and shouting to each other, grapes sloshing into the totes, tractors chugging back and forth. Each picker had two plastic five-gallon pails, and each time he emptied them into the wooden tote at the end of the row the contractor gave him a ticket to turn in for pay. The pickers ran, even with full pails, shouting their numbers to the contractor, stuffing their tickets into their pants, hustling back to pick. The contractor barked instructions and warnings (in Spanish): “Don’t pick so many leaves! Fill your buckets to the top! Pick the whole vine! You’re leaving too many clusters on the back side!” The pickers were mostly men, but some women came, and a few brought children who hung around with their parents. Pickers sometimes missed whole vines or skipped clusters that were hard to reach. I didn’t want to waste a single grape of our first vintage and walked up and down the rows with a bucket picking the fruit they had overlooked.
We tried to sort the grapes as they went into the totes, taking out the leaves and any clusters that looked underripe or diseased. Most of the time I stood at the totes with the contractor to monitor the picking. Ted Wirfs brought his tractor to help our vineyard foreman, Wayne, lay out the totes in the morning, and then ferry them to the winery as they were filled. Nik and Alex, then six and three, were in on the excitement; I had hired a babysitter to be with them so they could participate in our first vintage. Clad in rubber boots, blue jean jackets, and baseball caps, they watched big-eyed.
One by one, over the course of the month, the other blocks of grapes ripened too. The dark purple, small-clustered Pinot Noir grapes went directly from the stemmer-crusher into large, open-topped wooden vats to ferment. Three times a day, Bob McRitchie, our wine-maker, and Bill took turns standing on a wooden plank laid across the top of the open fermenter, to punch down the cap of grape skins that had risen to the top. To do this they had created a tool—an inverted dog dish attached to a long piece of PVC pipe.
When fermentation was complete, they pumped the Pinot Noir back into the press and pressed the juice off the skins. Then the young wine went into small French oak barrels for aging.
We finished harvesting our Chardonnay and Riesling, the last of the grapes, on October 22. By then we were starting the picking day bundled up against the cold. The fall rains were threatening to settle in for the duration. But the grapes for our first vintage were safely in.
Deciding what to call our new winery turned out to be surprising difficult. I was certain there was a perfect name that would call out to customers in wine shops and make them want to grab our bottles off the shelf. We just had to will that name into our consciousness. We thought of names that highlighted local towns, the hillsides, the vines, the river, the creeks. Nothing had the right magic. I concluded we simply weren’t creative enough. The marketing consultant Bill had hired consoled us. This winery was our baby, he said. Giving it our family names would let potential customers know that real people were involved. “Remember that slogan for lacy women’s bras? ‘Behind every Olga, there’s an Olga’? Put your names on the line—both your names, since you’re equal partners.”
So Sokol Blosser it was. After all, we told ourselves, Orville Redenbacher, the popcorn king, and Smucker’s, the jam people, had used their odd family names. That didn’t keep them from being successful. We could do it too. Bill’s friends teased him about putting my name first, but it was the right marketing decision. We were going to use the initials SB as part of our winery logo.
Once we had our name, we engaged a Portland graphic artist, Clyde Van Cleave, whose work we liked, to design a wine label for us, which we used, with only color modifications, for the next twenty years. The label was about three inches by three inches, with a rounded top that arched over the SB logo. Later, the black and brown lettering on textured beige paper seemed drab, but at the time we thought it fresh and exciting.
Located on a busy state highway, we had great visitor potential. We decided to build a tasting room, although no other Oregon winery had more than a converted garage for the public to visit. Our marketing consultant advised us that a tasting room would be an indispensable public-relations tool as well as a retail sales opportunity. It turned out to be one of the best pieces of advice we received.
A mutual friend introduced us to John Storrs, a Portland architect noted for his imagination and ability to design for the natural setting. John had designed several Oregon landmarks, the best known of which was Salishan Lodge, a resort on the coast that had become an instant mid-twentieth-century architectural classic. Tall, boisterous, and charismatic, John always dominated the space he was in. “Blueprints are just a formality,” he declared. He designed as he built. We enjoyed him and watched as he wandered around changing things after construction had begun—an opening here, a window there. He drove the builders crazy with his unconventional style. They grew to dread his visits, as they knew he would find something he wanted redone. But the result was better for it.
Our first wine label, with the SB logo and our winery name front and center. An exciting moment to see it on a bottle of our first Pinot Noir vintage.
In the summer of 1978, Sokol Blosser opened the first Oregon tasting room designed specifically for that purpose. The gray stucco building hugged the knoll and coordinated well with the gray concrete winery building. The existing large oak and maple trees and landscaping with native plants provided color and contrast. On a clear day, Mount Hood loomed majestically, perfectly centered in a large east-facing window. Besides a tasting area, we had a small kitchen, a tiny one-person office, and the requisite two bathrooms. The back door opened to a breezeway that connected the tasting room with the winery.
I ran the tasting room on weekends for the first few years. Behind me on the wall is a framed needlepoint my mother did for me. Underneath that are our first medals from wine competitions.
There was another door in the main tasting area, six feet off the ground, anticipating the big deck we wanted but couldn’t afford. That door remained nailed shut for the next twenty years until, in the late 1990s, the deck was finally added.
Once we had the tasting room, the challenge was to get people to visit on weekends, when we were open. Wine touring in Oregon was not yet in vogue. We sent out mailers to friends and friends-of-friends and threw a big party. Slowly the word spread. I spent weekends behind the bar welcoming people and pouring free tastes that we hoped would lead to sales. It was months before we could hire any help and years before we could be open more than weekends. The kids were always with us. During cherry season the first year, seven-year-old Nik demonstrated his entrepreneurial skills by showing up with fresh cherries from our orchard to sell to customers. Taking his cue from the way we worked the tasting room, he offered free tastes. He never failed to sell out.
THE EARLY WINEGROWERS IN the Willamette Valley were a close-knit group. We shared information and cooperated to chart a course for the new wine industry. This willingness to work together for the good of the whole became a distinguishing feature of Oregon winegrowers from the start. We understood our actions would shape the future and thought hard about what we wanted the Oregon wine industry to look like.
The whole industry, which was ten to twelve people in the early years, met regularly in each other’s living rooms, sitting around on mismatched thrift store furniture, a decor which we called “Contemporary St. Vincent de Paul.” First, we shared news of hot deals on equipment or supplies. Then, after passing along the address of a farmer who had stakes, wire, or used equipment for sale, we talked about what legislation we might need to protect our fledgling industry. Not every session ended in consensus, but we kept meeting until we reached it.
One issue with lasting effect was tightening
