When I interviewed Josh Bergström at Bergström Wines for my new book Oregon: The Taste of Wine, he succinctly summed up Oregon's post-Prohibition wine history:
"Oregon really started out with a bunch of well-educated hippies sitting around in meadows passing around bottles, critiquing each other. No bias about sharing information. It was all about sharing information. That spirit is still alive today–take Oregon Pinot Camp."
Driving back to the studio past David Adelsheim's winery, I thought about how he said he had started planting grapes in "the Whole Earth Catalogue period". As I turned on the oldies radio station–Jefferson Airplane was playing–I wondered if Oregon just might be the Woodstock of America's wine industry.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
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As one of the pioneers of the Oregon industry I think Janis's term "The Woodstock of Wine" is appropriate. Although to say that David Lett, Dick Ponzi,Charles Coury and Dick Erath and I were hippies is to stretch the term a bit. We were all X-Urbanities who were following a dream. We were all consumers trying to take our love for wine into the field. We all believed that we had to "hang together or all hang separately". That set the cooperative tone for the industry which still exists today. It is what most distinguishes Oregon from other wine growing regions.
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