivers that speech because we’re all trying to live life, have a good time, and do good things. You shoot an arrow and it goes real high—hooray for you. It's this kind of secret darkness we have behind the label.
Margot: That’s amazing. Have you met a lot of other queer winemakers?
Christopher: No. I think that's changing, though. My business partner and I are both queer people and we didn’t come into saying oh, we're going to be queer. We're in the wine industry and we want to make wine. We haven't been as vocal about that. There are some newer winemakers that are queer and that are being vocal about it, which is fantastic. We were talking about this recently—do we need to be shouting about this?
We were talking about the new labels yesterday, like do we need to put a rainbow flag on our back label? And I said maybe we do. It's representing, but without making it the entire thing.
Margot: Thanks for chatting with me. I’m excited about your journey and can’t wait to come back and come to one of your events!
You can support Christopher and Hooray For You by buying their wine, in store or in your local restaurants if you’re an Oregonian, or online on their website. Follow them on Instagram here.
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