A Visit with John Thomas at Thomas Winery

This past Saturday I was able to visit with John Thomas of Thomas Winery. I’ve been on the mailing list of Thomas for over 15 years and have been fortunate to try most of the wines going back to 2004 or so. I’ve blogged about Thomas frequently including Thomas Winery: The Best Pinot Noir You Have Never Heard Of.

Thomas Winery is situated up a long dirt road outside of Newberg, OR in the Dundee Hills AVA. There is no sign welcoming visitors but a lone empty bottle on a post is the clue you have arrived at the right location. We visited John on rainy morning about three weeks after he had harvested the last of his grapes from the 2025 vintage. The three room winery consisting of two barrel rooms and a production room is small and modest to say the least. Thomas produces between 500-600 cases per year most of which is sold to his mailing list, select retailers and a handful of local restaurants. John told me the mailing list is for the most part full but there is enough turn over every year that interested parties never need to wait too long.

For John, making Pinot Noir is more of an art than a science. He picks when he knows the grapes will produce the best wine with little worry about things like PH and brix levels. The grapes are hand picked and the juice is gravity fed into two old dairy fermenters. John last used whole clusters in 2015 and no longer presses his wines. Lastly, John hand bottles all his wine as getting a bottling line up the driveway would not be nearly impossible.

John had just finished bottling the 2023 vintage and hopes to get a mailer out in the next week or so. We were able to taste the 2024 and 2025 out of barrel and both wines were exceptional (although John thought the 2024 had shown better on a previous tasting). The newest vintages of Thomas are bigger and darker than the Thomas wines of years past and John attributes this to warmer vintages which seem to be more the norm than the exception nowadays. He also remarked that the 2023 should be one of the vintages that will need some extended time in the cellar.

John has been at this since the mid eighties. I get the impression he has at least five more vintages in him but beyond that who knows. One thing I know for certain is that I will buy a half case every year for as long as John continues to make wine. I’ve long wanted to visit Thomas Winery and will remember this for a long time.