About Us.

Slope Life celebrates both a place and a mindset. A community where we play as hard as we work, family is everything, and handshakes are binding.

Slope Life is a Gård Vintners brand inspired by our family farm and sustainably farmed vineyards in the Royal Slope AVA of Washington state.

Slope Life wines are approachable and crowd-pleasing, and crafted to be shared with good friends around the kitchen table, or around a bonfire at the end of a long day. We like to live in the moment, appreciate the abundance of life on the farm and good friendships, and embrace the work-hard/play-hard mentality.

Farming the Royal Slope is based on comradery and enjoying downtime together, too. We value a friendly outlook on business and living, and craft Slope Life to represent these qualities in the glass.

Our parent winery, Gård Vintners, was established by our family in 2006 to showcase our sustainably estate-grown wine grapes from Lawrence Vineyards. Proprietors Josh and Lisa Lawrence launched Slope Life in the summer of 2024 to further celebrate our estate vineyards as wines that encompass a lifestyle and all we love about raising our family and our crops on the Royal Slope.

Slope Life wines are available in the Pacific Northwest at select stores and restaurants, and also available to ship or pick up

at any Gard tasting room via wine club membership only. Please contact us for wholesale inquiries.

From our estate vineyards on the Royal Slope of Washington to your glass, we are excited to share a little of the Slope Life with you.

Team

JOSH & LISA LAWRENCE

Proprietors

Josh grew up in Royal City, a small agricultural town located 30 miles southwest of Moses Lake. He majored in business administration at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma where he met his future bride, Lisa (Treadwell) Lawrence, who majored in communication and grew up in Olympia.

Josh returned to Royal City after college to farm with his family for a few years, then moved to Redmond, Wash., where he married Lisa. At the time, Lisa was working in the tech field in marketing and public relations, while Josh was working in sales and later started a wine importing business.

The couple moved to Royal City in 2001, and not long after, Josh and Lisa started Lawrence Vineyards in partnership with Josh's dad, John Lawrence, and uncle, Sandy Lawrence, who had been farming the Royal Slope for more than 40 years at time. Together, they launched Gård Vintners in 2006, which is now solely owned and operated by Josh and Lisa.

Josh and Lisa raise two daughters and a son on the farm in Royal City. Josh oversees operations at Gård Vintners, as well as their estate Lawrence Vineyards and other farm operations, including apple orchards, cherry orchards, and a variety of other crops, such as wheat, hay and dried beans, and various other agricultural endeavors. Lisa oversees operations at the tasting rooms, as well as sales and marketing for Gård Vintners. The couple also owns Desert Wind Winery in Prosser, Wash., in partnership with friends Tom and Tami Merkle.

MATÍAS KÚSULAS
Winemaker & Viticulturist

A Chilean with Greek roots, Matías was a Marine officer and Naval Engineer in Chile for more than seven years when he realized that it was time to change the course of his career: In 2005, he started studying Agricultural Engineering at the University of Chile, where he graduated with distinction and a major in Viticulture and Enology. He worked in Chile for a few years and in 2011 he decided to start traveling the world on a quest to learn new wine-making techniques. After several harvests in Oceania, Europe and Africa, he settled down in France, to do his post degrees at the Universities of Bordeaux and Montpellier. He also performed for two years as a Maître de Chai for one of the oldest and most reputable wineries in Condrieu and Côte-Rôtie.

After years of traveling and over 15 harvests, he came to the United States and joined Gård Vintners/Lawrence Vineyards as a Production Winemaker and Viticulturist, and is currently head winemaker for Gård Vintners, Desert Wind Winery, Valo Cellars, and his own label, Massalto. In his spare time he likes to jump out of planes and is a Judo Black Belt.