The Color Collector
After graduating from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, Bethany Kimmel moved west to Jackson Hole where she first discovered wine. While working in a small shop on Broadway, she experienced a three-year-long wine epiphany, culminating in a final “ah-ha!” moment with her move to Oregon’s Willamette Valley in 2011. Since then, Bethany has worked at Soter Vineyards, Kosta Browne, Hunter’s Wines, Chapter 24, Phelps Creek, and was most recently the assistant at Analemma. The Color Collector produced its first wine in 2015 and from the beginning has sought out unique, old-vine parcels of Gamay from around the Willamette Valley. Fruit is gently hand-destemmed or left with partial whole clusters for an open-top, native yeast fermentation. After a gentle basket pressing, the wines are raised entirely in neutral oak and moved only by gravity before being bottled with nothing added and no filtration.
