How it started

Dreamed up under the big tree in our small backyard.

Our 1920s craftsman in Multnomah Village isn't fancy — the kitchen wasn't really designed for what we do in it. But there's a big Silver Leaf Maple out back, and some of our happiest evenings have happened under it. Late afternoons turning into evenings. Drinks in hand. No one in a hurry.

It felt like something you'd travel to Italy for — except it was happening on a Tuesday in Southwest Portland.

That's the whole idea behind Canopy. The slow, social, bittersweet rhythm of Italian aperitivo hour doesn't actually require Italy. It just requires good drinks, good people, and the patience to look up for a minute.

So we started making the drinks ourselves.

Meet the team

Jeb Hollabaugh

Jeb has spent over a decade making commercial beverages — Sam Adams, Union Wine, Straightaway, Accompani, Barley Brown's. He studied Food Science at Oregon State.

Before that, he grew up FFA and 4-H in St Paul, Oregon (a tiny town in the Willamette Valley) raising sheep and helping his parents run a small family farm and orchard. In high school, he spent a year in Sardinia, Italy as a Rotary exchange student. His mom didn't want him to go; his dad flew home early from a business trip to sign the paperwork. That year changed everything about how he thought about food, drink, and slowing down. The aperitivo hour he fell in love with there is the one we're trying to bottle now.

Today, Jeb develops every Canopy formula at home from scratch, infusing Oregon-grown grape brandy with foraged and farmed botanicals, refining batches in our kitchen until they hit a point of view we love. Once the recipes are locked, he partners with Dobbs winery in Newberg to bottle them at scale, and oversees every production run himself.

The Douglas fir tips come from forests around Tillamook, Hillsboro, and Vernonia. The juniper berries come from his family's farm in Central Oregon, where the Hollabaughs hand-pick junipers together each season.

Rachelle Hollabaugh

Rachelle has 17 years of creative direction experience. By day, she's a Creative Director at Adobe.

By night and weekend, she shapes everything about how the Canopy brand looks and sounds: the bottle labels, the brand voice, the social presence, the website you're on right now.

She also runs logistics, plans events, pours at tastings, and somehow still manages to put the kids to bed every night.

The whole crew.

Our two kids (9 and 13) help forage fir tips and juniper berries — mostly to keep them busy and out of trouble. They pitch in for silly marketing ideas, hold camera phones for videos, and pack bags at events. Jeb's brother Josh and his parents Jeff and Cheryl also lend a hand at the family farm. Our corgi Opus tags along on most foraging trips and approves of all of them.

We both still work full-time day jobs. Canopy isn't a venture-backed lifestyle brand — we're two people who really love what we make, working on it for date nights and after the kids go to bed.

Why we do this

A toast to the Tuesday afternoon.

We don't think you have to go anywhere to feel something special. The best evenings of our lives have happened in our backyard, on a friend's porch, on a cabin trip, around a folding table at a campsite. The drink in your hand doesn't have to be fancy. The setting doesn't have to be perfect.

What matters is that you stop. Sit down. Pour something slow. It's all about where you are and who you're with - under the canopy with good company.

Canopy is the drink we wanted to exist for that moment — the bittersweet, easy, late-afternoon pour that doesn't take itself too seriously. The kind of drink that pairs with cheese and good gossip on a Tuesday in May. The kind that doesn't apologize for being made in Oregon instead of Italy.

Hi, we're Jeb and Rachelle.

Dreamed up under the big tree in our small backyard.

Jeb Hollabaugh

Rachelle Hollabaugh

The whole crew.

A toast to the Tuesday afternoon.

Wildly delicious Oregon-foraged aperitivo.