Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/735024
{ SOMMjournal.com } 125 "My parents were history majors; they met at Stanford," she relates. "Neither of them came from a farming or winemaking background, but they did have this crazy notion of wanting to work the land, doing something with wine and food culture." Alison's parents arrived in Oregon in 1970 and settled on a five-acre parcel in the Dundee Hills that had been home to a senescent prune orchard. "It started as a hobby, and for the first few years, we sold the grapes. Later, with encouragement from my grandfather, we decided to build a family winery. The Letts [David and Diana Lett, founders of The Eyrie Vineyards] were just down the road, and the Ponzis [Dick and Nancy Ponzi of Ponzi Vineyards] weren't too far away. It started with a handful of people; everybody had day jobs, everybody came together to figure out how to trellis, how to deal with mildew. We shared equipment." It was this generosity of spirit that laid the foundation for the Oregon wine industry. Collaboration is not unique to Oregon; one can find it in California and in Washington State, too. The difference perhaps is the degree to which these families worked and weathered vintages together, or as Domaine Drouhin's Managing Director, David Millman, so succinctly puts it, "What connects us is our common quest for excellence, and our desire to help each other get there." The Drouhins were the first Burgundians to invest in Oregon, and they did so because of the potential of the region and the warm reception they received from the small, closely-knit winemaking community. The fact that Oregon Pinot Noir enjoyed early success, earning a place on the world's stage in 1979, helped to cinch the decision. At the Gault-Millau French Wine Olympiad, The Eyrie Vineyards 1975 South Block placed among the top ten in the Pinot Noir category, outranking many of Burgundy's top reds—a meteoric rise considering that David Lett had established the AVA's first plantings of Pinot Noir in the brick red Jory-type volcanic soils of The Eyrie Vineyards just 14 years earlier. In the beginning: Bill Blosser plants Pinot Noir vines in the Old Vineyard Block, 1971. PHOTO COURTESY OF SOKOL BLOSSER A historic vine from Ponzi's original vineyard, planted in 1970. PHOTO COURTESY OF PONZI VINEYARDS