From Skiing the Streets to the Vineyard

Words by Ian Greenwood / Photos by Espen Thomassen and Brady Perron

Forster Meeks stood atop a tank of glistening grapes and pungent, fermenting wine. He was 18—fresh out of high school—and working his first fall wine harvest at Penner-Ash, an Oregon-based winery co-founded by the trailblazing Lynn Penner-Ash. The summer prior, he lived the start of a years-spanning ski bum fantasy, working nights at Timberline Lodge, Oregon, and skiing the Palmer Snowfield during sun-baked afternoons. Wine harvesting presented an opportunity to stack cash before winter started.

Despite Meeks' inexperience, Penner-Ash agreed to let him perform a pump-over, which involves using a hose to pump fermenting wine over the grapes floating at the top of the tank. Mid-way through the pump-over, Penner-Ash, who was standing below the tank, called Meeks' name, making him think he was doing something wrong. Meeks glanced down and accidentally jostled the hose, resulting in a slapstick-tier gaffe as Penner-Ash got soaked with fermenting wine. Unsurprisingly, Meeks doubted he'd return for another harvest season—the work involved brutally long hours, and he'd sprayed a prominent winemaker—but over a decade later, he's committed to expanding the offerings of his very own wine brand: Model Citizen Wines.

Writing for Newschoolers eight years ago , Matt Sklar called Meeks the "quintessential ski bum" before extolling his relentless work ethic on and off the slopes. When that article dropped, Meeks was in his early 20s. He's now 31 and showing no signs of slowing down. During the intervening years, Meeks has tirelessly stacked an enormous video catalog focusing on his sub-discipline of choice—street skiing—culminating in the latest titular release from ON3P, ON3P 6 .

For many high caliber skiers, 30 is the age where momentum falters. Injuries, adult obligations, dwindling motivation levels—life often finds a way to sideline those who spend their 20s skiing hundreds of days during the winter. But for Meeks, giving up on skiing isn't and has never been an option. "I worked so hard to get to the level I'm at with skiing, and I owe it to myself to actualize that talent," he said. "I just have a fire burning inside of me to put out great [video] parts and make contributions to skiing. I just love it."

That doesn't mean Meeks isn't forward-thinking. Ski bumming and growing career-wise don't have to be mutually exclusive. Those challenging days at Penner-Ash opened a new door for him, and despite swearing off future winemaking gigs, Meeks found himself working the Napa Valley, California, harvest the next fall.

These jobs initially provided steady pre-season cash—he called them his "off-season hustle"—but Meeks came to realize that, as the years passed, his wine acumen was expanding: "What kept drawing me back to wine was continuing to build my wine knowledge, build my resume, with the expectation that this was going to be a career path that I took after skiing."

A knee injury forced Meeks to temporarily step away from skiing in 2020. Barred from wine production and skiing—he was crutches-bound for around 12 weeks—Meeks took up wine sales, first in Hood River, Oregon, then in Park City, Utah, at Old Town Cellars, a wine producer and bar that bulk-purchased West Coast wine for blending and bottling in-house. The experience further cemented his understanding of the wine business, but he was eager to return to what he knew: fall grape harvests and skiing.

Then, Meeks blew his knee again and was forced to take another winter off. The back-to-back recovery periods proved depressing, and he wondered if his ski career was finally over. While Meeks recovered and eventually returned to snow, the downtime offered moments of introspection. “I knew I needed something in my life that wasn’t skiing,” he explained in an interview with the Two Planker Podcast .

The promise of greater involvement in winemaking provided a new channel for Meeks’ energy. The owner of Old Town Cellars wanted to release their first Napa Valley-sourced wine and suggested Meeks invest in the project. Meeks agreed, putting money towards the Napa Valley wine and blending and bottling it. He went on to invest in several more wines through Old Town Cellars. "Seeing how they were received gave me the confidence that I could do my own thing," he said.

Bolstered by his investments with Old Town Cellars, Meeks began crafting two Pét-nats (a form of sparkling wine that uses ancient production techniques) and a red blend in the summer of 2021. The Pét-nats, which will soon be replaced with an updated roster, would become the first releases under his own banner, Model Citizen Wines .

Meeks eventually enlisted the help of Abner Wyman, an old friend and fellow budding winemaker. The pair first met when Meeks journeyed to Utah after his debut grape harvest. There, Meeks plunged into a park and street skiing culture incubator, which, unlike his winemaking endeavors, was more on the lite beer end of the classy spectrum.

Meeks and Wyman lived in adjacent Salt Lake City houses occupied by numerous young freeskiing up-and-comers. They connected through mutual friends, and regularly appeared in videos from The Hood Crew, a group of skiers known for releasing home-video style edits that illuminated the often debaucherous ski bum experience. The Hood Crew’s videos have since become cult-classics among freeskiing’s core audience. "That was raw skiing, you know? That was like ski bum s**t," Meeks said.

Wyman, known as "Wabs," is relentlessly high-spirited, his outsized personality and iconic on-snow style making him a prominent figure in freeskiing's underground scene. His presence in ski media create the sense that he cares about enjoying himself first and foremost—a fact he confirmed: "It's always about having fun."

When Wyman suddenly lost a close family member, Meeks called him every day to check in on him and see how he was doing. "I was like, 'Man, this guy's epic.' And then we ended up going on some pretty sick adventures after that when we got super close," Wyman said. “He's been my best friend pretty much since then.”

The following summer, Meeks set Wyman up with a coveted job operating snowcats at Timberline Lodge along with a fall wine harvesting gig, catapulting Wyman into the winemaking space. Since then, Wyman has caught the winemaking bug and moved to Napa Valley full-time to work as a cellar master at a local winery. Unlike Meeks, he's mostly stepped away from skiing.

Meeks believes Model Citizen is just now hitting its stride as its catalog of wines expands. Its early Pét-nats offerings could be produced and released quickly, whereas other types of wines have to age in barrels for a year or more. "We're finally releasing wines from 2022," Meeks said, noting that he views the Pét-nats as "fun summer drinking wines" rather than the "premier wines in the Model Citizen lineup." Meeks is more inspired by Pinot Noirs, whereas Wyman—now officially a partner in Model Citizen—prefers to make Sauvignon Blancs and Cabernets. Model Citizen's current lineup includes a Pinot Noir alongside two soon-to-be-released wines: a red blend and a Sauvignon Blanc (by the time you're reading this, those wines may have already dropped).

Wyman and Meeks make every wine in their catalog in a Napa Valley processing facility shared with other winemakers—called a "custom crush" in winemaking lingo. "We hand bottle it and hand label it, so it's all done by hand," said Wyman. "No robots." The hands-on approach has forced Wyman and Meeks to sometimes juggle dueling obligations. Wyman recalled performing pump-overs for Model Citizen's fermenting wines after working a 12-plus hour shift at his winery day job. Still, true to character, he didn't seem particularly phased: "I'm usually pretty fired up.”

The duo's friendship now spans two distinct worlds. Napa Valley is about as far as you can get from a skier-stuffed Salt Lake City party house that smells like stale beer, although the pair's proven adaptable. Outside of work, Wyman’s picked up an activity popular in the Valley: golf. Meeks continues to ski, and, when the snow melts, he ditches his baggy winter clothes to work in wine sales alongside his commitments with Model Citizen (he, too, is an avid golfer). "For seven months of the year, I'm in a button-down, dress shoes, and slacks," Meeks said. "And, you know, using a much better vocabulary than I do when I'm out on a street skiing trip."

Despite the surface-level differences, parallels to skiing remain among the grapes. Wyman, who frequently released neatly edited ski edits in his past life, found similar creative satisfaction in winemaking. “Once you start playing around with it, it’s like the same thing as editing a video,” he said. Another, more direct crossover between the pair's winemaking endeavors and skiing exists in Brady Perron, a filmmaker known for working alongside skiers Phil Casabon, Jossi Wells, and Jake Mageau. In 2022, Perron visited Meeks with Mageau in tow. During the trip, Perron captured footage of Mageau skiing the Utah streets shortly before they sat down with Meeks for a tasting session of Model Citizen's wines.

One year later, Meeks suggested Perron help craft the fledgling brand's visual identity through label design and videography. Perron agreed. So far, he’s designed multiple labels for Model Citizen, including the Pinot Noir. That label features a record player highlighted by some in-camera long exposure trickery—it's simple, satisfying, and, to fans of Perron's videography, pleasantly familiar. Perron compared the label design process to producing thumbnails for his videos and aims to create something that, he says, is "maybe fresh and not too typical."

You've likely heard the wine fanatics in your life talk about "pairings." Cabernet Sauvignon and steak. Chardonnay and grilled chicken. The wine completes the meal, and the meal completes the wine. Model Citizen is a bit like that. At numerous junctures in the label's history, skiing—or its mourned absence—was there, fastening two friends together and opening fresh, creative avenues.

As summer arrives, Meeks is thinking about what Model Citizen could become: higher outputs, national wine distribution deals, and new variations. Still, it's evident that whatever the future holds, Meeks is already doing what fills his glass. "I would like to just continue to make wine with Abner, you know, for the rest of my life," he said.