Sunshine Mill Harvests a Big Win: Trader Joe’s Renews, Festival Throws Open the Doors
Sunshine Mill Winery’s James Martin and Assistant Manager Anna Jasso are celebrating as their Pinot Noir contract with Trader Joe’s was renewed and they have launched new products in the form of serving size cocktails under the retox moniker, a play on the recent detox movement. Anna holds Oregon Mountain Estates wine in a new 12-ounce glass ‘stubby’ bottle for the single -serve, on-the-go wine market.
By Tom Peterson
The Dalles, Ore., Sept. 11, 2026 — Once a year, Sunshine Mill throws open its doors a little wider.
People climb to the roof. Grapes are crushed. Music spills outside. Local artists and makers fill the cavernous rooms of the former flour mill, while children bounce, get their faces painted and explore the grounds.
For owner James Martin, it is a little like Willy Wonka opening the chocolate factory.
Only here, the chocolate is wine — and this year's harvest comes with plenty to celebrate.
Sunshine Mill will hold its fourth annual Harvesting Sunshine festival from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, bringing together the grape harvest, local vendors, food, music and families at one of The Dalles' most unusual landmarks.
Sunshine Mountain Vineyard Pinot Noir 2023 featured at Trader Joe’s
At the same time, Martin and his family are celebrating some significant business news: Trader Joe's has renewed its relationship with the local wine operation after previously selecting Pinot Noir grown by the Martins for its Grand Reserve program. The retailer now plans to expand the program with a sparkling wine.
For Martin, the renewal was anything but guaranteed.
“I was very nervous for about four or five months,” Martin said.
Then came the answer. Martin said Trader Joe's told the company the wine was doing “really, really well,” and its buyer wanted to expand the program.
The sparkling wine grapes have already been harvested, picked earlier to retain higher acidity and the flavor profile needed for that style of wine.
The success is particularly meaningful to Martin because the grapes are grown here, in The Dalles.
The original selection came after Trader Joe's tasted 106 Pinot Noirs, Martin said. Sunshine Mill's grapes were chosen for a private-label wine produced under the family's Sunshine Mountain Vineyards name for Trader Joe's Grand Reserve line.
For a region where cherries and wheat have long dominated the agricultural identity — and where Oregon Pinot Noir is more commonly associated with the Willamette Valley — Martin sees the recognition as validation of what can be grown locally.
“They're really pleased with the style and the flavor of everything that we have growing right here in The Dalles,” Martin said.
When the mill comes alive
Sunshine Mill recently put the final touches on its east courtyard complete with play structure for the kids and whimsical tables and art to set your mind at ease while enjoying food, wine and shopping local vendors at Sunshine Harvest Fest set for Saturday, Sept. 19.
That makes Harvesting Sunshine particularly fitting this year.
Assistant Manager Anna Jasso said the festival was built around the family's grape harvest but has evolved into something considerably larger — an opportunity to bring local businesses, artists, musicians and families together inside a building that can be difficult to fully appreciate until you walk through its doors.
Sunshine Mill itself is part winery, part industrial artifact and part art installation.
The former milling complex, once associated with production for Sunshine Biscuits, retains its massive machinery and industrial bones. Belt drives and mechanical equipment have been painted gold. Older furniture with rich, soft textures sits against the hard surfaces of the mill. Artwork appears throughout.
Light pours through towering industrial windows into rooms that otherwise fall into deep shadow.
During Harvesting Sunshine, those spaces become a marketplace.
“We love to promote downtown,” Jasso said, explaining that the festival has developed largely through collaborations with local businesses and makers. “Our focus is just wanting to support some local folks who are doing their craft.”
The vendor area is full enough this year that Jasso said there is a waiting list.
The festival will include clothing, jewelry, candles, lavender products, flowers, cookies, sourdough and baked goods, handmade crafts and other locally produced items. Tamales by Teresa will be among the food offerings, while the Dry Hollow PTA will sell hot dog meals as a school fundraiser.
Sunshine Mill will pour its wines and offer free samples of Pinot Noir, while Freebridge Brewing will serve beer.
There will also be live music throughout the event, grape crushing and stomping, a pumpkin patch, face painting and a pumpkin bounce house.
The event is free and family-friendly.
Go all the way to the roof
One of the biggest attractions isn't something visitors can buy.
Martin will lead tours through the historic mill on the hour, taking visitors all the way to the roof — an area normally off limits to the public.
Martin said about 320 people took the tours during last year's festival.
“For a lot of people who've lived in The Dalles and have always been curious about this mill, it's just a great opportunity to come down and see it,” he said.
There is nothing else like the Sunshine Mill in the Gorge, with its eclectic style and vivid colors highlighting and celebrating the industrial feel of the historic flour mill.
Jasso said that sense of access is part of what makes the annual event special.
“It's one time of the year where we open all of our doors,” she said.
Outside, the Martins have continued changing the property as well.
A recently completed east-side tasting area adds more space for visitors, along with turf and a children's play structure. A mural created through The Dalles Art Center's youth art camp depicts creatures found in the Columbia River.
Bright colors, artwork and seasonal fall and Halloween decorations soften the mill's industrial surroundings and continue the family's effort to make the property more welcoming to children and families.
Martin said that evolution is deliberate.
“We've got a really cool thing that isn't like anywhere else,” he said, adding that the goal is to create a place where locals can bring friends and out-of-town visitors and feel comfortable spending time.
From wine to RETOX
The Trader Joe's renewal comes as the Martins are pushing into several other corners of the beverage industry.
Among the biggest is RETOX, a ready-to-drink cocktail brand launched in March.
The concept came from Martin's son, Griffin, who worked for years as a mixologist at Baldwin Saloon and helped develop the cocktail flavors.
The tongue-in-cheek name plays off the broader “detox” movement and a changing alcohol market in which consumers may be drinking less but still want a quality cocktail when they gather with friends.
Martin said RETOX is now being sold in 13 states and has sold roughly 400,000 cups since its launch. Nearly 100,000 were sold in the most recent month, he said.
The company is also rolling out Oregon Mountain wines in smaller lightweight glass bottles designed to provide two servings instead of the traditional four or more found in a standard wine bottle.
The bottles are screen-printed in-house rather than using traditional paper labels, another example of the Martins' fascination with packaging as much as what goes inside it.
Martin believes that packaging technology could eventually become a major part of the business.
He said the company is preparing a public crowdfunding offering centered on beverage-packaging technologies it has been developing. It would be his first public offering through crowdfunding since his appearance on “Shark Tank” in 2010.
“This is happening in The Dalles,” Martin said, describing the operation as a beverage technology company with national reach.
‘We want to make The Dalles a better place’
James Martin and his crew during harvest.
That connection to The Dalles runs through nearly everything Martin says about the business.
The Martin family has deep roots in the area, including generations of farming, and despite opportunities to take their ideas elsewhere, James Martin said leaving isn't the objective.
“I mean, we've had people at times tell us, you know, you should move this to California or you should be someplace else,” Martin said. “And for us, the reason we do this is so we can have The Dalles become a better place.”
That philosophy is also why he likes filling the mill with other local businesses during Harvesting Sunshine.
“I really need to put the spotlight on all these people that make great things and make The Dalles a better place,” Martin said.
He sees the mill increasingly becoming more than the family's winery or beverage business.
“I think that just the bit that we're doing now is becoming bigger than just us,” he said. “And that's what we wanted it to be.”
Wes Braun, who recently joined Drinxtec but knew Sunshine Mill long before working there, said the building was already one of the places he brought visitors while living elsewhere in the Gorge.
“Sunshine Mill is kind of a hidden gem in the Gorge,” Braun said, calling it a “must-go when you have guests in town.”
Harvesting Sunshine, he said, is a particularly good excuse to finally walk through the doors.
On Sept. 19, those doors will be wide open.
There will be grapes coming in from the vineyard, wine going into glasses, children playing outside and hundreds of people wandering through a century-old industrial building transformed by gold paint, artwork, imagination and a family determined to keep creating things in The Dalles.
For Martin, that is what harvest is ultimately about.
“When all the work finally produces something worth sharing,” Martin said.
