2024 Costarossa Farm 'Oro' Skin Fermented Gewürztraminer

Oak Ridge Gewürztraminer 

Ephemeral chamomile drifts through a time and place between the tropics and an alpine zephyr

Hand de-stemmed, 23 days skin contact, fermented in steel, aged in used oak

Costarossa Farm is run by Matthew and Krista, whose home farm and cellar sit on the west side of the Hood River Valley. There they farm mixed vegetables, flowers, trees, and vines. They also farm several vineyard sites in Hood River and White Salmon, totaling about fifteen acres under vine. The sites range in age from plantings established in 1968 to their small estate vineyard planted in 2025. Alongside their wines they sell fruit, vegetables, and flowers from the farm. All farming is organic without exception.

Matthew and Krista met working in restaurant kitchens in Oakland, where Krista was a pastry chef and Matthew a cook at Pizzaiolo. Their shared culinary sensibility continues to shape their decisions and aesthetic, guiding how the farm is tended and how the wines are made in the cellar.

Matthew discovered farming through the growers who supplied the restaurant. He later left the kitchen to work at Full Belly Farm in Guinda, California, where he held a combined farming and culinary position that set the course for his future. Krista remained in the Bay Area for a time, continuing her work in pastry before eventually joining Matthew in Mendocino. There Matthew farmed vegetables and worked in orchards while Krista helped build the pastry program at a cafe in Mendocino Village.

In time they found themselves in the Columbia River Gorge, between two volcanoes, where they purchased a small former farm and began Costarossa Farm. The farm first began as three acres of vegetables. At the time Matthew would have told you he would never plant grapes. He was, above all, a vegetable farmer. Over the years something shifted. Perhaps it was the steep hillside he farmed that slowly changed his mind. In 2024 they began purchasing fruit from several vineyards, one of which they now farm themselves.

Matthew and Krista produce honest wines that rely on the quality of the fruit and minimal work in the cellar. The real work happens in the field. They work with Gewurztraminer, Pinot Noir, Albariño, Chardonnay, and Gruner Veltliner. The wines are made without fining, filtration, or added sulfur. Fermentation takes place in oak, concrete, steel, and clay vessels. The wines age in the basement of an old barn.