Growing up in Indiana, family gatherings around the dinner table were a nightly ritual, with simple wine playing an important (but unspoken) role for Evan’s parents, Bill and Margo Martin. Basketball was Evan’s focus until he left Indiana for college in Durango, Colorado, seeking adventure in the mountains.

After finishing college in Seattle in 2004 Evan began frequenting a neighborhood wine shop (European Vine Selections) and for the first time started exploring with intention the world of wine. He was romanced by wine’s ability to transport him in both place and time, which fed his youthful sense of wanderlust. And so newly armed with an undergraduate degree in philosophy, Evan moved to Walla Walla, Washington, to work a wine harvest at Seven Hills winery, under veteran winemaker Casey McClellan.

Following two harvests at Seven Hills, Evan pursued his dreams of being a ski bum in the Rockies, while working in restaurants to pay the bills. He eventually landed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where a fine-dining gig inspired him to dig deeper into wine appreciation, leading to a stint as a wine buyer. Evan was introduced to the wines of the Willamette Valley at this time — and they seemed to have a beautiful resemblance to the wines of France, which he had fallen deeply in love with.

His arrival in Oregon was in 2009, after a cousin helped him secure a harvest internship at Belle Pente winery with proprietors Jill and Brian O’Donnell. Evan found his home. He returned to Belle Pente again and again for harvest, then assumed the role of assistant winemaker in 2012.

As the sole employee of the winery, Evan studied the winemaking process from beginning to end, harvest to bottling. He gained a passion to explore other terroirs and, in 2014, enough confidence to start producing wine for himself, then he took a giant step forward in 2017 when he built his own winery on a wooded property in the coastal foothills near McMinnville.

Evan’s story is bottom-up, starting small and re-investing every cent earned back into a growing portfolio of wines, all the while striving to learn, by patient observation and attention, how to be better at the craft. He eventually began to tap into winemaking as fine art, as not only a vocation, but also an all-encompassing way of life, expression and community. Part of this journey was creating HiFi wine bar — celebrating it’s third year in 2024 — where the wine industry comes together in a casual, music-filled atmosphere to drink the truly great wines of the world, with the edifying perspective which that affords.

Evan continues to build the Martin Woods “Dream Team” and he looks to the future with tremendous excitement. He believes that Oregon has arrived at a moment of time when it can produce some of the finest, more compelling, most sought-after wines in the world.