researching grape clones, trellis systems, cultivation methods, propagation systems, and the like. He always had a hearty laugh and welcomed everyone into the industry, just as he had Susan and me. Dave Lett was something of a hermit, not really liking committee work or lobbying, but he was deadly effective in marketing and was an early supporter of tough labeling standards and land use laws. Dave Adelsheim was one of the easiest possible people to work with and had a keen perception of what was needed to develop a lasting industry, from labeling laws, to the grape tax, to marketing programs, to being a key player in the establishment of the International Pinot Noir Celebration. When we needed an effective diplomat to solve a knotty problem, Adelsheim was the man.
Bill Blosser
Cofounder, Sokol Blosser Winery
Like most of the other couples, neither Bill nor I had any business experience. We hadn’t even taken a business class in college. That didn’t stop us; we could learn. No tradition of fine winemaking in Oregon? We would create one. We knew we could lose everything, but none of us had much, so that was no deal killer. Our college professors had touted a liberal-arts education as training for life—we could do anything with it. Planting wine grapes in Oregon represented a risk most easily made by people in their twenties, an age when optimism has not yet been tempered by experience.
To prove we were not entirely crazy, we would point to the master’s thesis Chuck Coury had written at the University of California, Davis, in which he showed that the climate of the Willamette Valley was virtually identical to that of Burgundy, whose Pinot Noir wines were world-renowned.
Bill and I wanted be part of this great Oregon experiment of growing Pinot Noir, the Burgundian red grape with a reputation for being difficult. We focused on planting a vineyard. Starting a winery seemed so far in the future, we never talked about it. The immediate challenge before us would be figuring out to how grow wine grapes in this new, untested region. If we succeeded, it would take all of our smarts as well as our physical strength and stamina.
After looking at possible vineyard sites in the hills of the northern Willamette Valley, we found what seemed the perfect piece of land in the Dundee Hills, about thirty miles southwest of Portland. The area, known for its giant, sweet Brooks prune plums and hazelnuts, is a series of gentle hills ranging from three hundred to a thousand feet in elevation. Our eighteen acres, at the five-hundred-foot level, had been an orchard, destroyed by the Columbus Day Storm, a powerful windstorm famous for its devastation. The old prune trees sprawled across the land in haphazard fashion, few still upright. Local lore was full of stories of the damage and death caused by that tempest, which we assumed had happened recently because it was such a common point of reference for local farmers. We were shocked to learn that it had occurred in October 1962, almost a decade earlier. The stories told with so much immediacy showed the long-term impact of weather on a farming community. We weren’t deterred. Perhaps because we hadn’t lived through its ferocity, the storm seemed a remote, one-time event.
The old orchard had been waiting for us, the downed trees obscured by a labyrinth of blackberry vines and common vetch that had blanketed the hillside over the years. Knowing that fruit trees had once flourished, and that Dave and Diana Lett’s new vineyard was just down the road, cinched our decision to buy the land. Even with our limited knowledge, we knew that the presence of an orchard meant the hillsides would be frost-free in early spring when those trees blossomed and thus would be safe for grapes, which leafed out at the same time. We bought the land for eight hundred dollars an acre and hired a local farmer to clear it. It had been just five months since the subject of a vineyard had first come up.
From the beginning, the vineyard was Bill’s baby. I mirrored his excitement and didn’t want to disappoint him, but it was years before I experienced the passion that he felt from the start. I didn’t flinch at the challenge, the commitment, or the money we put into the project. But it took time for me to feel that it was a genuine partnership.
Our rented house in southwest Portland, so far from our property, became increasingly inconvenient. With Bill teaching at Portland State University, we had only weekends to work the land. We found a farmhouse to rent about a mile from our property, and our family—Bill and me, baby Nik, and our cats, Cadwallader (Caddie) and Tigger, moved there in May 1971. The house had a long, narrow front yard ideal for rooting grape cuttings in nursery rows. The small bushy plants would then be planted as dormant rootings the following spring.
California, with its nascent wine industry, was then the only source for wine grapes, so when Bill visited his folks in Oakland, he and his dad drove to Wente Vineyards in Livermore, hoping to buy some of Karl Wente’s certified, virus-free Chardonnay cuttings. Bill was thrilled when Karl himself greeted them warmly in his small office. “Gonna grow grapes in Oregon, eh?” he said. “Great idea. I always wondered why no one was trying the cool-climate grapes farther north. I think you have a chance to make some great wines up there.” These words of encouragement from a successful third-generation winegrower further motivated Bill. He and his dad returned home with cuttings of all the varieties we thought might grow in our cool climate—Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Riesling, and Müller-Thurgau (a cousin of Riesling). Bill always remembered Karl Wente’s welcome and encouragement, but never saw him again. The great man died suddenly at age forty-nine, six years later.
The big white farmhouse we rented sat beside the old state highway, a picture-book place with its tall, shady trees along the front and old, untended cherry and prune orchards along the sides and back. But any romantic notions we had about country living quickly dissipated. From across the narrow road, one of the area’s major turkey farms assaulted every one of our senses from the day we moved in. Hundreds of white turkeys lined up at the fence to clamor at us, red jowls bobbing and beady eyes staring. From time to time huge trucks went by carrying stacks of large cages crowded with turkeys. White feathers floated to the ground long after they had passed. The odor of turkey manure, ranging from pungent to gagging, depending on the heat and wind direction, maintained a constant presence. The gentle breeze that cooled me while I worked in the vegetable garden also enveloped me in the rank smell of turkey.
Bill and I had often talked about what fun it would be to buy an old farmhouse and fix it up. Realizing what it would take to make our rented farmhouse comfortable ended that fantasy. We were told that our house, like a number of others in the valley, was the work of some barn builders who came through in the early 1900s. They built houses the way they constructed barns—framing studs set more than two feet apart, little attention to detail, no insulation. My homemade cotton curtains fluttered in the wind even with the windows closed, and the smell of turkey manure leaked in through the cracks. Over the years, residents had added sections to the original house, so that by the time we moved in, what had once been an animal shed in the back had become part of the house.
The cats roamed freely through the abandoned orchards, sleeping by day, hunting by night, and wreaking havoc on the mouse and gopher population. After Tigger was run over one gruesome night, Caddie did the work of two. She was a fearsome hunter and ate most of her prey outside, leaving the front teeth, whiskers, and large intestine on the doormat to show us her prowess. But occasionally she thought they’d taste better inside; one night she leapt up and came flying through the open window above the head of our bed. I opened my eyes in time to see Caddie, clutching a giant gopher in her mouth, pass over me, inches from my face. I listened to her chewing her prize for a few minutes, and then turned over and went back to sleep, making a mental note to watch where I stepped in the morning.
For the first few months, until the cats pared down the population, the mice were the most active inhabitants of our house. I learned to put my feet in my slippers slowly after once feeling a living fur ball cowering in the toe. When my mother visited from Wisconsin, I sat with her at the kitchen table trying to keep her engaged in conversation so she wouldn’t see the mice scampering across the floor. She turned and saw them, of course, as soon as I stopped talking to take a breath. They only reinforced her belief that Bill and I were living in
