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Oregon is home to some 300 wineries and 13,000 acres of vineyards. Its Pinot Noir wines consistently earn high scores from wine critics.
Yet it wasn't a winemaker from Bordeaux, or even Napa, who helped start Oregon's wine industry.
It was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin.
In 1959, Jim Maresh and his wife Loie, who he met while attending the UW, purchased a 27-acre orchard in Oregon. They had no farming experience. Each time that farms neighboring theirs went up for sale, they snatched them up until eventually they had a 140-acre orchard. Then, in 1970, when Dick Erath of Erath Winery encouraged them to plant wine grapes, they converted that orchard to a vineyard.
In the Dundee Hills region of Oregon's Willamette Valley are the fruits of their labor: Maresh Red Hills Vineyard, where Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, White Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc grapes are grown. Drop into the nearby Red Barn on a weekend from March 1 to Thanksgiving and you can sip wines produced from Maresh's grapes and bottled by three different wineries.
The Mareshs' grandson -– Jim, 25 –- produces Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines under his own label Arterberry Maresh, which he launched in 2005. Although these wines are not distributed in Wisconsin, they are in available in several states plus Germany and Denmark.
Whitefish Bay native Susan Sokol Blosser founded Sokol Blosser Winery in the Dundee Hills region, which is about an hour west of Portland. In 1971, armed with degrees from Stanford University and Reed College in Portland (master of arts in teaching), she planted some of the state's first Pinot Noir grapes with her then-husband Bill Blosser, who she met at Stanford.
"We wanted to plant a grape that had never been grown in Oregon and were among the first to grow it here," explains Sokol-Blosser, about why she chose Pinot Noir, an historically finicky grape to grow around the same time as esteemed neighboring wineries like Erath Winery and Ponzi Vineyards.
Sokol Blosser Winery has a distinct eco-conscious bent. In 2005, it became Oregon's first winery to achieve USDA organic certification. Also, the underground cellar is the first in the country to be LEED-Silver certified by the U.S. Green Building Council). There is also a photovoltaic solar-panel system on the property. Since stepping down in 2008, Susan's three children have become more actively involved -– Nick, 36, as chairman of the board; and Alex, 36, and Alison, 30, as co-presidents.
Much of Susan's story is published in "At Home in the Vineyard: Cultivating a Winery, an Industry and a Life" (University of California Press, 2006), an autobiography about her establishing the winery and doing so as a woman. The wines are sold locally at Whole Foods Market, Downer Wine & Spirits, Metro Market downtown Milwaukee and Brookfield, some Pick N Save stores, and Sendiks' Whitefish Bay and Brookfield locations.
Maresh Red Hills Vineyard and Sokol Blosser aren't the only wineries with a Wisconsin connection.
Don Olson, founder of Torii Mor Winery in the Dundee Hills region, and a retired physician, grew up in Stoughton. The winery he co-owns with his wife Margie adopts a Japanese Zen vibe with an authentic Japanese garden on the property and a tasting room modeled after a tea house in Japan. In fact, at Portland's Japanese Garden, Torii Mor's white wines are exclusively poured.
"Everything's Japanese because I enjoy that style and the concept of balance," explains Olson, who visits Taliesin in Spring Green each time he returns to Wisconsin to visit family.
His road to Oregon passed through many other wine regions first and along the way, the seed to own a winery was planted.
"I interned in San Francisco. Whenever I had a free moment I headed up to Napa. I also did a year in France with a fellowship and drank a lot of wine and never really recovered," he says with a laugh. "Wine does that to you. You get involved and you want to learn more."
He saw the property -– where Torii Mor now is –- on a Saturday and bought it that day, convinced it was the right place. Like Sokol Blosser the winery has a green bent: a wind mill on top of the production facility supplies power and was LEED-Gold certified this year.
Olson recruited Jacques Tardy, a fifth-generation Burgundian winemaker, to produce his wines. The result is a Chardonnay that is not a California-style at all, with luscious green-apple notes. In 2007 –- just 14 years after opening -– the winery made 11 Pinot Noirs which contributes to 15,000 cases of annual production. Hanging in the tasting room are two red Wisconsin Badgers baseball caps.
"It's farming and that's what everybody in Wisconsin understands," he says. "The thing we're most proud of is that we're able to get 90 or above scores every year since starting the winery in 1993."
