Our Story
Boots first, bottle second.
Before there was a wine, there was the work. Kitchens as a teenager. Warehouses in his twenties. Years spent learning discipline the hard way, long before he ever set foot in a vineyard.
He came home in 2008 and chose vineyards — landing on a piece of Red Mountain ground that would go on to become one of the most respected sites in the state. He studied under the people who wrote the book on Washington viticulture, worked the research alongside the scientists tracking what makes a vine healthy and a wine age well, and spent years at tables where decades-old bottles got opened just to see what time had done to them. He was trained by the generation that built this industry, and he never forgot it.
For twenty years, he grew fruit for other people's labels — some of the most decorated vineyards in the Pacific Northwest — before ever bottling a wine of his own. That's Brothers In Farms: the discipline, the fieldwork, the company built on managing land the right way, for other people, for nearly two decades.
Then, in 2024, the land came full circle. A vineyard he'd managed years earlier as a young manager became his to farm as an owner — the same crew, the same rows, a new name on the label. That first vintage became Moctoe Wine Co.
Two companies, one philosophy: pay attention, do less, let the land do the talking. Boots first. Bottle second.
A vineyard came full circle. So did he.
Wine story here
Before the wine, there was the work.
Farm story here
Brothers In Farms
Brothers In Farms started with a blog post and a decision to go it alone. Before that, there were years spent learning vineyards from the ground up — first as a young manager building and running some of Washington's most respected sites, then as an independent consultant trusted to solve problems other managers couldn't. Water. Timing. The instinct to know when a vine needed less, not more.
That reputation built a company. What started as a handful of contracts grew, one relationship at a time, into a full vineyard management operation working some of the most respected ground in Washington and Oregon — high-end sites, demanding clients, real accountability for every acre.
The team hasn't changed much over the years, because it didn't need to. Some of the same hands that worked these vineyards decades ago are still working them today. Brothers In Farms was never about growing fast — it was about growing right, and keeping the people who know the land close. This is the company built on fieldwork. Everything else — the wine, the brand, the merch — comes from what happens here first.
Moctoe Wine Co.
Moctoe wasn't planned as a brand launch. It was a piece of land coming back around. After twenty years managing vineyards for other people's wine — tasting more bottles than most people see in a lifetime, learning what actually makes a wine hold up over ten, twenty, thirty years in the cellar — the opportunity came to take on a property he'd farmed years before, this time as its owner. The first vintage off that ground became Moctoe Wine Co. — named the way it is because good farmers don't trust clean boots, and neither does this wine. It's made with the same values that built the vineyard management side of the business: minimal intervention, real decisions instead of formulas, and enough restraint to let a place like Elephant Mountain speak for itself.
This isn't a production wine. It's what two decades of growing other people's grapes taught one farmer about what's actually worth putting in a bottle — and finally doing it himself.