Harvest Moon Sangria Bar Opens in Newberg

NEWBERG, Ore. — Downtown Newberg is welcoming a hometown native as Julianna “Jules” Moseley opened Harvest Moon Sangria Bar on First Street last month.

“We just had to set a date,” Moseley said. “We’re going to make improvements week by week, but we had to get the buzz out and start.”

Moseley, who attended school in Newberg from kindergarten through high school, remembers her first job scooping ice cream at Jem 100. She said that early experience sparked her love for front-of-house restaurant work.

After high school, she studied photography and design at art school but left about seven months before graduation.

“That was the phase where the education really got into creative thinking, and that was what I already had,” she said. “I was ready to get out there and get started.”

She continued working in restaurants and bars, eventually moving to Hawaii in 2016 to work at Kuleana Rum Distillery. There, she trained under an award-winning mixologist who mentored her and helped deepen her passion for the craft of mixology.

“I realized I could flex the artsy side of myself in the thing that pays my bills,” Moseley said. “It was my two worlds coming together.”

She stayed with the distillery for several years until the COVID-19 pandemic brought her back to Oregon. During the transition, she stopped drinking liquor and occasionally drank wine—but something was missing.

“There is a ton of wine out here, but we’re only doing one thing with it,” she said. “Wine bars are everywhere—and don’t get me wrong, we have so many great wines and wine bars. But what about the people who want a casual experience and can’t afford a $20 glass of wine? Where’s the middle ground?”

For Moseley, that middle ground was a classic Spanish beverage: sangria. At its core, sangria is fresh fruit steeped in wine, but it can be customized with liqueurs, spices, or carbonated beverages.

“Sangria should be floral, fruity, and fragrant,” wrote Rochelle Bilow in a 2015 edition of Bon Appétit magazine. “It should be easy to sip, but not mindless entertainment.”

For Moseley, the best sangria starts with seasonal fruit, fresh herbs, and spices.

“There’s no limit for sangria,” she said. “At its core, it’s fruit, wine, herbs. It’s that simple. But that simplicity means you can go in any different direction with it.”

One of her first creations was a pinot noir old fashioned sangria—made with whiskey barrel-aged pinot noir, orange, bitters and syrup. The result, she said, was a refreshing drink that tasted like a classic old fashioned, and it sparked even more cocktail-inspired ideas.

“I’m one of those people who always has ideas—I always have 100 ideas,” she said. “None of them have landed per se, but this one felt a little different.”

She began by selling sangria mixers and mocktails at farmers’ markets and pop-up events. At one event, she was approached by Tigard Councilor Jeanette Shaw, who told her about grant programs designed to support underrepresented entrepreneurs.

Moseley, who is Native American, Hispanic, and female, qualified for the Launch Pod Business Accelerator, a program designed to help food and beverage businesses launch. With its support, she opened a food cart in April 2023, serving sangria and small bites in a supportive pod environment with controlled rent and resources.

Eight months later, she was approached about opening a brick-and-mortar location—and began developing the concept.

“I just felt like I wanted to do a sangria-focused bar before someone else did it,” she said. “Nobody was telling me to stop, so I kept going.”

Harvest Moon Sangria Bar quickly gained attention as Oregon’s first sangria bar, with coverage in The Oregonian and other Portland-area media.

“They didn’t tell us when they were publishing that story, so overnight we suddenly got hundreds of Instagram followers and people started packing in,” she said.

Now, almost exactly a year after opening the Tigard location, she’s opened the doors to a second bar in Newberg.

“I never thought I’d come back to my hometown and open something,” she said. “It’s a little surreal to be here, but now that I am, I’m so excited about it. It’s great to be here and contribute to my hometown community in this way.”

Moseley’s mother, who still lives and works in Newberg, heard that the Down 2 Details salon building was coming up for sale. She and several business partners purchased the building and began renovations to convert the former salon into a restaurant and bar.

The Newberg location is still in its soft opening phase, which Moseley said will likely continue for the next three to four weeks. During this period, days and hours may vary as the team fine-tunes the space and updates the menu.

One upcoming change is the addition of liquor—something the Tigard location doesn’t offer. Moseley is also testing the food menu, which includes shareable plates like nachos, charcuterie, and flatbreads.

“We want to bring it back to what food is supposed to be at its core,” she said. “It’s bringing the friends and family around and picking at plates together, trying new things together.”

Harvest Moon is currently open on weekends, except for holiday weekends such as the upcoming Fourth of July holiday. Moseley said she hopes to eventually expand to a Thursday through Sunday schedule, open from noon to 9 p.m. For the latest hours and updates, she recommends following the bar on social media.

“I think Harvest Moon is going to bring a different way to enjoy wine that we don’t have in the area right now,” she said. “I think it’ll be a big tourism draw as well and will bring a lot of people to town.

“I didn’t think I’d ever be behind a bar that I owned, talking about bringing tourists and supporting downtown in my hometown—but here we are.”

Learn more about Harvest Moon Sangria Bar on its website and Instagram.