Rebecca and Ryan Johnson, MTN/ART Wines

“Comfort is the enemy of greatness,” says Ryan Johnson, vineyard manager at WeatherEye Vineyards on the top of Red Mountain. “You just stop trying, and you become complacent.”

That is not a problem for Johnson, who always prefers the road less traveled. That includes starting a new winery with his wife, Rebecca, called MTN/ART Wines after more than two decades farming on Red Mountain.

A winery born from hardship

The idea for the Johnsons’ winery was, itself, born from a personal challenge. In 2021, Rebecca started experiencing crippling pain. After months of uncertainty, she was diagnosed with severe rheumatoid arthritis.

The good news was there was a treatment. The bad news, it restricted her consumption of wine, which is a big part of the family’s culture.

“Being a problem solver, I thought, if alcohol is the issue here, what if I was able to get us a lower alcohol version of some of the great wines from Red Mountain?” Johnson says.

The idea was, on the face of it, bold. Red Mountain is a hot growing region, where alcohol levels are often elevated. Here, however, Johnson had an advantage

Johnson designed and planted WeatherEye Vineyards. The 440-acre site (37 under vine) is along the ridgeline and north and south sides of Red Mountain. (I have written extensively about WeatherEye Vineyard before. See here, here, here, here, and here.)

The idea of WeatherEye Vineyards, owned by Cam Myhrvold with its first plantings in 2016, is to utilize elevation, soil, clone, trellising techniques, and haute couture farming to retain non-fruit characteristics in wine in addition to fruit characteristics. The site was essentially designed to reach flavor maturity at a lower alcohol levels.

A search for lower alcohol wine

WeatherEye Vineyard

Still, when Johnson designed WeatherEye, he had not necessarily envisioned lowering alcohols that dramatically. However, he’d thought about the possibility.

“I’d always been curious, what if someone pulled fruit early from the right site and gave it to the right person and it was grown properly throughout the season, what would happen?” Johnson says.

For the “right person,” Johnson approached Keith Johnson (no relation). Johnson is partner and production winemaker at Sleight of Hand in Walla Walla and also has his own winery, Devium. At the latter, Johnson has made his mark going against the flow by, among other things, producing wines at substantially lower alcohol levels.

“We love Keith and what he does,” Johnson says. “He can just work magic.”

Starting in 2022, a cool vintage, Keith Johnson created a Syrah from a northeast facing block at WeatherEye planted on stakes (sur echalas), picked at a lower sugar level. The labeled alcohol is 13.2%. The wine is called ‘The Edge of the Wild,’ a reference Ryan Johnson saw on a J.R.R Tolkien map that seemed apt for WeatherEye.

Heart and soul

From there, the project evolved. Talking with winemaker Chris Peterson (Avennia, Liminal), Johnson decided to have him craft a red blend.

The Syrah component for the inaugural 2022 vintage wine comes from east-facing, stake-trained vines. The Mourvèdre is head trained bush vines with a northwest aspect. It is finished off with Cabernet Sauvignon.

Peterson made the wine in a more traditional style in terms of alcohol level. It is called ‘The World’s Gone Mad.’

“Is there more truth than that?” Johnson says with a laugh.

Seth Kitzke (Upsidedown, Kitzke, The Devil is a Liar) makes the final wine in the augural lineup. Called ‘Sol to Soul,’ it’s a Pét-Nat (a type of sparkling wine) made from Grenache Blanc, Roussanne, Clairette Blanche, and Viognier.

“You can see that we put our heart and soul into these wines,” Johnson says. “Seth Kitzke is a genius with Pét-Nat.”

Case production for all of the MTN/ART Wines offerings, which were just made available on the winery’s website, is miniscule. ‘The Edge of the Wild’ is 93 cases, ‘The World’s Gone Mad’ is 76, and the ‘Sol to Soul’ is a scant 22. Johnson says that he and his wife have already consumed three cases of the Sol to Soul themselves.

“It’s a serious white Rhône,” he says. “It’s got texture and depth.”

“Humor is what carries you through”

The winery’s name, MTN/ART Wines, speaks to Johnson’s career as a wine grower of the highest order on Red Mountain. “Everything about my career has been mountain-centric,” he says. “And I think there’s an art to viticulture, and obviously there’s an art to the wine.”

Johnson created whimsical images for the red wine labels. “I’m a serious guy. I can be kind of intense, but humor is what carries you through,” he says.

‘The Edge of the Wild’ label is an illustration of a coyote playing guitar. Johnson says that when he first tasted the wine from barrel, he heard Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Spanish Castle Magic,’ specifically the solo from the April 26, 1969 concert at the L.A. Forum. “It just blared in my head.”

‘The World’s Gone Mad,’ meanwhile, has an image of a coyote behind an out-of-control tractor. “That’s my life, and it’s my homage to coyotes,” Johnson says. “They are the bane of my existence, but you have to respect something that persistent and clever that can withstand my best efforts.” The ‘Sol to Soul’ label, meanwhile, is more staid, with a photograph of flowers.

Living on the edge of the wild

Sunrise, WeatherEye Vineyard

Mercifully, in the years after her diagnosis, Rebecca’s health has improved. Her treatment has changed, and she is once again able to drink and enjoy wine. The Johnson family recently moved to Red Mountain, exchanging a home in the city for one in an area that is mostly grapevines.

“It is a challenge,” says Johnson, who also manages nearby Force Majeure Vineyard. “But the first night we stayed here, we caught a sunset. I probably had more campfires in the last few months than the last two decades.”

Similarly, starting a winery in 2025 might seem audacious. The global wine industry’s recent struggles have been well-documented. Still, Johnson wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Some people are wired, you want to keep creating, and you want to keep getting better than you were the day before,” Johnson says. “That doesn’t mean it’s an easy path, but there’s satisfaction in that.”

Images courtesy MTN/ART Wines.

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