[wind whooshing]
[birds chirping] [bright hopeful music] NARRATOR: It's just after dawn
on a late October morning. Wine growers are harvesting their crops on Willamette Valley hillsides. It's like the culmination of all that, everything you've been
doing all through the year now finally is, you're rewarded
in just a short few days. It's always magic when
these factors come together. The coolest summer that
we've had in 50 years, one of the wettest. And here we are standing at
the end of October surrounded by just this beautiful, ripe,
healthy fruit and grapes. It's wonderful. MAN: It's Oregon. That's what keeps it exciting. I mean, after all these vintages,
every year it's different. NARRATOR: Less than 50 years ago, no vineyards graced the
landscape of this valley. WOMAN: A little Pinot noir for you. NARRATOR: And fine
Oregon wine didn't exist. Today, Oregon is the toast of the world. We enjoy wine, we enjoy food, and most of all we enjoy Oregon. NARRATOR: And a delicate
wine called Pinot noir is the belle of the ball. It takes you places you
never knew were there. I think some people go to
Cab, they go to Zinfandel, they go to many different wines, but they ultimately come back
to the elegance of Pinot. [woman speaking in foreign language] [bright jazzy music] NARRATOR: Back in the 1960s, Pinot noir was a wine most
Americans hadn't heard of, didn't buy, and couldn't
pronounce, either. DIANA: The wine and the food awareness in this country was just beginning. Here we go. And I think we were just
at exactly the right place at exactly the right time, and maybe just a little bit ahead. NARRATOR: They were a band of dreamers. We were the underdogs, and the underdogs sort of stick together. NARRATOR: Determined to make
an elegant, old-world wine where few dared try. The climate is risky here
for growing Pinot noir, but it's also the reason for being here. David Lett and Coury had been told the rain would wash them out, they would grow fungus between their toes, and it would rot their clothes off, and that there was no way in hell they were gonna grow good grapes up here. We were experimenting to see if we could create an industry. We had no idea where it was gonna go. NARRATOR: The experiment would take them on a journey few could imagine. You hit doors that slammed in your face. We thought we could take the
product and show it to people and convince them that this
is the holy grail right here. We were on a crusade to
be known for quality. NARRATOR: It was a journey
that would change Oregon and resonate around the world. A lot of things happened
in the '60s and '70s that all came together
that made this possible. If it hadn't happened,
we wouldn't be here. My mom likes to say that
there was Paris in the '20s and there was McMinnville
in the '70s. [laughs] And so there was definitely a feeling here that there was something cool afoot. [gentle music] [birds chirping] [bright triumphant music] [gentle music] [gentle music] NARRATOR: Funding for "Oregon
Experience" is provided by the James F. & Marion
L. Miller Foundation, the Oregon Cultural Trust
and viewers like you. Additional support
provided by Kay Kitagawa and Andy Johnson-Laird. Thank you. [pensive music] NARRATOR: In 1979, a
French gourmet magazine sponsored a wine Olympics in Paris. A 1975 Pinot noir from a
small upstart winery in Oregon placed in the top 10 with a grape that claimed its native
home as Burgundy, France. The French were stunned
and demanded a rematch. And to our delight, the Eyrie Vineyards '75
Pinot noir came in second to a 1959 Chambolle-Musigny from Drouhin. The news hit the press, and
it was international coverage of this little Oregon winery
that had scored so well, and then "The New York
Times" picked up the story and AP picked up the story. My parents were working
very much in obscurity, but I can remember the general
feeling of joy [laughs] at just this amazing sort
of flash of exposure. DIANA: There were many more steps to take, but that was our first
international recognition that what we were doing here in Oregon was good and made sense. It certainly made us. But it certainly helped
Oregon, because after 1980, things really started
happening in this valley. [gentle music] NARRATOR: Growing grapes
in Oregon dates back to the time the territory
was first settled. Pioneer Peter Britt, for example, grew wine grapes in the
Rogue Valley in the 1850s. And by the turn of the century, Ernst Reuter was operating
the family winery in Washington County. But by 1919, Prohibition
had crushed wine production across the state. After its repeal in the early '30s, many so-called farmers' wineries sprouted, mostly producing fruit and berry wines. But with limited demand, only
a few remained in business. My parents, who came through Prohibition, rarely drank wine. I mean, Americans rarely drank wine. We'd lost a generation of wine drinkers and there was no continuity. NARRATOR: The fizzled wine
industry had to start over. With its mild climate,
California took the lead, producing inexpensive jug wines. But a new breed of winemaking pioneers
was on its way to Oregon. To be in this business, and
especially at that point, you have to be a dreamer, because there are a lot
of reasons not to do this. NARRATOR: In 1961, a
young Californian arrived in Southern Oregon's Umpqua Valley looking for a cooler climate to
experiment with Vitis vinifera, the fine wine grapes of Europe. Hillcrest, where the first
Pinot noir was planted in Oregon, was founded by the gentleman that's considered father of the Oregon wine
industry, Richard Sommer. Richard Sommer had earned
a degree in agronomy at the University of California at Davis, America's premier school for winemakers. While there, he'd been warned
that Oregon was too cold and wet for vinifera to flourish. DYSON: Richard listened
to what people said, but Richard did what Richard wanted to do. And I think it's very fair to say people thought of Richard as crazy. NARRATOR: Over the years,
Sommer planted 35 varieties, but mostly Riesling,
Cabernet, and Pinot noir. And he tended his vines with loving care. DYSON: Richard was a
bachelor his entire life, but he was a man that
looked at vines and wines as his children, literally, and he referred to them as his children. And there's kind of a point at which you fall into wine enough that it's a very spiritual thing, and that's hard for many
people to understand, and how it can change people's lives. NARRATOR: He was called
eccentric, quirky, and brilliant, and the local folks adored him. Sommer released his first wine,
a white Riesling, in 1963. Four years later, he
unveiled another milestone, Oregon's first commercially
bottled Pinot noir. DYSON: And Richard in many
ways captured many firsts from the Pinot noir which
he's most respected for. First to plant and first to bottle, as well as the first stainless
steel tanks in Oregon. Hillcrest has been making
fine wine, grape wine, consistently longer than
anybody else in the state. NARRATOR: In 1961, the year that Richard Sommer founded Hillcrest, David Lett had just graduated
from the University of Utah, where he'd studied philosophy and pre-med. He'd gone to San Francisco
to apply to dental school. And while he was there, he decided to take a little side trip out to the Napa Valley. And he didn't know anything about wine. You know, he grew up in
Chicago and Salt Lake City, so not too much about wine. And he saw a young man out in
the courtyard of this winery, rolling a barrel around,
and he stopped and talked, and they talked about wine. I used to tease dad that he
got hit by the cosmic brick. You know, he didn't know what it was, he didn't know where it was
coming from, but it got him. He was smitten with the
wine bug immediately. Went home and told his
parents that he thought instead of going to dental college, he would like to work in a winery. And so his parents were kind of shocked. At that time there was no
glamor in being a winemaker. It was sort of like saying, "I want to be a shepherd,"
[laughs] you know. So they said, "Well, as long
as you're gonna this thing, we'd like for you to look into really learning it as a profession." NARRATOR: Lett enrolled at UC Davis, where he studied viticulture and enology, the science of grape
growing and winemaking, earning his second degree. I had a professor there who said one day there's no climate in California
cool enough for Pinot noir. And I had discovered Pinot
noir at Davis, and I loved it. So I started doing research
at the Davis Library on various places in the world where Pinot noir might do better. One of them was the Willamette Valley. The others were Northern Portugal and South Island of New Zealand, where nothing was going on then, either. NARRATOR: Eager to learn more, Lett spent the next
year in Northern Europe. There the winemakers believed that Pinot noir produces the finest fruit when the grapes struggle to
ripen in a difficult climate. Lett returned with a decision. He wanted to grow Pinot noir and he had become convinced
that the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon was the place in the United States to do this. NARRATOR: The Willamette Valley lies at about the same latitude
as Burgundy, France. The valley has long and warm summer days. But the nights are cool,
allowing grapes like Pinot to ripen slowly so they peak
in flavor and complexity at the very end of the growing season instead of burning out
quickly in warmer climates. But in the valley, heavy autumn rains can threaten the grapes' steady march to maturity. If the season is too cold and wet, the grapes will fail to fully
ripen or rot on the vine. [gentle music] When I first came up here, the idea of growing grapes in the Willamette Valley was absurd. It was just a theory. And it was a huge gamble. But it was an educated one. We have a file folder about this thick with weather records
going all the way back to the late 1940s, and so he was very clearly
reading and researching. If I know my dad, he didn't
come here 'cause it was easier. He came here 'cause he
thought it was better. NARRATOR: David Lett
wasted no time gathering about 3,000 baby grape vines from UC Davis and commercial growers, primarily Pinot noir,
Chardonnay, and Pinot gris, loaded the cuttings into a trailer and shipped them to Oregon. He planted them temporarily to root at a friend's place in Corvallis. This is David's journal from 1965-66 when he was first getting
started here in Oregon. On February the 13th he says, "Slowly I am learning to be a farmer. I hope I don't lose all my cuttings while I'm waiting to
get them in the ground and all my money while
I'm waiting for a job. The process is slower than I had thought. The ditches are filled with
about five inches of loose soil, which is wet and muddy. Rain came heavily Friday
night, Saturday, and Sunday. Monday was again clear, and
the planting is complete. 1st of March, 1965." And it was a beautiful warm day. I asked him, "What wine did you use to christen your grape cuttings?" And he said, "I'm sure it was a bottle of very good Burgundy." [gentle music] NARRATOR: To pay the bills, Lett landed a day job
selling college textbooks while he searched for
his ideal grape land. The red hills of Dundee, when I first came here, I avoided. The subdivisions were beginning to creep into Dundee even then. And this place came up for sale
and it was just too perfect. [bright music] NARRATOR: About the same time David found his perfect property, he and his future wife found each other on an out-of-state business trip. I didn't know enough about
grapes or Pinot noir or Oregon. I didn't even really
know where Oregon was. But he was so enthusiastic about it. I could feel the determination to do this and the excitement, and he told
me how beautiful Oregon was, and he was a really good salesman. And I got a rain suit and a
shovel for my wedding present, and we started our honeymoon year by digging out all those
vines down in Corvallis. When David and I were first
planting the vineyard, we noticed that there was a
pair of red-tailed hawks nesting in the top of this fir tree. An eyrie is the nest of a red-tailed hawk. We decided that we would name our vineyard the Eyrie Vineyards. We wanted to honor our
natural relationship with everything that was around us. DAVID: This hill, David Hill, years and years ago had a
wonderful reputation for wines. NARRATOR: By late 1965, David Lett's UC Davis
classmate Charles Coury had purchased the old Reuter Farm to pursue his own interest
in cool climate viticulture. He'd gotten his master's degree
by criticizing the practice of planting all grape varieties everywhere and advocating instead that
growers match the variety with the climate. This climate, this beautiful
Oregon climate of ours, gives a characteristic, distinctive flavor to all our wines. They tend to be lighter,
a little fruitier, more fragrant than wines grown in warmer regions such as California. NARRATOR: Although Coury
was often described as difficult, his insight would help fuel a fledgling industry. He was a visionary, no question. And it kind of spread to the rest of us. In other words, we would be reminded that we were really starting something, and we wanted to make sure that it would be preserved for the future. He inspired me a lot, I think, 'cause he, Chuck was a very creative
sort of thinking guy. But he had a hard time
putting things into practice. NARRATOR: In the mid-1960s, Dick Erath was an electronics
engineer by trade, an avid photographer who'd studied with the great Ansel
Adams, and a home winemaker in his Walnut Creek, California garage. But one taste of a fine 1955
Pinot noir changed his life. It has a silkiness to it and texture. It has elegance. It has many little facets to it, and when they're all
right, it's beautiful. You know, it's just, it's perfect. I went after Pinot noir at that point, and I said, "This is the
one, what I have to do." NARRATOR: His plans took
root in a winemaking class at UC Davis, where he happened
to meet Richard Sommer. So after the class was over, he gave me some wine he'd made from his vineyard in Roseburg, which he planted in 1961. So I couldn't wait to get it home to Walnut Creek to try it out. And soon as I got back, I pulled a cork and poured some wine in a glass,
and it smelled like whiskey because he was using freshly
emptied whiskey barrels from Hood River Distillers
to put his wine into and he didn't bother rinsing them out. So there was a pronounced
whiskey characteristic to the wine. But even behind all that, I could tell there were some
really nice things going on. NARRATOR: The taste lingered, and with Sommer's encouragement, Erath moved north to
the Willamette Valley. He got a job at an electronics
company near Portland. The job at Tektronix afforded me a place to have a day job, and
then while I was there, I spent about 8,000 miles in the family car driving around
looking at potential sites. NARRATOR: In 1968, he sank his savings into 48 acres near Newberg,
planting Pinot noir and several other varieties. Hi there, old buddy. Haven't seen you in a long time. Class reunion! [laughs] This was a walnut orchard when I got here that was heavily damaged
in the Columbus Day storm. And prior to the walnut orchard, they say they grew potatoes
and hops in the old days. It was $500 an acre, and I
thought it was pretty pricey. NARRATOR: To save money
and be close to his vines, Dick and his family moved into
an abandoned logger's cabin. Then he went to work.
So did Mother Nature. In August of 1968, I think
it was the wettest year on record for the month of August. We had about eight inches of rain. At the same time I'm
trying to build a road, and every load of rock
would just disappear. It would sink out of sight. Well, it was very wet, and that does lead to
mud, doesn't it? [laughs] NARRATOR: It was just the beginning. Beetles fond of walnut trees bored into his grape vines instead. And the following winter, the weakened cuttings
snapped during a silver thaw. DICK: About this time, you're ready to pack up your suitcase and head back, right? I didn't give up on the dream. I think the determination was there and it would have been easy
to pack up, but I didn't. We would spend many, many
coffee breaks talking about winemaking because he
was an amateur winemaker, I was an amateur winemaker. NARRATOR: Dick Erath's unyielding passion helped uncork the imagination
of another Tek engineer. Our neighbor next door, John, said, "Ron, you make good wine," after four or five years of making wine. He said, "Why don't we start a winery?" with six children, I thought, "Whoa, this is going to be a big step." But I said, "Well, let's try it." So we found this old dairy
barn south of Hillsboro. [upbeat music] Well, those silos were here when we bought the old dairy
farm to build a winery. [upbeat music] This was the milking parlor. And of course there was a lot of cleanup after the cows got through. So it was a rustic building, but we saw the potential
to be a winery also. And May 18th of 1970, Oak Knoll was born. NARRATOR: Ron and wife Marge focused on making berry wines at first, then began producing
fine varietal wines, too, including Pinot noir. Pinot noir was not a popular variety back in the early '70s because California, their Pinot noirs were kind of flabby, they didn't have the character. I think we all believed we could make a better Pinot than California was making at the time, because back then they were still saying we could plant any grape
in any place and ripen it. Most grapes can adapt to a wide variety of growing conditions,
but Pinot says, "No. You've got to have this
very little narrow band of, everything's got to be right
for me, or I won't cooperate." NARRATOR: In 1970, there
were less than 100 acres of Vitis vinifera growing in Oregon and just five bonded wineries. David and Diana Lett were operating out of a converted turkey
processing plant in McMinnville. The one thing that all of
our early wine community had in common was poverty. [chuckles] The banks would not loan us any money, first of all probably
because we were young and because we were doing something that hadn't been done before,
and there was no assurance that we would be able to pull it off. The '70s, I guess 1970 was the year, my first year of making wine. I had a California education. I did absolutely everything wrong. I picked the grapes too early. The wine came out thin and tart, and it was just a nothing wine. And I was embarrassed
to call it Pinot noir. We called it Oregon spring wine and sold it for $2.65 a bottle. Had 250 cases. Took about three years to sell that. 1974. NARRATOR: Dick Erath was
producing his first wine out of the basement of his home. Okay, so 1972, the first vintage. This is the only one
that's left out of that. 216 cases total, and 90 cases of Pinot. I remember that my wife and I bottled it and the kids were labeling it. We didn't come here to
make a lot of money. We came here because we had a dream of making really great wines. And we also knew that
we had an opportunity to create a brand-new
viticultural area in the world. NARRATOR: The early pioneers protected their young industry fiercely. They joined forces early on to prevent a Southern Oregon nursery from selling virus-ridden vines. That would have been a disaster. So Chuck and Dave and I
went to the Nursery Division of the Department of Agriculture
and we got that stopped, and at the same time we
got quarantines passed. So we wanted to make sure
whatever came in was clean and was disease-free. That's visionary. That's saying, "We have a future here, let's not destroy it." NARRATOR: By now, new wine
growers had begun arriving in the state, most drawn to
the Northern Willamette Valley. [gentle upbeat music] This was in the late '60s. A lot of unrest going on
and things that happened in California that we
didn't like politically. And we were somewhat idealists in a way, and many of us wanted
to get back to the land. NARRATOR: In 1969, aerospace
engineer Dick Ponzi left a comfortable job designing amusement rides for Disneyland. He and his family landed near Beaverton. And we were very naive
about a lot of things. I mean, we had no business plan. We only had the vision
of planting a vineyard, particularly Pinot noir and Chardonnay and all the other varieties
that we explored in Europe, in Burgundy and in Alsace. We didn't know anything. Neither one of us knew
anything about farming or animals or anything, so. Well, we liked to drink wine, you know, and we decided Pinot noir was the thing, because of course we didn't want to just do something normal. Being an engineer, I
built a lot of equipment. I remember I built this
press for our first harvest. We had four beautiful
barrels of Pinot noir, and they were probably the
most cared after barrels that we've ever had. [chuckles] Yeah, we were highly educated. We should have known better, I guess. We wanted to have a small vineyard, never really intended to be
in the wine business itself. We were gonna just grow grapes and sell them to other
wineries that were around here. NARRATOR: Liberal arts
graduates Bill Blosser and Susan Sokol Blosser arrived
in the Willamette Valley about the same time as the Ponzis. I was in heaven because growing things was always in my DNA someplace. I just loved the whole process of getting these rootings out
of the ground, sorting them, laying out the vineyard,
doing the first cultivation, and getting the weeds out. It was great fun. Everything was new to me, and the idea of working the equipment was actually really
exciting, I loved that. Partly because it was something that women didn't usually
do, and that appealed to me. [upbeat music] NARRATOR: By the 1970s,
word was getting out that fine European wine
grapes could indeed be grown in Western Oregon and that vineyard land was still
cheaper than in California. When you begin to look at
land prices here versus there, and you looked at a lot
of costs of doing business and getting a business
started and whatnot, this was a good place because it was a more
economical way to get going. We'll take one of the
berries off of the cluster. NARRATOR: In 1973, longtime Napa Valley winemaker
Bill Fuller and wife Virginia started Tualatin Vineyards
in Washington County with partner Ed Malkmus. BILL: I was young and eager and I was excited about the
possibility of starting a winery and doing it the way I wanted to do it right from the ground up. [birds chirping] NARRATOR: The Chehalem Mountains drew in David and Ginny
Adelsheim from Portland, convincing them this was the place to establish their
original vineyard in 1971. There's an emotional specialness to it, but there's also, I mean, it
doesn't taste like Pinot noir from anywhere else in the world. NARRATOR: And Joe and Pat Campbell. PAT: The Gewurztraminers are looking pretty good over there. NARRATOR: Soon found Gaston, Oregon, the perfect place for Elk Cove Vineyards. I think they're gonna be really delicious. Go ahead and try one. Yeah, sure. NARRATOR: The collaborative
spirit of this small but growing family of
entrepreneurs would become the glue and guiding force of the industry. In the early days, it was
kind of like a fraternity where you helped each other. If you needed some yeast or anything, you could call your neighbor
or the closest winery. "Sure, I'll let you have that. I don't need it right now." I think the camaraderie was
just absolutely the best thing that happened to this industry. We had to be very creative. And we had to be very good at scrounging from other sources and unusual sources. There was no place to buy
barrels here or glass. There were no vineyard workers that were trained to do
the work in the vineyards. [upbeat music] When we planted the vineyard, we bought rejected milk cartons, and you slip it over the plant. And it does several things. One is if you're spot watering by hand, you can fill the milk carton with water, and it'll direct the water
straight down into the root zone. We had milk cartons out in the field and literally the kids on
the school bus wanted to know why we were trying to grow milk. [laughs] And our early fermenters
were used dairy tanks, and for white wines if
we needed extra storage, we used stainless steel Coca-Cola barrels. People were very willing to
help and share equipment. And one time Ron Vuylsteke came over and helped us get our
refrigeration system going. He was pretty good with electronics. We wanted to see the industry grow, and we felt if everybody
was making good wine, it was going to grow. If people had a problem, there was nowhere else to
turn except to our peers. My brother left me in 1981 to go work in Washington state, and he used to call me
up and bitch and say, "I don't have this piece of equipment," or, "This is broken." I said, "Well, you know,
there's a lot of vineyards and wineries up there. Just go borrow something
from a colleague." And I would get a lecture on,
"Myron, this isn't Oregon. People just don't do that kind of thing." NARRATOR: Political
science major Myron Redford bought the existing
Amity Vineyards in 1974. And the way we helped each other, the main vehicle was
the various committees. I was on the Viticultural Committee with several other people, and we'd be looking at some problem, and then we would make a presentation at our monthly meetings. And it was just continuous. NARRATOR: The learning curve
was steep, the hours long. Most had day jobs and family and friends that helped them survive. [gentle music] And many were raising young
children alongside their vines. The first harvest that I
really remember well was 1973. I was three. I really felt like one of the guys, and I was working on the harvest crew and was helping to make wine. Putting them into the crusher-stemmer
one cluster at a time. I'd just come from driving
posts in the vineyard, and little Alison, who was
two or 2 1/2 at the time, came out to meet me. And I love it, because I think
of it as two women of wine. NARRATOR: In a few short years, the winegrowers had begun
laying a strong foundation for a new Oregon industry. But they knew that the industry's future
growth depended on real estate. There were the beginnings
of some housing developments on Chehalem Mountain
and a few other places. I mean, who doesn't want
a house with a view? And yet these hillsides
were the very places that were needed for grapes. NARRATOR: In 1973, the state legislature
passed Senate Bill 100. The bill mandated county officials to work with citizen groups to create a comprehensive
plan protecting farmland. There was an urgency. We had a short period of time to do it. And so we jumped on that bandwagon and did some studies to show them how this land was actually
very, very valuable farmland for the grape industry. This is a map, one of I think eight or 10, that would give us a graphic way to show the Director of
Planning of Yamhill County the extent of land on
which it would be possible to plant and grow grapes. This is the Chehalem Valley. We're literally right
here where that dot is. This is the Dundee Hills. I mean, the beauty of having
several of us involved in this process was that, particularly people like Dick Erath, he'd driven a lot of these places. NARRATOR: Working together,
they identified nearly all the county hillsides
theoretically suitable for grapes. I think it was that there
was so much highlighted land on this that the director of
planning ultimately decided to keep the hillsides
zoned for agriculture. We got virtually all the land that we thought was prime
grape land designated for prime farmland in
that first phase of plans that came out of the state, and so that was just
a huge accomplishment. NARRATOR: By now it was becoming evident that the growing industry
was facing unique challenges requiring a unified
political voice to solve. At that time in the early '70s, to call a California Cabernet, it only had to be 51% of that variety. We wanted Oregon wines to mean something. So we went to the liquor
commission and said, "We want Oregon wines to have
at least 95% of that variety." DAVID: So if you were gonna
say that it was Oregon wine, it had to entirely be from Oregon. And then if it said Willamette Valley, it had to be 100% from
the Willamette Valley, and we had to collaborate to do that. We had to go to every winery,
and every licensed winery in Oregon had to sign off on these things. So, I mean, we put through the
stiffest labeling regulations in the country and, in some
respects, in the world. Had we waited five years,
[scoffs] couldn't have happened. Couldn't have gotten that
kind of unanimity about it. NARRATOR: At the same time,
the growers agreed that if they were going to continue to protect and improve their industry,
they'd need outside expertise. The whole concept here is
cool climate viticulture. Because Oregon is a unique growing area, we recognized that what
was going on in other parts of the world was not
necessarily appropriate to what we needed. We were all focused on one goal, Making better Pinot noir, okay? Better wine in general,
but Pinot noir was it. And we were thirsty for knowledge and getting that knowledge. [upbeat jazzy music] NARRATOR: Working with
the state legislature, the winegrowers created
a special advisory board. It allowed the industry to
impose a grape and wine tax on itself and use the money for research. They had a tremendous amount of knowledge about a wide range of things,
but on the science side, they were on a learning curve. NARRATOR: The money helped
support a research position at Oregon State University. DAVID: Barney was the Johnny Appleseed of this industry. He set up workshops. He would come out to your winery. There were tons of ideas. Everyone was exploring. You've got to figure out the
best winemaking practices for the fruit from that climate, you've got to figure out the best yeast or the best wine bacteria. You've got to figure
out the best varieties, how to trellis them, how to
crop them, how to manage them. So a lot of it was
developing our own resources and having the university
working with the industry to help them move it all
along at an ever faster rate. NARRATOR: Determining the
best plants, or clones, became an early priority. Nobody was talking about
them as individual clones. All we knew was that it was Pinot noir. And that all changed in the fall of '73 when Chuck Coury helped us all understand that there were a lot of selections of Pinot noir in the world
and that maybe the ones that we had were not
necessarily the best for Oregon. We decided it would be a lot better if we could go directly to
Europe and bring in clones, and then we could test
them here in Oregon. And we started doing that in 1978. NARRATOR: During the process, France granted Oregon favored status partly because the state's
strict labeling laws prohibited the use of
French geographic names like Burgundy and Chablis. California used them, Gallo
Hearty Burgundy and all that. The French were really
upset for a long, long time, and rightfully so. We're producing cheap white
wine and calling it Chablis, which is some of the best
Chardonnay in the world. So they liked that fact that we respected their labeling laws and we made it illegal
from the very beginning to use any of those. So they felt comfortable
in sending us some of the plant material they had, which they never would
have sent it to California or anywhere else in the
country at the time. NARRATOR: The clones were planted at cooperative vineyards and eventually at OSU's research vineyard
near Alpine, Oregon. BARNEY: I made replicated wines from them for quite a number of years. We had winemaker panels come in. We'd taste the wines,
and through that process, between tasting the wines
and gathering the data and the field data, then
the industry was better able to select the best ones for the future growth of the industry. In the '80s, there was a big surge of new people coming into the industry, and they needed help and we
wanted them to have help. We wanted things to be planted properly, we wanted them to plant the proper grape. We wanted to improve the quality, because one flawed wine in the market would reflect
on the whole industry. NARRATOR: The more the
winegrowers learned, the better their wines were becoming, but they needed to start producing great Pinot noir quickly and consistently. In 1979, a small group of
Oregon and California winemakers organized a technical retreat
at a remote fishing lodge on the North Umpqua River. Really, the pH had gone down? No.
No, it had gone up. pH went up, acid went
down, and the Brix came up. We realized from the start, Pinot noir was the unknown American wine. It was at a tremendous disadvantage from a marketing perspective in that California didn't
spend any energy on it and Oregon was brand-new. So the point was if
we're going to survive, we've got to put out high quality wines as rapidly as we can. The early fruit is very cold. DAVID: Steamboat was like the early Oregon but for the whole world. We got together. Never
allowed press to come. We told each other our mistakes. We opened ourselves to criticism. It smells a little bit like yeast. And then the discussion would be, "Okay, how did this problem come about? Has anybody else experienced this problem? What did you do about it?" By doing that we all learned. NARRATOR: Today, Pinot producers from around the world
collaborate at the annual event. The reason that it works is because Pinot noir expresses
the place that it grows. So if he wins a gold medal
or I win a gold medal and I tell him exactly how I made my wine, his won't taste the same. So we give up nothing by sharing. We gain from the experience
of our fellow makers. [people chattering] NARRATOR: The winegrowers
call Pinot's reflection of place terroir, a French word that, while difficult to define, defines Pinot noir like nothing else. [birds chirping] So it's not just the slope of the land and the way the sun hits the hillside, it's how everything comes together. It's a sense of the place,
of the sun, of the rain, of the soil, of our footsteps
through the vineyard, of the bluebirds that fly around, that's all reflected in
the taste of the wine. Pinot noir is such a grape of place. People get excited about it because my Pinot noir
here is gonna be different from Bethel Heights'
Pinot 20 miles down there or Sokol Blosser's Pinot
up in the Dundee Hills. They're all different. And we rejoice in the differences. [gentle music] NARRATOR: By the early 1980s, there were about 50 wineries in the state. The winegrowers were attracting
respect and recognition for their wines and opening tasting rooms to a curious public. But getting people to actually
buy their premium wines, especially Pinot, was still a tough sell. We wanted to make great wines in Oregon, but then we realized there was no market for great wines in Oregon because they hadn't existed before. [gentle music]
[people chattering] DAVID: Pinot noir wasn't
exactly on everybody's lips in the late '70s, early '80s, and the American public was
just starting to drink wine. NARRATOR: To raise the
profile of their industry, the winegrowers decided to tax each other at an even higher rate and
use the additional money for marketing and promotion,
including television. In 1963, I founded what is now Oregon's oldest
premium grape winery. My husband Joe and I find grape growing and winemaking very challenging. At our Umpqua Valley winery, the emphasis is on quality, not quantity. ALL: Pour Oregon! NARRATOR: While the campaigns helped increase awareness locally, the winegrowers knew they needed national distribution even more. I always felt that the
future of our industry was our ability to sell
the wine away from Oregon, and that would define how
successful we would be. NARRATOR: So the winegrowers
hit the road together. [gentle music] Basically we were teaching. We were going to every
market in the country, and we did it as a group, because as individuals we
were laughed at pretty much. We worked together, and there was no way, absolutely no way a single person from Oregon could have sold
their wine by themselves. We didn't have any idea
just how few people outside of Oregon even
know where Oregon is. I remember our first wine
that we took to San Francisco. You know, six months later, I got a letter back saying
nobody's interested. It was hard. Wine is very subjective. And it was very difficult
to get people out of state, in Boston and New York, to
really put aside their prejudices and taste the wine. And it was almost like the
wine writers had to promote it before they would then carry
the wine in their shops. NARRATOR: The year 1985 rolled in with sales looking bleak. We were trying to decide whether we should even bother
picking our Pinot noir crop, because at $7.95 a bottle we had a three-year supply of Pinot noir. NARRATOR: But then. ANNOUNCER: New York's renowned
international wine center held a blind taste test to pick the finest wines in the world. They picked Oregon wines. The tasting blew everybody's mind. First of all, the tasters admitted that they could not
distinguish which was Burgundy and which was Oregon, and the
top five wines were Oregon. They were stunned. We were stunned. NARRATOR: The smoldering
industry was about to ignite. Skeptical wine clubs replicated tastings across the country with the same results, and praise for Oregon
wine came pouring in, in particular from an
influential national wine critic. DAVID: Robert Parker was
one of the driving forces that brought us onto the
national stage in the early '80s. CHARLES: It was, I think,
the first recognition that, "Look, there are many wineries
here doing great things." People were curious. They wanted to know, you know,
"What's this Oregon thing?" We wished that we'd had
10 times as much wine we could have sold at that point, but our stocks disappeared
almost overnight. So we're talking an incredible effect. I mean, the sucking sound
was all the warehouses in Oregon emptying of Oregon Pinot. ANNOUNCER: Listen to
what the world is saying about the premium wines of Oregon. ANNOUNCER: You can tell an
Oregon wine by its finesse. VIKKI: People had started
hearing the Oregon story, and they were fascinated by it. It was so different from
any other wine region in which there were small groups that identified only with their own wines. ANNOUNCER: Oregon wines, world-class quality right here at home. And in some sense people like
Myron and David Adelsheim and David Lett were
international rock stars of the wine industry. And that was a huge change
from the hippie boys up north. NARRATOR: From the early
days of the industry, Oregon and France had
been forging a unique bond with a special wine. And curiosity on the
French side was building for this rogue producer on
the other side of the world. Robert Drouhin was a respected
winemaker in Burgundy. He'd organized the 1980 rematch between Eyrie Vineyards' '75 Pinot noir and the top French Burgundies of the time. I think that's when my father realized there's something special about Oregon. It's not like they were lucky. It's just good wine. [bright music] NARRATOR: In 1986, Veronique
Drouhin asked her father to help her find a winemaking
internship in California. And he said he could, but that he wondered why she wouldn't want to come
to Oregon and work here. So I kind of looked at him
and said, "Where is Oregon?" See, I'm ashamed to say this, but I had no idea Oregon
was growing Pinot noir. And I said, "Fine, I'm
happy to go to Oregon." DAVID: She worked as an intern and scrubbed and ran presses and hooked up hoses and all the things that you do during harvest. And one year later in June '87, I remember very well, we were in Bordeaux. David Adelsheim calls my father, and says, "Robert, you have to come to
Oregon and see something." I think it was a 90-acre piece
of property was for sale, and here was the price,
and were you interested? And he's kind of a deliberate guy. Took about 10 seconds to
say, "Yes, I'm interested." And we go up the hill
with David Adelsheim. We go up the hill and we arrive here, where there's just weeds and the trees. No vines, no winery, nothing. And both Robert and I were
like, "Wow, this is incredible." NARRATOR: Robert Drouhin purchased the hilltop property near Dundee. VERONIQUE: The welcoming
we got was just amazing. It could have been New
Zealand or another place, but I think Robert felt
the best was Oregon. NARRATOR: It was the beginning
of Domaine Drouhin Oregon. That was a big impact at the time. A lot of people who doubted that we could be a serious wine region no longer could express that same doubt. All of that started to
build as an industry, and that was very important
because in the beginning we had to establish
that we were an industry and not an oddity of one winery or two wineries making great wines. [people chattering] NARRATOR: The time was right to promote their new
industry in a premiere event. Working with the city of McMinnville, the winegrowers launched the annual International
Pinot Noir Celebration. The vision was to bring together the top Pinot noir producers in the world, along with fabulous food, top chefs, and to have a weekend that would have enough technical knowledge that the industry would be
interested but not so nerdy that sophisticated consumers
wouldn't also enjoy it. [people chattering] The food and wine pairings are exquisite, better than I've had almost
anywhere else in the world. Pinot noir works with more kinds of food. It can work with fish, it can work with even
richer dishes like meat, and that makes it easier
to pair with food. And wine should be with food. Wine is food. You have Oregon winemakers
here who are pouring their wine among the greatest Pinot
noir producers in the world, and it's just absolutely brilliant. I would say that because
they've been going for 25 years strong, it's
because it's not just marketing. It's because the wines live up
to their international peers. Okay, let's toast!
Well, now we can mix. Now, Vikki, you need one.
How 'bout a toast. Well, I'm gonna share my glass with you. [bright music] NARRATOR: In 1984, some 20 years after the first winemaking
pioneers arrived, the Willamette Valley was named Oregon's first official
American viticultural area. Today Oregon boasts 16
AVAs across the state, six sub areas in the
Willamette Valley alone, each with its own terroir. And Pinot noir basks in glory as the state's premier signature wine. It's hard to believe today
that no one seemed to like it. It was not made right. People weren't making it the
way we were doing it in Oregon. They weren't raising it
in the area that we were, the cool climate. I think this was the birthplace
of New-World Pinot noir. [gentle music] NARRATOR: Today more than
400 wineries beckon visitors from every which way. Oregon ranks fourth in the
nation in the production of wine. And the industry pumps
nearly $3 billion annually into the state's economy. Personally I didn't think it would be as big as it's gotten. But I never doubted that
we would not be successful. There's a demand and an
interest in Oregon wines around the world which is really nice, but with that comes more competition. So trying to maintain
that collaborative spirit that helped get the
Oregon industry started while also staying in business
[laughs] can be a challenge. Oregon has been a wonderful example of what an industry can
do to make a living, increase the prestige of the state, bring money into the state, and keep the land
healthy at the same time. Trying the Pinot, it tastes pretty good. I mean it still has- I hope we're still singing
the praises of Oregon as a high quality producer of
Pinot noir 40 years from now. [gentle music] NARRATOR: From the very beginning, the pioneers of Oregon's
wine industry took themselves and their wine seriously. It just took a while to
convince the rest of the world they weren't kidding. There was a much higher calling than trying to imitate some other place. And that goal was to figure out who we wanted to be for our self and what it was that we could do that nobody else in the world could do. JOE: We had a chance to really make a brand-new viticultural
area in the world. And we've done that. And I'm really proud of that. If you ask any grape grower
in Burgundy or anywhere, I knew it was a good idea
to put these out this year. "What do you do to your wines
to make them so wonderful?" He'll point out to his vineyard. This is where the wine is created. And it's natural. [engine rumbling]
[people chattering] NARRATOR: Harvest is
over for another year. The golden vines will soon go dormant. [gentle music] And as winter sets in, their
life cycle will begin anew. [birds chirping] [gentle upbeat music] In the spring, new buds will unfurl, and the winegrowers will once again gamble with the weather ahead. Because in Oregon, harvest
brings no guarantees. Although Dick Erath
sold his winery in 2006, he didn't exactly retire. Today you'll find him back in his garage brewing up a batch of Pinot noir. The father of the Oregon wine industry, Richard Sommer, died in 2009. In 2011, the state
house of representatives honored his legacy. Charles Coury eventually
returned to California, where he died in 2004. Today at David Hill Winery, the old and gnarled vines are rooted deep. They, like the elder
vines down the valley, continue to produce some of
the finest wines in the world. That's the old French theory, too, that a grape has to struggle. No, no, no, the grape
grower has to struggle. Yeah, that's it. [both laughing] [birds chirping] PAT: We walked out here
every night for 40 years. He's definitely here.
He's all around here. [gentle music] NARRATOR: David Lett, who came
to be known as Papa Pinot, passed away in 2008. It was David's ideal to produce a wine that would express the terroir of this particular place where we are. The intention and the philosophy and the love of the winemaker, everything that goes into making wine from a particular place. "So many hopes and dreams are
held in these fragile leaves and tender shoots which
seemed a few months ago to be only dead sticks
pushed into the Oregon mud. There seems such a harmony between the earth, the
sun, the cool breezes. I can't help but feel now
that success will be ours." ANNOUNCER: There's more
about "Grapes of Place" on Oregon Experience Online. To learn more or to order a
DVD of the show, visit opb.org. [gentle wistful music] [gentle upbeat music] [gentle triumphant music] [gentle music] Funding for Oregon experience is provided by the James F. & Mario
L. Miller Foundation, the Oregon Cultural Trust
and viewers like you. Additional support
provided by Kay Kitagawa and Andy Johnson-Laird. Thank you.
