I wrote about the new guard of young and diverse winemakers in the Willamette Valley for Bloomberg Pursuits.
Here's a tease:
I’m in McMinnville (population: 34,000), in the heart of Oregon wine country, sharing pizza with the Mayor. As we chat about how she got into politics, she greets every person who walks past our table at Mac Market by name. 42-year old Remy Drabkin is not your typical mayor of a small agricultural town. First, she’s queer. Second, she’s been a winemaker since 2006, known for her Italian-style reds including an estate Lagrein. When Drabkin was young, her mom cooked at Nick’s Italian Café, where all the winemakers hung out. She’d have Thanksgiving with the Lett family (of Eyrie). 4th of July was at the Adelsheims. At the tender age of 14, she worked harvest at Ponzi, where idolized the Ponzi daughters. That’s when she cemented her aspirations to be a winemaker. Today, at her 29-acre property in the Dundee Hills, she has 7 acres planted and sources fruit from other vineyards.
Back then, in the mid-90s, Oregon wine pioneers like the Letts and the Ponzis knew what the rest of the world is waking up to now. The soil and climate of Oregon’s Willamette Valley—the elements that make up terroir—yields grapes that make some of the finest wines in the world. These families and others who arrived decades earlier are still making incredible wines. But Oregon’s wine industry has grown dramatically over the past fifty years—today, there are over 700 wineries in the Willamette Valley, the 150-mile long area that runs from Portland to Eugene. And over the past 15 years a new crop of winemakers—many from different cultural and racial backgrounds—have entered the scene. From a Black former sommelier from Per Se to a Japanese immigrant who started her career in Germany, these and others are injecting a new energy into the Valley. They’re also attracting a younger, more diverse audience to the region.
“I’m aware that just by showing up, I challenge the status quo,” says André Hueston Mack, winemaker at Maison Noir. “There are not a lot of people like me who do what I do.” Mack, like many of the newer faces of Oregon wine I spoke to for this story, does not own land. But he has forged connections with vineyard owners and buys fruit from them, cheekily calling the resulting bottlings OPP (Other People’s Pinot).
Continue reading here. Or see here for a PDF version of the final story. Download 14 Best Wineries Hotels and Restaurants in Oregon’s Willamette Valley - Bloomberg
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