I am familiar with the Oregon Winegrowers Association (OWA), which has been around since the 1980’s and has done important work in the Oregon wine industry, including land use and labeling laws. But I just became aware of the Oregon Wine Council (OWC), a fairly new organization founded in 2019.
At first glance, there seems to be a lot of overlap between the missions of the OWC and the OWA. Can anyone involved in Oregon wine shed some light on how/why the OWC was founded? Was there some sort of North/South rivalry that led to its founding? (It’s happened before.) Maybe a difference of opinion on policy? What would lead a winery to join one of these organizations rather than the other?
Not my area of expertise but I believe OWA is membership based and advocates for the members. OWC, I believe, is a separate lobbying organization. I do believe OWC is an offshoot of OWA.
At the risk of stepping in it, I am on the Board of Directors of OWA and am the immediate past President.
OWA has long been the wine industry’s lobbying arm at the state level.
OWC is a splinter group of large producers and commodity wine grape growers formed in 2019 who were upset about pending legislation about labeling.
Most of the Oregon industry supports clear transparent labeling (if the label says Willamette Valley, all the fruit should be from the Willamette Valley; if the label says Pinot Noir, the contents should be all Pinot Noir). Some commodity producers don’t.
There has always been some leeway about including a small percentage of fruit from another AVA or even another varietal. Oregon rules are tighter than California and Washington and few if any Oregon wineries take advantage, probably none who participate here. If you look at the OWC Board of Directors, on their Website, you’ll get the idea.
OWA has long been the driver that minds the details while OWC has been something of a “free rider”. We are misaligned on certain issues:
Agricultural Worker Overtime - for many years agricultural workers were exempt from overtime leading to a situation where workers in the winery and tasting room were paid overtime while their colleagues in the vineyard were not. This equity issue became a political football. OWA worked with the State to implement agricultural OT in the least painful way. I personally worked with the legislature to create a reimbursement fund to partially offset the incremental costs for the first few years. In contrast OWC fought to the death over the issue.
“Right to Farm” - OWC supported a commodity agriculture effort to get rules related to chemical usage and spray drift loosened. This is a major concern for the wine industry. A organic vineyard does not want to be victim of a neighbor growing GMO canola and using heavy doses of Glyphosate next door. OWA fought against it.
Most Oregon wineries are very small businesses with no HR departments or scale to provide employee benefits on their own. OWA has set up a group health plan and last year drove creation of a syndicated 401K for member companies. OWC…nope.
Ah! This makes sense. Thanks for explaining. I suppose it was inevitable that, as the industry grew, the interests of big producers would diverge from those of the smaller producers that established the industry.
Edit: I should mention that, as a consumer, I’m grateful that I can grab an Oregon Pinot Noir off the store shelf and be confident that it is actually Pinot Noir. And that’s thanks to the OWA.
Part of what was confusing me, is that I knew from watching the Oregon Wine History Archive interviews that there was already an Oregon Wine Council that was a predecessor to the Oregon Winegrowers Association (and may have been merged into the OWA). This was back in the 1970’s, I think.
“In the 1960s, industry members founded the Oregon Winegrowers Association in Roseburg and the Winegrowers Council of Oregon in the Willamette Valley for technical assistance and information sharing purposes. These two groups began working together at the state level in 1977 when the Oregon Legislature was considering a major increase in the wine tax. The current OWA was established in 1981 after key players in the industry engineered a merger of the OWA and the WCO so it would be clear that the Oregon wine industry spoke with a single voice.”
