You’ve seen Tyler Magar’s Monument Wines around Portland, even if you don’t realize it. What started in 2018 as a one time experiment has turned one of the staples of small producer post natural wine oregon movement. After spending time as the assistant to Andy Young from the Marigny, Tyler decided he needed to make wine for himself at least once in his life. (Fun side note: Tyler worked for Andy mostly because Tyler’s electric car couldn't make it all the way out to the Willamette valley on one charge. Andy, at the time, was making wine in Sellwood, thus the proximity made it possible). So in 2018 he bought a little Syrah and Pinot with the goal of making one blended wine, but the separate pieces were too interesting to blend together, so one wine turned into two. Everyone loved the wines and he loved being in the cellar, so onward the project went. He now has 8 vintages under his belt crafting one of Oregon' s most personal - and tender - projects.

You’ve probably seen Monument Wines around Portland—even if you didn’t realize it. What started in 2018 as a one-time experiment has quietly become one of the staples of the small-producer, post-natural wine Oregon movement. After spending time assisting Andy Young at Marigny, Tyler Magar decided he needed to make wine for himself at least once in his life.

(Quick side note: Tyler worked with Andy partly because his electric car couldn’t quite make it all the way out to the Willamette Valley on a single charge. Andy was making wine in Sellwood at the time, which—logistically—made the whole thing possible.)

So in 2018, Tyler bought a little Syrah and Pinot with the idea of making one blended wine. But the individual pieces were too interesting to blend, so one wine turned into two. People loved the wines. He loved being in the cellar. And just like that, the project kept going. Eight vintages in, it’s become one of Oregon’s most personal—and tender—projects.

His most well-known wine, Jenny, is named after his mother and features a different photograph of her every year. Other labels pull from family archives, self-portraits, or the occasional line of poetry. Always soulful, always meaningful. It’s that kind of project.

We’ve talked with Tyler for years about making a Post Familiar wine together, but the timing never quite lined up. He works mostly with Syrah, Pinot, and Muscat, and for a while I had a running fantasy of doing something inspired by Jean‑François Ganevat—specifically his Pinot Noir and Gewürztraminer blends. They’re wild: the floral Gewürz adds this lifted, stone-fruited perfume to Pinot’s earthy, crunchy red fruit. It feels totally wrong and, somehow, completely right (don’t all good things?)

The idea was to translate that into Oregon—Pinot Noir, but swap Gewürz for Muscat, one of Tyler’s specialties. Like Gewürz, Muscat brings explosive florals. On its own, it can drift into that “soapy old lady” territory. But handled with restraint, it’s more like fresh-cut flowers—alive, bright, humming.

Alas, not this vintage. (Maybe next time.)

But another idea that had been rattling around in my head finally clicked.

I’ve been curious for a while about orange wine as a blending component with red wine. 20 years into the orange wine revival, it seems strange to me that we always silo it as a stand alone wine. Historically, sure. But what’s the point of making wine in 2026 if you’re not going to push at the edges a little?

We already blend whites and rosés into reds all the time. Why not orange? If anything, it makes more sense. Orange wines bring tannin, so you’re not diluting structure the way you might with white wine. Instead, you keep the bones of a red wine intact while opening up a completely different aromatic spectrum—stone fruit, citrus, florals, herbs. You can make something that drinks like a red, structurally, but tastes like almost no reds that exist in real life. A chimera wine in the best of ways (not unlike our previous chimera blend of tempranillo/riesling. )

Overall, the key is grip. The orange component has to have real texture.

So that’s what we did. A true 50/50 blend of red and orange.

The red portion is roughly equal parts Pinot Noir and Syrah, co-fermented toward the end. On its own, it leaned hard into mineral—rock dust, bruised strawberries, not much overt fruit. Fresh, sexy, but still serious, with fine but firm tannin. Exactly the kind of frame we wanted.

The orange portion is equal parts Chardonnay and Muscat, and it’s… wild. It tasted like a field of flowers growing unhiged into a witches medicinal herbal garden. Definitely not shy, but not too soapy or bed bath and beyondy either. And most importantly, it had grip. The kind of orange wine that wants food, or time, or both.

We played with a bunch of different proportions for the blend, but at the end, 50/50 is where magic was at. The red keeps everything grounded, stony and somewhat familiar—while the orange lifts it into this more fruity aromatic space. It still feels like a red wine. But then the flavors start bending: hibiscus, prickly pear, stone fruit, dried flowers, spice. It’s familiar until it isn’t.

We made just 78 cases of this, and it really feels like the beginning of something. Our first real step into blending with orange wines. We desperately want to do another red and orange. And maybe a rose + orange. Maybe a white + orange. Maybe a cider + orange. Maybe maybe maybe maybe.