Willamette Valley

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Blame it on my Anthropology undergrad work, but I have written that, still feeling fairly new to the wine industry, I often feel like Margaret Mead, looking in on and trying to understand the behaviour of some lost tribe. As a participating observer having now lived 6 years among “the people,” things still baffle me, and I like to wonder why.

No matter how hard I tried the other day, it seemed I could not shake that Chateau following behind. Sam and I were off that day from Portland to the Willamette Valley, to pick up some of our wine at Oregon Wine Services  (very nice people) in McMinnville, and en route, I had the best chuckle: a Chateau on wheels. It was just a camper, but how funny to see a “Chateau” traveling through Oregon’s best-known wine country. It’s apropros in a way, you know, how wine and chateaus like to go hand-in-hand here in the USA? As if a chateau is some marker of what, authenticity? Prestige? The “Old Country”?

I always say, “Only two letters separate ‘arrogance’ from ‘ignorance,’ meaning, in my pointy head, there’s not much that differentiates the two words. Don’t get me wrong, I like chateaus just like the rest of us romantic souls, but only when they’re the real deal, LIKE IN FRANCE, or GERMANY or some other country where the provenance is legitimate, and not some contrived artifice used for marketing. Which, c’mon, it is.

Not that there are many chateaus in the Willamette Valley, if there are any at all—things seem pretty real down that way on the physical landscape of rolling, verdure hills, and tucked away places. On the brand landscape there might be a few; a quick Google search turned up Chateau Lorane (no picture of a chateau, though); Chateau Bianca (again, no image of a chateau), and Chateau Benoit (not clear if a chateau is really there, either, since all I found was a label, and no chateau on that).

Up Washington way there are some actual chateaus, as well as “chateau” brands. Chateau Ste. Michelle would be the acting queen of Washington castles and brands, the oldest wine biz up there. Then there’s Chateau Champoux, but I don’t get a sense that there’s an actual chateau on the premise. Nor at Chateau Rollat’s. Things look more promising for Le Chateau Winery, since that’s what the “under construction” website suggests. There is a chateau up on La Montagne Rouge (all this chateau talk is making the French come out of me, sorry), as we all know, one of the founding partners having connections direct to la France (there it is again). But all these other chateaus, I just don’t get. We’re not France!  Two years ago I was still wondering about all this chateau stuff, but more with a peek into Cali, and here’s the post I wrote, if you’re interested.

Anyway, we don’t have a chateau on our hill, and have no plans for one. But what we DO have is something we like to refer to as the “Campeau” (or “LE Campeau,” if we’re feeling very French), so we might fit in a little out there in the wilds of the wine world.

It’s not even a Chateau, like the one cruising so close behind the other day, it’s a Komfort (that’s right, with a K). “And it’s paid for,” Scott pipes in, “as of this week.” And klassy, in its own, krazy way, I might add. I wonder what Margaret would say.

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Our latest installment on The Daily Meal. We (mainly me, Stephanie) write a bi-monthly piece called “Diary of a Start-Up Winemaker.” What we(well, I)’ve written to date are HERE.

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We’ve only been “in business” for just under a year, and are working on finding like-minded wine adventurers who appreciate wine like ours, as well as our endeavor. It’s a crowded, crazy market these days, as you all know, but we’re slowly reaching some of you individuals who dare to step off the well-worn route, or should I say, you’re discovering us, as true adventurers are apt to do.

Carl found us through Scott’s parents, out in Missouri. He was so interested in The Grande Dalles that he purchased six bottles of our inaugural wines: two ’09 Leroy’s Finest, our bone-dry Riesling; two ’08 Gampo, our sangiovese blend; and two ’08 Home Place, our tempranillo blend, just like that. Since his order, we’ve exchanged a few chit-chat messages, so imagine our surprise, when he told us he’d be out in the Pacific Northwest (a rare visit, he said) and wanted to meet! Our first fan from afar wanting to come and learn more! We were thrilled.

So off Sam and I went — Scott had to stay in Portland, holding down his day job that keeps this dream alive — to meet Carl.

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And it just keeps coming! This one touches upon the stone swept into our vineyard land and surrounding area from the great Missoula Floods, those cataclysmic dispatches of water that thundered out of Montana, across Washington and through the Columbia Gorge into Oregon’s Willamette Valley, the last ones some 12-14,000 years ago. It was these that formed the landscape around us, as well as carved out the magnificently scenic Columbia River Gorge. We’ve got tons of this washed-in gravel on the site, dug through around 300 feet of it for our well before hitting basalt (what the volcanoes flowed in). It’s some wild, rugged land out there, I tell you.

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