For Jarod Sleet, assistant winemaker at Roco Winery in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, the journey into wine really began with a love of food and flavors. “I remember at a very young age just kind of always being on the hip of my grandma and my auntie in the kitchen cooking,” says Sleet, who was born and raised in Appalachian Kentucky.
In 2002, Sleet moved to Oregon to study at the Western Culinary Institute, afterwards working in restaurants and helping with recipe development for a local farmer’s market. That’s where he met winemaker Patrick Taylor of Cana’s Feast in the Willamette Valley. “He invited me to work on the harvest with him in 2008,” explains Sleet. “I had no idea what I was signing up for, but I immediately fell in love with the energy of harvest.”
After some years dabbling in wine retail, Sleet decided to return to the production side and earned a degree in viticulture and enology from Oregon State University in 2013. From there, he joined the team at Argyle Winery—known for its expressive méthode traditionnelle sparkling wines and lively Pinot Noirs—where he had the chance to work with its founding winemaker, Rollin Soles, before he switched to consulting so he could concentrate on his own Roco Winery, which has a similar wine focus. “He’s a character—super fun to work with, but really down to earth,” Sleet says of Roles. “He’s also such a wealth of knowledge, having experienced working abroad and in California. He pretty much kind of helped build the Oregon wine industry from the ground up with Argyle.”
Now on his seventh vintage with Roco as assistant winemaker, Sleet is looking at how he can help the Willamette Valley at large, particularly by improving inclusion and mentorship opportunities for others in the LGBTQ+ and Black communities. “When we make space for ourselves and we start to get together, then we’re on the way to do the work.”
Sleet spoke to Wine Spectator’s Julia Larson about acceptance in the wine industry, bouncing back from the 2020 vintage, the wine regions he wants to travel to next and who he finds inspiring.
Wine Spectator: Was there any wine that really made you think “wine might be for me?”
It was a 2005 vintage Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington’s Columbia Valley. I wasn’t buying really expensive bottles, but I just remember, for the price point, it blew my socks off. The baking spice components—the cloves and the cinnamon—just balanced so well with the dark berry flavors. It was just something I’d never really experienced before. It really moved me! From there, I really wanted to get more into experiencing wines from the different AVAs across the country.
How does your culinary and restaurant experience impact the way you approach making wine?
I find a lot of similarities with the front of the house and back of the house dynamic. Even on the production side of wine, I'm still the back-of-house guy again. It’s a translation of that kind of work ethic. It’s that drive. You have a goal in front of you, whether that’s dinner service or whether that’s harvest, where you just put your head down, grind and get everything done.
Do you still like to cook and, if so, what are you cooking nowadays?
Since I don't have to do it for a living, it doesn’t burn me out as much as it did when I worked in kitchens! But I still get to cook for some wine events, which really pairs my wine and cooking skills. I would say, more times than not, when people [in my life] ask me to make them something, they want me to make my bacon risotto with spring snap peas—it’s that good.
Is there a skill you’ve gained as an assistant winemaker that you never thought you’d have?
Multi-tasking! Being able to do 15 different things at once. The job has a little bit of everything. I’m out there planting, pruning everything by hand, mowing, weed-pulling, working with Rollin … I definitely feel like I get that grape-to-bottle experience and that vineyard connection.
What do you think is the most rewarding part of being a winemaker?
Harvest is probably the most rewarding aspect. The grapes come in, and by the end of harvest, all the wine is made and nicely resting in barrels. That feeling of success and completion when you get to walk away at the end of November. You get to take a little break, just reflecting on all the hard work that you did to get that grape from juice to wine to barrel.
What’s it like to be a queer, Black man working in the wine industry, in particular on the production side?
Regardless of my identity, at the end of the day, I want to be seen as someone who makes good wine. But part of my identity is, obviously, that I’m a black man. What’s not so much on the forefront is that I’m a queer black man. When I started in 2013, I would go to events and be the only person of color in the room, and oftentimes the only queer person.
Over the past few years, that has been changing. There are organizations like Our Legacy Harvested, Women in Wine Oregon and Wine Country Pride that are really taking the steps to mentor individuals and help them join this industry. Our Legacy Harvested, for example, brought BIPOC interns from all over the country into the Willamette Valley to work production in wineries, culminating in a summer block party. These groups are putting on events for us to get together and create a space for us. Those spaces allow us to get to know each other and to feel more comfortable in the industry. Then we’ll feel more comfortable taking on those high-profile positions. Seeing that growth, inclusion and diversity is beautiful.
What makes the Oregon winemaking scene stand apart from others in the United States?
From the early Oregon wine pioneers, who were sharing knowledge and equipment, I think [this cooperative spirit] still stands today. And I think it was really reflected in 2020, when all of us were faced with similar problems, how we all got together, interacted and worked together to solve it. It felt good.
I think a lot of times people just don’t know or understand Oregon wines. We’re sitting in between Washington and California, which are two really big producers of wine. Oregon sometimes gets overlooked. But I think year after year, as the Willamette Valley grows and as other AVAs within Oregon grow, we’re starting to become a little more prominent. Also, a lot of [the excitement] in Oregon has to do with the innovations that are coming from the Oregon State University Extension [which provides local communities with research-based support on sustainable agriculture, food systems and other topics].
Tell us about the 2020 vintage and why it was so hard.
Well, for one we had COVID. That was tough within itself. We were figuring out how to keep all of our people employed, and then also figuring out how we could work together with social-distancing. Throughout most of the year, it was really easy for us to stay separate and have our own little office bubbles. But then when harvest happened, we had a crew of three to four individuals that were coming and going daily, that needed to work in close quarters for production purposes, but we also wanted to kind of keep our office staff safe.
On top of that, it was a little smoky for us here— beyond anything we had experienced before. [Willamette’s winemakers] as a group really got together and talked about ways to mitigate and solve this problem. It was pretty interesting. There were some winemakers that just made reds as usual; some winemakers didn't make reds at all. And other winemakers [including at Roco] mixed different vintages together to still come out with a product that we were really, really proud of.
And then another thing, during harvest, a lot of wineries usually get together for small events and gatherings just so industry people get an opportunity to meet each other each vintage. We have people from all over the world that come to Oregon to make wine, but in 2020 we didn’t get to have any of those fun interactions. It was tough, but 2020 really highlighted the camaraderie and family that we have here in the Willamette Valley.
Is there any wine region that’s at the top of your travel bucket list?
With Roco now joining the Santa Margherita USA family, Italy is probably top of my list—with Santa Margherita in Veneto, Lamole di Lamole and Sassoregale in Tuscany, and Ca’ del Bosco in Franciacorta being the most intriguing. What can I say, I’m a big bubbles guy!
Are there any queer or Black members of the wine industry who really inspire you or who you think are doing great work?
Bertony Faustin [winemaker of Abbey Creek and Oregon’s first recorded Black winemaker]. I got to work with him on the Red, White & Black documentary [highlighting the experience of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ winemakers in Oregon]. That experience played a really big role in me being comfortable in my skin. And then also, Remy Drabkin [Remy Cellars founder and mayor of McMinnville, Ore.], who I worked with to launch the first Wine Country Pride Fest last year. Those two are pretty important to me.
