Laura Brennan Bissell
Years of Participation
2019-2020, 2024-2025
Laura Brennan Bissell, founder of INCONNU & AITIA, is a dedicated regenerative farmer and winemaker based in the Columbia Gorge AVA, in Underwood, Washington.
On a bootstrap budget she founded INCONNU in Napa, CA in 2012, cutting her teeth on the versatile terroir California had to offer.
INCONNU (meaning unknown), was created to exhibit the often forgotten delicacy and grace California Bordeaux variety wines can bring to the table. For over a decade Laura again and again created understated elegant California wines, all while dreaming of the day she would finally have her own land.
While working with leased properties, other dedicated organic farmers, and family owned operations, she learned a lot about holistic land management, and built the personal ethos that brought her to the Pacific Northwest.
In 2021 Brennan-Bissell purchased a vineyard/farm on Underwood Mountain, on the Washington side of the Columbia River; it is there she lives with her family, and a menagerie of critters.
In 2024 she released AITIA, a hyper focused project with grapes only coming from her farm, or other properties within a half mile, all abiding by regenerative organic practices: no till, dry farmed, native cover crops, animal integration.
The wines of AITIA (the reason something happens, its story, the cause for it), are intense and elegant, gripping and mineral, displaying the complex climate from which they come. Underwood Mountain offers elevation, volcanic soils, blustery winters into long cool springs, legendary wind, and desirable diurnal shifts in the growing season.