In August, when wildfires filled the Oregon air with smoke, persnickety winemakers up and down the Willamette Valley fretted. Not Bertony Faustin, though. The owner of Abbey Creek Vineyard in North Plains, west of Portland, took a laid-back and pragmatic approach to the smoke. “It drifts over, but we’re not having any immediate issues,” he said. “It’s got to be burning, like, next door for it to matter, and it’s got to be going for a long time, too. It’s all about what sits on the skins of the ground. Just it being hazy in the air? No, it’s not affecting us.”
Faustin is the first Black winemaker on record in Oregon. He is refreshingly candid and down to earth. “I’m a very hands-off sort of winemaker. I don’t need the validation that I created something,” he said. “Mother Nature makes the wine, at the end of the day. For me, I remove the variables where something negative could occur, and I just let the wine be.”
Faustin was raised in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn by parents who had emigrated from Haiti. He came to Oregon in 1999 and worked as an anesthesiologist assistant. “I was actually trying to make it to California, and obviously never made it,” he said.
Instead, Faustin married a local woman, Jennifer, whose parents had a 50-acre farm on Germantown Road in North Plains.
When Faustin’s father passed away in 2007, he had something of a midlife crisis.
“I had money, I had stuff, but was I really happy?” he said. Faustin’s in-laws, Robert and Sandra Simmons, had planted about five acres of grapes on their farm in 1981. Though he didn’t even drink at the time, Faustin was drawn to those mature vines. “I was like, ‘I’m going to go ahead and make wine,’” he said. “Part of what makes me successful is that I wasn’t passionate about wine. To me, I was a hustle. I was like … I’ve got some grapes, right? Worst-case scenario, I’ll make some raisins.’”
In 2010, he planted another 10 acres of grapes on the property. Faustin called this the dumbest thing he has ever done. “It’s way cheaper to buy the fruit,” he explained. “That’s the bullshit of the industry they don’t want to share. You go broke with a vineyard.” Despite this, today, Faustin grows a wide variety of grapes at Abbey Creek Vineyard: pinot noir, pinot gris, chardonnay, gewurztraminer, gamay noir, and albarino.
The winemaker has also produced a documentary, directed by Jerry Bell Jr., called Red, White, and Black that tells the stories of minority Oregon winemakers including Remy Drabkin of Remy Wines, Jesus Guillen of Guillen Family Wines, Jarod Sleet of Roco Winery, and Andrew Mack of Maison Noire Wines. The project sprouted from Faustin’s early realization that he would have to blaze his own trail through the Oregon wine world. “Early on, I realized the industry didn’t fit me,” he said. “The industry joke is, ‘How do you make a small fortune in wine? Start with a large one.’ So that just meant it was a bunch of rich dudes throwing money around as a hobby. I’m from Brooklyn, man. In Brooklyn we say, ‘If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.’”
Faustin has a wine club—a tribe, he called it—with a long waiting list. His wines, which he makes from a range of grapes he grows onsite and sources from around the state, are blends that vary with each vintage and appeal to a general audience. He sells every case he makes, often at a pace that is faster than he would prefer. While he was out of his popular lightly oaked chardonnay through the summer tourist season, he wouldn’t release the next vintage until he was satisfied with it.
“When I became truly successful is when I accepted that not everyone is going to be my customer,” Faustin said. “I could just be me. So we’re a hip-hop winery, where I wear Timberland and Carhartts and do me.”
A midlife crises brought on by the death of his father motivated Bertony Fausin, pictured above, to make wine from mature vines growing on the property of his in-laws. “I was like … I’ve got some grapes, right?” he said. “Worstcase scenario, I’ll make some raisins.”