In honor of Father’s Day, here are Newberg fathers and kids working in wine together.
My track and field event in high school was the 3,000-meter race — no one wanted to run it because it was 7½ grueling laps around the track. At full speed.
One spring day of my junior year I finished the last lap, and I saw a woman coming at me, flailing her arms and shouting. In my post-race delirium, I couldn’t tell who it was or why she was yelling at me, but I knew something was very important to her.
Ten years later I went to work for this wild woman. She was my mom, and she was too excited to wait for me to get home from my track meet to tell me she had quit her job and was starting her own business.
This business became Katayama Framing and Murdoch Collections, and both are still thriving 40 years later in Portland — way more than my track career. My brother Pete is vice president and has been working there for 26 years. My dad, now retired, is also an entrepreneur who worked with large boats and ships.
In the 1990s, I committed to working for my mom and doing her marketing full time, but life had a different adventure for me. Adidas came calling, and within a week of hiring me, the company had me on a plane to South Africa to work a photo shoot with golfer Ernie Els, who was ranked No. 1 in the world at that time.
While I missed out on the camaraderie and unconditional love that a family business offers, in Oregon — with 70% of the 1,000-plus wineries small and family owned — there are a lot of parents making wine alongside kids that we can all partake in.
Here are some notable Newberg examples of fathers sharing their love for the vines with their children.
Jachter Family Wines: No Bull, Dave Jachter Loves Working With His Family
Dave Jachter is learning all sorts of things these days in Newberg. Once a car magnate — you may remember the license plate frames from Wilsonville Toyota proclaiming “No Bull” on cars bought from his lot — Jachter now makes wine at the family’s vineyard and winery, Jachter Family Wines. A wildly coincidental detail: the property Jachter now farms was once used for raising bulls.
His son, Aaron Jachter, manages their 120-acre, organically and dry-farmed estate vineyard, with almost 18 acres under vine. Aaron lives on the property in the Chehalem Mountains AVA with his wife, Candra, the winery’s cellar master.
“We have so much fun together, and my family is really part of the team — they both call me Pops, and they’re both super hardworking, and they’ve earned the respect of the people who work with us. Our team understands they get no special privileges as family members,” Dave said.
Except for one, he notes. “The one benefit they did get was an old farmhouse on the property that was about to be torn down,” Dave said. “It was built in 1902 and it was really coming apart — windows all smashed, carpets all moldy, 15-foot-tall mounds of blackberry bushes. They were actually out looking to develop an RV park, and while visiting and walking around the property with them, they turned to me and said they wanted in.”
The experience has been full of learning opportunities for Dave as well, especially from Aaron’s push toward regenerative farming. Dave recently attended Regenerative Agriculture 2026 and couldn’t wait to share his learnings, calling his son from the event with an explicit warning: “You’re going to be sad you sent me to this course because it’s going to cost us some money.”
As testament to Candra’s work ethic, Dave describes his daughter-in-law as “a real sponge.”
“She was going to go get a job at Wilco or something, and I was like, ‘Why don’t you go work a harvest and see if you like working in the winery?'”
At the time, Jared Etzel was Dave’s winemaker and was also entering harvest at Domaine Roy & Fils as a part owner. “He needed an intern really bad. He asked me to send Candra over, so I did. According to Jared, she was the best worker they had from day one.”
“In a nutshell, I gotta tell you, the satisfaction that I get from seeing my son and daughter-in-law so excited and so passionate about a business — it’s irreplaceable. It’s very special to me. I don’t know how much more pleasure I could get than watching them be this passionate about something when they were going off in a completely different direction. That’s been a real blessing.”
Beaux Frères Vineyard: Hard work and family
The Etzel family rarely needs introduction in wine. Its cast of characters includes Michael G. Etzel, father of Mike D. Etzel (Mikey), Jared Etzel, and Nathan Etzel. The Etzel ethos is rooted in family, with the name Beaux Frères literally meaning “brothers-in-law” — a nod to their co-investment in Beaux Frères with wine critic and brother-in-law Robert Parker. Parker’s investment helped them transform a former pig farm into a wine estate. Mike Sr. planted its first five acres of Pinot Noir in 1988; the estate is now made up of three vineyards in Newberg: The Beaux Frères Vineyard, Upper Terrace, planted in 2000, and The Bridge, planted in 2021.
The family moved to Oregon from Colorado Springs after visiting in 1986. “I’d heard the hype and tasted a 1979 Pinot Noir in a Riesling bottle from Bill Fuller of Tualatin Vineyard and thought, holy cow, this is something,” Michael told Wine Spectator.
While the kids learned a lot from their father’s work ethic — and, according to Mikey, especially from their dad’s school of hard knocks — they weren’t exactly knocked out by working in wine. Until they went abroad.
Mikey’s aha moment came working harvest in Spain, he told Linfield’s Oregon Wine History Archive.
“I worked for these producers and felt the cultural vibe of the old-world connection with the wine world. It just really opened my eyes and I came out of it saying, ‘Yeah, for sure.'”
For Jared — who co-founded Domaine Roy et Fils and now owns Rodeo Hills, both in Dundee — an opportunity as an Oregon State University freshman to go to Spain for a harvest job at Artadi, in Rioja, proved equally transformative. Owner Juan Carlos López de Lacalle and the vineyard Viña El Pisón wowed him.
“It was one of the most incredible wines I’d ever had at that point, with the aromatics of a grand cru Burgundy and the depth and power of a first-growth Bordeaux,” Jared said. “And I saw the same super focus on the vineyard that I grew up with.”
While they work together and live near one another, the Etzel men aren’t effusive, but they are always gracious to the people who support them. Michael summed it up best on his 72nd birthday in June:
“When I started this fire I was 32 years old and there was a lot of piss and vinegar, a lot of energy, a lot of high hopes. I never thought that the journey would take me to where I am today and I’m quite pleased, so thank you for being part of that journey.”
Hazelfern Cellars: Business builds confidence
Bryan and Laura Laing were living in a Northeast Portland neighborhood that in the 1800s had been a cattle farm called Hazelfern Farm. They were making wine by night in their garage, and in 2014 moved their two young daughters, Adalyn and Ava, to wine country after finding their dream property in Newberg, where they began planting vines at their estate vineyard and Hazelfern Cellars on Zimri Drive.
In a Father’s Day-themed podcast with the Willamette Valley Wineries Association hosted on the organization’s site, Bryan told the panel one of the benefits of raising kids on a vineyard is that seeing a business in operation builds confidence.
“It’s really fun to see them be around the property and the vineyard and winery and just develop skills and confidence,” he said of his daughters’ involvement in the business. “They get to meet new people and introduce themselves with confidence and really go out there and tackle anything.”
As a dad making wine, Bryan also learned an important lesson in letting both grapes and kids be their own thing.
“You know, I often talk about my wines like they’re my kids,” he said. “We do a whole different series of single-vineyard designates, and in the tasting room people always ask which ones are my favorites.”
But like kids, “each one of those wines is totally different,” he said. “When your kids are born you might have a vision of exactly what you want them to be, or what they’re going to be when they grow up, and at the end of the day they’re their own person. So it’s really learning to lean into their skills, their interests, their passions.
“When I’m making wine from a certain vineyard, I try and look at what is this vineyard about, what makes it really unique, and let’s lean all the way into that because that’s what makes it special.”
Trisaetum Winery: A family that makes wine together, stays together
Another first family of Newberg winemaking is the Frey family, who runs Trisaetum, a Newberg tasting room and estate winery in the Ribbon Ridge AVA. As reported in a December 2025 story, last summer three members of Trisaetum’s second generation joined the leadership team of the 20-year-old winery founded by James and Andrea Frey. The name Trisaetum is an amalgam of the names of their two children, Tristen and Tatum, both of whom were promoted to leadership roles, along with Tatum’s husband, Jackson Harloff-Frey, who became assistant winemaker.
Tatum and Jackson are high school sweethearts from McMinnville High School who were married in the summer of 2025 on the vineyard property. They live on the property, as do James and Andrea. An artist, James’ stunning canvases adorn the tasting room. Today, Frey Family Wines encompasses the Bordeaux-inspired 18401 Cellars and sparkling wine brand Pashey Sparkling.
The family business dynamic is so strong, they started another project — distilling spirits. James and Tatum launched Brixeur Spirits in 2020. What began as a COVID-era project blossomed into a full-time brand.
“We started distilling gin. After a few batches, we realized it was really fun, and first and foremost, we really enjoyed it.”
The devotion to family doesn’t stop with this generation. James even looks back to his grandmother Pashey Nugent, whom he never met because she passed away at 38. She raised five children during World War II in Reading, England, and in her honor, a picture of her is tucked onto each enclosure of the sparkling wine. Pashey is the sparkling wine division of Trisaetum Winery, founded in 2014.
Get out there this Father’s Day and enjoy some family-made Oregon wine!
Sarah (Sally) Murdoch is a runs Puncheon PR and has marketed many iconic sports and beverage brands, which eventually led her to the Oregon Wine Board where she headed communications for almost seven years. A native Portlander and Oregon Duck with a journalism degree, she is an avid tennis player and captains a number of tennis teams. She now lives in Forest Grove. Visit sallymurdoch.com to learn more.
