Meliora

In 2018, I immersed myself fully into the wine trade. In the years since, I’ve worked in both retail and sourcing, visiting over 100 respected winemakers across Burgundy, Piedmont, Champagne and the Loire and Rhône Valleys. These journeys through cellars, alongside importers and winemakers, provided an education no formal training could replicate.

I figured out pretty quickly I had a strong interest in how wine was made and how it was grown. I needed to know more and I had a lot of questions, so I enrolled in a viticulture and enology program here in Oregon. I learned after one semester the program I was in was not the one for me. I learned I was not looking for a professor. I was looking for a mentor.

One day I was buying wine and asked the shop owner what made a particular wine taste the way it did. He replied “Ask the guy behind you, he used to work there”. The guy behind me was Chris Dickson, the winemaker at Twill Cellars. He answered my questions and extended an invitation to taste in his cellar and gave me his card. Fast forward 5 years; Chris was exactly the mentor I was looking for. Twill brought me on in 2019 and Chris and I worked together for five formative harvests and I will forever appreciate his skills as a teacher and his willingness to share his knowledge.

In 2023, after years of dreaming, saving funds and working on securing vineyard sources, I was able to start Meliora, which is a culmination of everything I have learned from Chris and the hundreds of winemakers and growers that have inspired me over the years. In 2024 I left Twill Cellars to focus entirely on my own production.