Vivian Perry - Winemakers of the Willamette Valley: Pioneering Vintners from Oregons Wine Country

Published by American Palate

A Division of The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2013 by Vivian Perry and John Vincent

All rights reserved

Cover image: Cristom Vineyards. Courtesy of John DAnna; harvesting Pinot noir grapes. Courtesy of Polara Studio.

Illustrations by Sarah Schlesinger.

First published 2013

e-book edition 2013

ISBN 978.1.61423.897.3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Perry, Vivian (Journalist)

Winemakers of the Willamette Valley : pioneering vintners from Oregons wine country / Vivian Perry and John Vincent ; illustrations by Sarah Schlesinger.

pages cm.

Includes index.

print edition ISBN 978-1-60949-676-0 (paperback)

1. Vintners--Oregon--Willamette River Valley--Biography. 2. Wine and wine making--Oregon--Willamette River Valley. 3. Willamette River Valley (Or.)--Biography. 4. Willamette River Valley (Or.)--Social life and customs. I. Vincent, John (John Clark) II. Title.

TP547.A1P37 2013

663.20922--dc23

[B]

2013035213

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the authors or The History Press. The authors and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

In memory of Forrest Klaffke.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

This book is about passionthat key ingredient that rewards idealists even when financial rewards arent there. And yet it takes a perspective that is unique from other books about Oregon winemakers; indeed, it similarly focuses on passionate souls vital to the industry, but of a current generation rather than those who began it all, as other books have done. I call these subjects the Validation Generation because they are the ones required to validate the worth of what we did earlier. They nod to us by bringing a passion and drive equal to our own to continuing and improving what we began. These are the ones to whom the baton has been passed.

They have the same impetuous, less-than-rational need to be up to your elbows in grapes at harvest, bear crushing debt on your shoulders, play road warrior marketing wines on back roads of New Jersey you never thought were there and pour wine into plastic cups that busy buyers will never go back to taste. A stubborn will to succeed lives with these modern pioneers, as much as it drove David and Diana Lett unpacking bare rooted grape plants, Dick Erath repairing equipment on his kitchen table or David Adelsheim inviting a filmmaker to shoot in his vineyard for a tale about growing together grapes and a smokable, herbal cash crop in the 1970s. The future of our wine community lives with them, whether second-generation passionistas proudly joining a life they had every right to abandon, growing up usually playing second fiddle to wine in one way or another; professionals hired to put rigor and additional insights into wineries, drinking the Koolaid, embracing their job like a lover and many times spinning off brands of their own; or wide-eyed idealists young and old coming into the wine community with no credentials except conviction, being ready to redo what pioneers did three or four decades before, with a slightly easier path laid out before them but with a lot farther to fall if they failed.

This is a book of potential, both realized and anticipated. And that is so perfect.

My face shows up in here, but only to introduce my daughter, who is a stereotypical second-generation winemakerborn in the same year as my first vineyard, Ridgecrest; a scientist, but better trained than her father both academically and on-the-job; and facing an equal but altogether different set of obstacles, such as how to get the old man out of the way.

Others, like Lynn Penner-Ash, are young enough to be second generation but formative enough to be a pioneer, leading a vanguard of younger female winemakers into the harvest fray. Of course, that said, stalwart pioneers like Pat Campbell, Diana Lett and Nancy Ponzi were talented, wit-endowed, gifted tasters and as critical to the Oregon wine community as any of the fuzzy-faced male pioneers sucking it up for photos at a holiday eventyouve seen the photos! No one has a better palate than Pat Campbell, no one had more iconic labels crafted than those Ginny Adelsheim executed, no one was a better strategist and vineyard manager in the first wave than Susan Sokol Blosser, no one has a better laugh than Patty Green, and on and on.

I could do an I remember excursion of things at this point, like early Steamboat Winemaker Conferences, especially the one where I bared my soul with early highly technical experiments only to be brought down a rung or two when the experimental design rigor was lost and meant less than the final wine quality; or of working early harvests in others cellars like Amity, Elk Cove and Erath; or speaking of Dick Erath, whom I admire greatly and with whom I have in common two metal hips, each with the ability to set airport security alarms caterwauling, and who gave the advice when I was viticulturally pubescent and asking some basics about grape plants to go ask the person you did buy them from, if you didnt buy them from me.

Or what about Dave Adelsheim, similarly real-world and to the point, in one of the first of a million consultations or collaborations to come, after I asked how best to sell my first vintages grapes, advising me to use my wifes contacts since she was a wine writer rather than playing independent and idealistic (are you getting a sense of how I was educated in the ways of the world?); or those no longer with us, like the fastest wit and curmudgeon David Lett, the real pioneer and defender of land use, and the equally grumpy at times (not one to suffer fools gladly) and entrepreneurial, as well as yet not made for business, Charles Coury, helping catalyze both Oregon wine and micro-brewing industries; or Dick Ponzi, who made a very successful business in both arenas, equally navigating fine Pinot noir as our first can do no wrong winemaker of the 80s and 90s and IPAs with Bridgeport before he sold it and then restaurants afterward in both brewery and in wine country, and still hes active lobbying the legislature, as we waded forward in the political swamp this spring to do sensible things to make industries hum.

And how about the place where we all were when we finally decided to do AVAs inside the Willamette Valley after several abortive meetings where we decided not to risk potential dissension in our classically collaborative commune of friends; or where we were when we stopped visiting cities begging people to taste our wine and understand our beauty and, instead, dreamed up OPC in the heads of the Pat Dudleys and David Adelsheims, with me there admiring that process of rich teamwork in which you cant remember and dont care which idea was whose, an innovation that Pied Pipered our customers to come to us to understand the magic of Oregon some fourteen years ago; or when wine pioneers sold grape plants to make ends meet; or when there was no lending by banks to vineyards and wineries, so you were forced to maintain an outside job like Dr. Joe Campbell did or were forced to invite friends and family to enjoy the dream by investing some money in your dream (I did both for sixteen and twenty years, respectively); or even how we all invited world-traveling young winemakers to join us at least for harvest, with some to stay for a decade or more, becoming a part of our family, and also invited friends just starting to begin their winery inside ours (weve had more than thirty harvest interns just from New Zealand and more than ten wine brands begin in our house).