How two Oregon winemakers went from saying “never” to creating one of the region’s most compelling new labels.
Tracy and Aaron Kendall’s path to founding Folly of Man may look inevitable from the outside, but for years, they insisted they’d never do it. After more than 15 years working at other people’s wineries, making wine and managing production, they knew firsthand how demanding and all-consuming it could be to run something of their own. They had children, hobbies, weekends they valued, and the ability to leave work at the door.
“We said to ourselves and each other, ‘We are never going to start our own winery,’” Tracy recalls. And yet, what began as a small project, just the two of them, making a little wine to keep Tracy’s passion alive, quickly took on a life of its own. “Once we made that decision,” she says, “it felt so natural we wondered why we’d ever said we wouldn’t do it.”
The two met years earlier at Adelsheim Vineyard, where Tracy was an intern and Aaron the cellar master. They fell in love, stayed on for four years, and built a rhythm working together. Creating a winery of their own felt like a return to that shared foundation. The vineyard came just as organically. A friend told them about a remarkable site that an elderly couple was ready to sell after two decades of tending. The couple wanted it to go to another young family who would care for it and carry the legacy forward.
Tracy and Aaron hadn’t dreamed of owning a vineyard so early in the life of Folly of Man, but when they saw the land, they couldn’t walk away. “It wasn’t easy,” Tracy says, “but we figured out how to make our dream a reality.”
The name Folly of Man came from their recognition that trying to predict or control any part of this process — whether in wine or in life — is a kind of beautiful mistake. “We thought we knew exactly what kind of wine we were going to make together from the outset,” she says, “when in reality the wine is an amalgamation of our experiences, personalities, intuition and craft. Bringing these wines to bottle encompassed far more late night discussions and debates than we anticipated.”
We asked Tracy to share more about what she and Aaron are discovering along the way.
Sip: You’ve both shaped wines at some of Oregon’s most iconic wineries. What was the itch you just couldn’t scratch until Folly of Man?
Tracy Kendall: Having the entire creative freedom to truly craft the wines the way we want. And beyond that, having the ability to make the calls from pruning to bottling. Because our past wineries were such iconic brands, there was always history we felt it was important to honor. You can never take the winemaker out of the wines, but we were ultimately making Nicolas-Jay wines and Beaux Frères wines. It’s incredible now to be able to make our wines and follow our instincts without boundaries.
Sip: This was your first year farming your own land. What did the vineyard teach you that no textbook or mentor ever could?
TK: Faith. Farming is complex, ultimately out of man’s control — isn’t it folly to think we can control it? — and unpredictable. Every season is different, bringing new challenges and surprises and new problems to solve. We work hard with our team to ensure we do the best we can by the vineyard, but ultimately we’ve learned to have faith in these beautiful old vines. They have seen so many more seasons than we have, and can respond dynamically to seasonal changes and challenges in ways we couldn’t anticipate.
Sip: You’ve said the best expressions of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are still ahead of you. What does that future look like in your mind, and how do you plan to chase it down?
TK: Winemaking is a fascinating combination of art, science and intuition. Science continues to evolve and helps us to improve our craft from a foundational level in a way that our predecessors didn’t have access to. They had intuition and art and the science of their time, certainly, and many were so exceptionally talented that they set the bar very high. For us, like any artists, nothing we make is ever “good enough.” We continually strive to make every vintage better through learning our sites, honing what we do and love, and pushing ourselves to learn more and connect more deeply with our vines. As soon as we think we have it all figured out, we’ve stopped learning — and we never want to do that. What initially attracted us to winemaking was the continually evolving challenge of it and the feeling that you can never know everything there is to know.
Sip: Your vineyard is wild, windswept and partially untamed. How does that rawness influence the way you think about farming and winemaking?
TK: That rawness is ultimately one of the reasons we fell in love with the site. Farming organically with biodynamic and regenerative principles is sacrosanct to us, and to do that effectively requires a site with dynamic biodiversity, allowing the site to maintain balance. Hawks live in the oak savannah, helping to keep voles under control. Bats reside in the forest as well as small birds, helping to keep insect populations in balance. The winds blow powerfully through the vineyard each afternoon, keeping disease pressure at bay, allowing for minimal organic sprays to be effective. When you are farming a monoculture, keeping biodiversity in the surrounding landscape ensures a balanced and healthy ecosystem.
Feature image by Cheryl Juetten
