Ruth Lewandowski
East Sussex, England
Evan Lewandowski initially made his way to Salt Lake City to attend the University of Utah — or really, to ski. Sticking around after graduation, Evan began working at a local wine bar. It was here that Evan began developing a passion for natural wine and a dream of becoming a winemaker himself.
After working at Domaine Binner in Alsace for several years, Evan Lewandowski moved back to his adopted state of Utah in 2012 to start his own small project. With the intention to someday plant and grow 100% of his grapes in Utah, Evan began purchasing his fruit from Fox Hill Vineyard and Testa Vineyard in Mendocino County, trekking the organic, dry-farmed and alternate grape varieties in his refrigerated U-Haul to his home in Salt Lake City to complete fermentation, maturation and bottling.
While Evan moved his operations entirely to California in April 2018, his L-shaped labels remain a tribute to his adopted state. His winemaking is rooted in his hands-off philosophy, crafting heartfelt, honest wines made to showcase site & season.
Who is Ruth?!
“I’ve said it a thousand different ways since the beginning of Ruth Lewandowski Wines, and I think its most comprehensible to explain “Ruth” as a concept more than a living, breathing individual. A concept born out of the affiliation of my own philosophies of farming and winemaking (which indeed spill over to inform so many of my life beliefs) and one small but very significant text in the Old Testament of the Bible, the 'Book of Ruth'. Without sounding 'preachy' and so as not to offend the sensitive, and in the interest of concisely summing things up, I don't believe there to be a deeper, more compelling depiction of the natural cycle of death and redemption (both in the physical realm we can see and the spiritual realm we often do not) than this one short book. Nothing that is alive today could be so without something having died first. This is the redemptive nature of our universe, of our planet, of our soils, plants, and ultimately you and I.
The cessation of things is necessary to begin anew, even more fully. From the wreckage of death and tragedy at the beginning of the book of Ruth, a young woman finds life, finds beauty and is able to truly live....not simply in spite of the death, but because the death occurred at all. The regeneration of the life of our soils occurs only through organic matter...all completely dead, broken down carbon-based items. Natural fermentation is the building up and dying off of multiple strains of yeast and bacteria, each paving the way for the next strain to take over (and each leaving their altogether unique signatures of flavor, aroma, and textural compounds)”
Evan Lewandowski
"When I last visited the United States, in 2019, I was able to catch up with Evan and run through his wines - they were the highlight of my lengthy wine-seeking mission through California. They popped out of the glass, imbued with immense complexity yet a levity, freshness and a sense of purity. They had structure, they had depth, but they were on the edge too, in that zone of eccentric, but detailed and engaging, a place where so often great wine lives. While the wines have a seriousness to them, they're ostensibly fun; drinkability is through the roof. They come from amazing vineyards too, some of the most significant sites reimagined and deified by the high profile, high quality-seeking sect of avant-garde California winemakers. Outstanding wines any which way you come at them."
Mike Bennie, P&V Wine + Liquor Merchants
