Burnin'

Dana Tims at The Oregonian is reporting that Oregon’s wine industry is under intense pressure to change and that big changes are indeed underway.

At a time when recessionary pressures on the state’s $1 billion wine industry are threatening to leave tons of grapes unpicked this year, Ken Johnston, general manager of vineyard operations for Winemakers Investment Properties, is developing more than 550 acres of vineyards west of Silverton — huge by Oregon’s traditional mom-and-pop standards. His business model relies on efficiencies of scale to help keep long-term costs and consumer prices down.

Industry insiders are impressed.

“It’s absolutely a game-changer,” said Joseph Wagner, whose family founded Napa Valley’s Caymus Vineyards, which has relied largely on mechanical harvesting for the past five years. Not only has the method worked, he said, but it has actually increased the quality of the fruit at harvest.

There is no way, he said, to underestimate its potential for Oregon’s wine operations.

On the surface, automation doesn’t sound too appealing. It smacks of factory farms and corporate agriculture. And that’s not Oregon! Yet, a higher yield of fragile pinot noir grapes will drive prices down, and that’s something that desperately needs to happen, if Oregon pinot noir and pinot gris is to become more than a niche product.

Tims’ article also points out that Silverton is nowhere near the Dundee Hills, but a perfect place for pinot grapes nevertheless. This is the kind of news I get excited about. Yamhill County is a special place. But there are lots of special places in Oregon that are ideal for cultivation.

I love Oregon pinot noir, but I do not love paying $25 to $60 for a great bottle of great local wine. I do it because I’m a fiend, but I also look favorably upon Washington state’s broader range of varietals in the $10 to $20 price range. And I discovered a wonderful wine merchant in SE Portland who specializes in unearthing amazing ten dollar bottles from Spain, Italy and France (and California and Oregon on occasion).

Price is important. Quality is important. May the two frequently meet.

Cheers.

We first tasted Pinot Noir from Oregon’s Umpqua Valley a few years ago while living in South Carolina. Brandborg Winery has pretty solid distribution in The Lowcountry and our local wine merchant, Claude, stocked the Elkton-made product. The wine created–as wine will sometimes do–a curiosity about the terroir. This weekend we got a chance to experience it up close and personal.

See more photos on this Flickr Slideshow from the weekend

Brandborg’s tasting room is one of the more obvious structures on the town’s main drag. We found Terry, the proprietor, enjoying his lunch and some wine on the deck adjacent to the entrance. He followed me inside the building after a bit, and said he’d be my host today. I said great, sell me a bottle of your Estate Pinot Noir. After getting me to taste his other two pinots, and telling me about the winery’s recent writeup in The New York Times, he did.

Soon thereafter, Terry’s wife Sue appeared unexpectedly at our table with complimentary cheese, chips and watermelon. Sue also informed us of the couple’s favorite restaurant in Florence, told us about a good six-mile hike in Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area and about house rental options in town, should we want to return. Terry also had nice things to say about River’s Edge Winery down the street, and Bradley Vineyards around the bend.

When we arrived at River’s Edge, owners Mike and Vonnie Landt were there to greet us. Mike said Lucy girl could come inside and enjoy the A.C. with us. We sipped pinot noir and Vonnie mentioned that there was a barn dance in the community center that night. She also said Florence is a pretty cool place if we’re headed to the coast. Mike and Vonnie seem like good people and their wine is one to stock up on, as it has very limited distribution.

Both River’s Edge and Brandborg buy fruit from Bradley Vineyards, so we figured we better head over there too. Bradley is situated on a picturesque southern slope. Unlike the first two venues, here the grapes and the tasting room are situated together. I opened the door to the little cabin and found Bonnie Bradley entertaining another couple, but I managed to buy two glasses of Baco Noir and we found a shaded spot to take in the stunning views of this northernmost section of the Umpqua valley.

After our three wine-centric visits, we headed to a city park and changed in to our swim suits. The Umpqua River is one of Oregon’s great waterways and it’s particularly inviting on a hot summer day. Lucy doesn’t like to swim but she’s a strong swimmer. When Darby and I waded out from the shore, Lucy decided she better join us. What a good girl.

The drive from Elkton to Reedsport was easy and the scenery was stunning all the way. Just before town, there’s a platform for elk viewing. We didn’t stop, but there was a herd of elk lounging in the meadow. At Reedsport, we turned north on 101 and entered the Oregon Dunes. With fresh water lakes on one side and the ocean on the other, it’s easy to appreciate this remote area of the Oregon coast. Just before the bridge to Florence, there’s a Best Western overlooking the city. Turns out they take dogs, have King beds and rooms with a balcony. I have to have access to the outdoors when I’m in a hotel. It’s a rule (and in Oregon, it’s typically a reality).

The Siuslaw River Bridge to Florence is a classic 1930s art deco creation, and as soon as you cross it and enter the coastal city of 9000, you hang a right and bing, you’re in Old Town. We had been advised to call Waterfront Depot for a reservation, which I did. Matt, the host, told me there were no tables available but he’d fit us in at the bar. When we arrived 25 minutes later, there were no seats at the bar, but Matt said we could sit at his most excellent six top, until the party which had it reserved arrived. Matt’s plan, while bold, worked flawlessly! We enjoyed a cup of chowder, glasses of wine and Manchego cheese with olives and marinated roasted red peppers, and soon enough Matt showed us to a great two-top against the wall.

I don’t often find the inspiration necessary to rave about a restaurant, but Waterfront Depot in Florence totally impressed Darby and me in every way. The food is great, the atmosphere is great, the service is great, the prices are great…we can’t wait to return.

In the morning, we grabbed coffee in Old Town, then headed out to Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, just to the south of Florence. The area is popular with ATV enthusiasts, and we saw some on our way in, but when we reached the spit that runs back toward the mouth of the Siuslaw River, there was no one. We parked, the lone car in a beach access lot. On a beautiful sunny Sunday morning in July! We hiked up and over to the beach and ocean stretching forever before us, seemingly untouched by man.

Men’s Health named Portland, Oregon “America’s Most Patriotic City.”

The magazine came to its conclusion after factoring the number of registered voters who turned out for state and federal elections in 2004 and 2008, money spent on military veterans, percentage of residents who volunteer, and finally, sales of fireworks and U.S. flags.

Portland wins lots of media contests and has long been the darling of The New York Times, but this new designation from Men’s Health Magazine is surprising to me, for Portland is home to lots of free thinkers. Of course, free thinkers are the people who make America great, but they’re often marginalized in favor of another, simpler view of patriotic Americans.

Speaking of Portland’s free thinkers, I met Jeffrey Thomas at Meatapalooza on Wednesday and just days later a huge, flattering feature by D.K. Row appears in The Oregonian on Thomas.

Row is the paper’s art critic and he asks Thomas, a former art dealer, some great questions about the art of selling art.

Q: Can you remind us how tough it was to sell art back in the ’80s here in Portland?

A: Remember, this was a timber economy and in the 1980s, Oregon went through its first of many recessions. We went through three years of lapsed timber sales; this little business called Intel was just starting up, so we really had no tech industry. Interest rates for houses were 12.5%.

So it was a tough time to get interest in cultural activity. There was a lot of money in town but you did not show it. It was very old school WASP. Nobody showed their wealth; no one supported anything. There was this anti-philanthropic thing going on. You just didn’t show that you had money. That made for a tough environment to create cultural activity and awareness that would draw people here.

Q: And people think it’s tough now.

A: It was nothing like it was then. There was just no cultural awareness. It was a country club for a few families and everyone else was part of the working class. There were few galleries, and only a handful of people interested in them.

Today, Thomas is a producer and photographer’s rep for Polara Studio. His Polara bio says, “…in his mind every day is a birthday party, which sort of explains the applause and flowers that he constantly showers upon everyone around him.”

Thomas is @bonegypsy on Twitter.

The Oregonian is running a feature on Gerding Edlen Development Co., one of Oregon’s biggest real estate companies, and its CEO, Mark Edlen.

Between 2002 and 2009, Gerding Edlen built 3,200 condos valued at $1.6 billion. Naturally, that didn’t work out too well for anyone. The article goes into all the juicy details of investor losses and bank repos, but that’s not the part I’m interested in. This is:

With the condo boom over, Edlen is trying to reposition the company to be the national leader in green building makeovers.

The green economy is in.

Gerding Edlen’s strategy is to buy completed or partly finished buildings at bargain prices, retrofit them with state-of-the-art energy-efficient technology and then either sell the buildings or hold them and lease them out.

Edlen is convinced sustainable building has finally arrived as a viable business strategy, thanks in part to the Obama administration’s view of the green economy as one of the country’s primary economic engines.

“You’ve got to get your hands dirty and do deep retrofits,” Edlen said. “It’s about insulation, new windows or reglazing existing windows, it’s about new water-use strategies.”

The Oregonian article is followed by several negative comments from readers—sadly, that’s often par for the course in a public forum. Yet, I think Gerding Edlen deserves some praise for keeping their head above water during the deluge. And their new course is the right thing to do, for their business, the people who buy or rent from them and for conservation of our natural resources.

In related news, The Economist recently asked, “Is Oregon’s metropolis a leader among American cities or just strange?”

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles-based demographer and author, thinks that places like Portland, San Francisco and Boston have become “elite cities”, attractive to the young and single, especially those with trust funds, but beyond the reach of middle-class families who want a house with a lawn. Indeed Portland, for all its history of Western grit, is remarkably white, young and childless. Most Americans will therefore continue to migrate to the more affordable “cities of aspiration” such as Houston, Atlanta or Phoenix, thinks Mr Kotkin. As they do so, they may turn decentralised sprawl into quilts of energetic suburbs with a community feeling.

That is not to belittle Portland’s vision. It is a sophisticated and forward-looking place. Which other city can boast that its main attraction is a bustling independent book store (Powell’s) and that medical students can go from one part of their campus to another by gondola, taking their bikes with them? Other cities will see much to emulate…Adam Davis of Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall, a Portland polling firm, says that Oregonians like to consider themselves leaders but also exceptions. They are likely to remain both.

It’s safe to say Gerding Edlen’s desire to retrofit old buildings to exacting green standards is a leadership position and an exceptional path, not frequently taken by real estate developers.

As for Kotkin’s claim that Portland is an elite city, I don’t see it that way, although I know what he means. Houston would be a much easier choice for a young family to make. Portland is, in fact, an expensive place to live and the wages here have not kept pace with the rise in cost of living, particularly real estate valuations.

Anyone who is on the ground in Oregon today knows the economy is weak, but I think the future portends good things. Many people are retrofitting not just buildings, but their entire way of thinking and doing business, and as this process unfolds we’re going to see business and civic interests align in impressive and unprecedented ways.

It’s been so incredibly sunny out we had to go to the western edge of Beaverton on Saturday and drink wine.

We started out by visiting Cooper Mountain Vineyards, where we ran through a flight of red before buying two bottles–their 2007 Reserve Pinot Noir and the 2007 Malbec, a new release Cooper Mountain makes in Argentina. The Pinot Noir was $24 and the Malbec was $20. We opened the Pinot Noir for lunch and it went exceptionally well with the Farmer’s Cheese, salami and olives we toted from the city.

After lunch, I asked inside what nearby winery we ought to visit next and Ponzi Vineyards was the answer. Just a few miles from Cooper Mountain we found Ponzi, and also found it to be extremely crowded. It turned out it was “pick up day” for Ponzi’s wine club.

We purchased Ponzi’s $35 2007 Pinot Noir and enjoyed a glass on their sun deck. When the woman inside the building saw our Lucy girl (on leash, btw), she came out and asked us to put her in the car, which we did. We also put ourselves in the car and motored back to NE Portland.

All in all, Cooper Mountain and Ponzi are not our favorite places in the valley to visit, but they both make highly quaffable Pinot Noir.

There’s an increasingly tiresome argument being made in the corporate suits, government offices and newsrooms of Portland, Oregon. The argument goes like this: Portland doesn’t have enough top tier talent to properly grow a company, nor enough venture capital.

According to Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian, three Portland companies—Jive Software, Ensequence and SurveyMonkey—all moved their top executives out of state last year.

“It’s not about Portland,” says Dave Goldberg, SurveyMonkey’s new California-based chief executive. “It’s really just about the Bay Area.”

“My job is to shepherd this company to be a great company, and if we can’t do it in Portland, we’re going to do it someplace else,” Dave Hersh, Jive Software’s CEO, said last fall. “I’m disappointed we weren’t able to pull it all off in Portland.”

Jive and Ensequence maintain Portland headquarters, and all three companies have retained sizable contingents here. Still, last year’s executive exodus was especially dispiriting in the context of Oregon’s wilted economy.

In related news, Laura Gunderson of The Oregonian reports that Lucy Activewear is moving from Portland to San Leandro, Calif., eliminating as many as 95 corporate and distribution center jobs here. Lucy, it’s important to note, isn’t locally owned.

In addition to the lack of available capital and talent beef, Oregonians also suffer from rumors that we don’t work hard and that our taxes on corporations are too high. I’ll leave the tax argument to others more qualified to speak, but the work ethic gripe I’ll gladly mangle. First, the argument is false. This state and all the great companies, schools and cultural institutions in it weren’t put here by a genie. They were put here by the pioneering, passionate and deeply committed citizens of the Beaver State.

Plus, too many places with a notable work ethic are soulless husks of a city. I don’t want to be part of that. Do you? Work is a central aspect of life in Oregon, as it is elsewhere, but we strive for balance here. The arts are important here; we like to eat amazing food and drink local wine and beer; and we go camping, hiking, skiing, etc.

PREVIOUSLY ON BURNIN’: Does The Northwest Have The Right Climate for Business?

Industry group, North Willamette Vintners, is pleased to announce its second annual Wine Trail Weekend, which will take place on April 10-11, 2010.

The Wine Trail leads wine lovers on a journey to 21 neighboring wineries located just minutes from Portland. A full Wine Trail ticket is only $35 ($10 for designated drivers) and entitles guests to exclusive access to all participating wineries. Guests are treated to complimentary wine tastings, food, entertainment and activities at each participating winery.

Some of the 2010 highlights will include terroir demonstrations, an appearance by cook book author Nancy Ponzi, live bluegrass, spring Chinook salmon cooking demonstrations and wine glass education.

Participating wineries include:

A Blooming Hill Vineyard, Cornelius

Adea Wine Company, Gaston

Apolloni Vineyards, Forest Grove

Cooper Mountain Vineyards, Beaverton

David Hill Vineyard & Winery, Forest Grove

Elk Cove Vineyards, Gaston

Garden Vineyards, Hillsboro

Gresser Vineyards and Provincial Vineyards, Hillsboro

Helvetia Vineyards, Hillsboro

J. Albin Winery, Hillsboro

Kramer Vineyards, Gaston

Montinore Estate, Forest Grove

Oak Knoll Winery and Beran Vineyards, Hillsboro

Patton Valley, Gaston

Plum Hill Vineyards, Gaston

Ponzi Vineyards, Beaverton

Purple Cow Vineyards, Forest Grove

SakéOne, Forest Grove

Tualatin Estate Vineyards, Forest Grove

The Register-Guard looks at hometown brewing sensation, Ninkasi, and finds plenty to marvel at, including eye-popping growth. Ninkasi produced 3,000 barrels of beer in 2007 but topped 17,000 barrels in 2009.

The company’s signature brew — Total Domination, a hoppy India Pale Ale — is living up to its name. Last April, 22-ounce bottles of Total Domination were the No. 1 single-serve beer in Oregon, according to Information Resources, a market survey firm. In August, it was ranked as the 10th most popular single-serve beer in the country — even though it was sold in only two states.

In surpassing the 15,000-barrels benchmark last year, Ninkasi became the first Oregon brewery to gain status as a regional craft brewery in more than a decade, said Brian Butenschoen, executive director of the Oregon Brewers Guild. As of October, Ninkasi’s production ranked sixth among Oregon breweries, according to state records.

Founders Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge said when they started Ninkasi, they wanted to establish the brewery as a regional presence in the Northwest and create a flagship brewery identified with Eugene, such as Rogue in Newport, Deschutes in Bend and Full Sail in Hood River

“That’s pretty much what’s happened,” Floyd said.

More than a century of industrial use has resulted in Willamette River sediments being contaminated with many hazardous substances, such as heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), dioxin/furans, and pesticides. This far-from-green reality led a 10-mile stretch of the Willamette to be classified as a Superfund site by the Environmental Protect Agency in 2000.

This month Oregon Business is running a feature on the Superfund situation. It’s a topic all civic-minded Portlanders need to get up to speed on, because our economic future is tied directly to our willingness and ability to clean up the river and put sustainable practices into place.

As with most things, we need to know our history if we’re going to find a route out of the mess we’re in and refrain from repeating past mistakes.

Portland was built on the Willamette River, and the city’s 150-year history has forever altered that body of water. The West Coast’s first navigation channel enabled timber and grain exports starting in the 1850s. The railroad followed in the 1880s. After a lull during the Depression years, the harbor shifted into full gear during World War II, as workers built Liberty Ships for the Navy and rail cars for the Soviet Union.

Since the war years, healthy business clusters have developed in international trade, ship repair and metals manufacturing. Little thought was given to the ecological health of the river until the 1970s, when Gov. Tom McCall campaigned against pollution in the Willamette and spearheaded efforts to clean up Oregon’s defining waterway. But by then much of the damage had been done. It was just a matter of time before the pollution bill came due.

Oregon Business does a nice job of showing readers just how large that bill is. According to a 2008 report paid for by the Portland Development Commission, failing to redevelop key harbor properties such as the Arkema site over the next 10 years could cost the region $320 million in investment, $81 million in annual payroll and 1,450 jobs.

Cleaning up the toxic messes along the river is not easy nor inexpensive, a fact that’s contributing to the slow pace of progress. Hard choices need to be made and compromises struck between competing interests.

Steve Gunther, an environmental contractor who resigned from the harbor’s Community Advisory Group in frustration, says, “This is a billion-dollar project with no timeframe, no budget, no vision and no accountability.”

Gunther calls Superfund process “a jobs program for lawyers, lab rats and consultants.”

The Oregonian says the cleanup effort could commence in 2013, with the cost potentially totaling $1 billion or more for industry, landowners, and sewer and utility ratepayers. It’s likely to involve hundreds of landowners past and present, and some of the state’s top industrial employers, from Schnitzer Steel to Siltronic.

I don’t see how Portland could have a more critical issue on its plate. We’re a river city and a city with a lot of unrealized ideals about how business and environmental needs can coexist. The thing is we’re not in a lab in a school. Portland is the lab and we can either get it right and prosper, or get it wrong and dissolve in a toxic stew of our own making.

In this episode of WineLibrary TV, Gary Vaynerchuk pits a 2008 Evening Land Pinot Noir against the 2007 Beaux Frères Pinot Noir in a blind taste test.

As you can see he’s blown away by the results.

Oregon Business is running a lengthy profile on Domain Serene in its December issue.

The title, “Evenstad’s Island,” clearly hints at what’s to come in the article. While the Willamette Valley winery puts out highly-rated wine, the owners, Ken and Grace Evenstad, suffer from a damaged reputation. They’re seen as wealthy hobbyists from Minnesota and are said to be totally removed from the local wine-producing community.

For instance:

“Ken and Grace have been quoted as saying they’re responsible for the entire wine industry and winemaking techniques going back to Jesus,” says Harry Peterson-Nedry, founder of nearby Chehalem Winery in Newberg. “And that’s probably not far from what they believe.”

Indeed, both Ken and Grace Evenstad say that what differentiates their wines is unique methodology and an unusually high attention to detail. They insist on dry farming — meaning they do not use irrigation — because this method produces stronger tap roots and healthier vines. They also strive for a very low yield: around 1.78 tons of grapes per acre (the industry standard is 2 to 2.5). And they do 4-5 hand passes per year through the vineyard, green pruning, removing small clusters so the larger, robust ones have more space and food to grow.

Domaine Serene ferments each grape separately — not only according to the type but also by growing conditions such as elevation, direction and amount of sunlight — which means working with more than 200 individual Pinot Noir fermentations. Domain Serene also ages all its wines on-site for at least 15 months. According to the Evenstads, this combination of world-class winemaking practices was unprecedented when they arrived in the region 20 years ago. And they claim to have developed a unique system for making white wine (“Coeur Blanc”) from mature red grapes. Others in the region scoff.

“This kind of wine was made by an Italian producer long before it was made by Domaine Serene,” says Ken Wright, the Evenstads’ original winemaker who worked with them for their first 10 years. “If you like, I can send you the link to prove it.” (He did, and it did.)

Sadly, the story doesn’t end there.

In September, the news broke that the Evenstads were suing Tony Rynders — the man who worked as their principal winemaker from 1998 to 2008 and created many of their most highly rated wines — for leaving their employ with proprietary information, especially pertaining to the methods for making Coeur Blanc.

Rynders would not comment because the case is still under way. But others in the community are avid to speak on Rynders’ behalf. Ken Wright, for instance. He insists the Evenstads’ lawsuit is simply a battle for power. “It’s typical of Ken and Grace,” Wright says. “Look at it this way. They just celebrated their 20th anniversary in business and nobody was there who helped them make wine for the past 20 years. I actually kind of feel for them.”

Of course, the great irony here is that Domain Serene is well known outside the state for carrying the flag for Oregon pinot. “Only Oregonians want to strip them of their status,” notes Ann Bauer, the Seattle-based journalist who wrote the story.

NPR is running a story on cargo bikes that features two Portland companies in the cargo bike business—Metrofiets and Clever Cycles.

The piece also introduces Portland mom, Carie Weisenbach-Folz, who picks up her two kids, ages 5 and 2, from school. “But instead of loading them into the usual minivan, she’s uses a cargo bicycle.”

Try that in Dallas, Missy.

It’s interesting to note that the majority of Metrofiets’ customers aren’t families—they’re businesses. Metrofiets has built a custom cargo bicycle for a floor refinisher to carry his sander, and another for a brewery to transport their beer kegs. Phillip Ross of Metrofiets says businesses “can absolutely get rid of one of their fleet vehicles, and use one of these bikes, within a certain geographical area around their shop.”

Today, 750,000 Americans bike to work–a 50 percent jump since 2000. There are no estimates yet on the number of cargo bikes on the street.

View on Flickr

We joined the festivities at Portland’s 14th annual Holiday Ale festival in Pioneer Square yesterday. I tried to keep a running tally of beers sampled on Twitter as I went from tap to tap. Here are my notes from the event:

Tasting Sled Crasher by Collaborator #HolidayAle

Drinking Mama’s Little Yella Pils by Oskar Blues #HolidayAle

Tasting Kronan the Barbarian from Hopworks Urban Brewery #HolidayAle

Tasting Holy Herb by Upright Brewing #HolidayAle

Tasting Stone Brewing’s Bourbon-Barrel-Aged Arrogant Bastard #HolidayAle

Tasting Great Divide’s Hibernation Ale

Tasting Cascade Brewing’s “Sang Noir”

@HolidayAle nice fest dude!

Tasting Double Dry Hopped Gordon by Oskar Blues #LiquidOregon

Opening Holiday Ale Fest with Unconventionale from Ninkasi

The best beer I tasted–Double Dry Hopped Gordon from Oskar Blues–wasn’t actually a holiday beer. But it was incredibly fragrant and tasty.

Of course, Darby tasted a whole different set of beers and I got a few sips in on those too. I remember one standout among them–Eel River Brewing’s Holiday Spiced Baltic Porter.