I owe a lot to wine.
My journey here, to produce Riesling in the great northwest of Oregon hasn’t been easy. There were Continents crossed, languages learned, cultures explored, friends made. There was love, war, asses and knuckles busted and many, many bottles of wine consumed. I feel blessed to have such a supportive family, great friends all over the world, and amazing little children who don’t even bat an eye at picking up and relocating at the drop of a hat.
There was always wine at the dinner parties my parents threw and sometimes I got to taste it. It was usually red Bordeaux if I recall. I guess I can credit my Dad for introducing me to wine. But even more credit has to be given to a Chardonnay-drinking girlfriend of mine that I had in my early 20’s. For the most part, I had been a beer guy. But I too would buy and drink Chardonnay because she liked it and she was a lot of fun after a couple of glasses. We explored all of the mid-priced California and French Chardonnays that we could find or afford and they were fine –varying degrees of caramel, crème brulee, buttered popcorn and fruit nuances. Moreover, they were wet and got us drunk.
Around this time I had started working at a large wine and liquor store which gave me the opportunity to learn about and taste wine from all over the world. The California wines were the easier to read and comprehend, but I eventually got to the point where the European wines were more interesting to me, both stylistically and academically. At that time you only really had to deal with France, Italy, and a little bit of Spain and even then just a few Appellations from each (there were no Basque whites, Val d’Aosta reds, or Styrian Sauvignon Blanc on wine-shelves in the late 90’s in MN). The German Riesling section was a jungle of indecipherable labels mostly produced by large bottling-firms and co-ops, but nothing much of quality. I didn’t give the section much thought until I had the chance to taste a bottle of 1998 J.J. Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese at an in-store tasting. Well this sure as hell wasn’t Chardonnay. There were vivid flavors of fruit, mineral, acidity. It was like tasting a guitar-solo of apples and steel. ALIVE! I had to get to the bottom of it.
I started reading an old Alexis Lichine Encyclopedia of Wine and was as fascinated as I was confused by the complexity of the wine-labelling law in Germany. It takes a certain sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder to undertake study of that sort at age 21, but you can ask anyone: I’m clearly a very sick man. I quickly took it upon myself to invigorate the German wine section of the store. Riesling deserved it. It was during this time that I met Rudi Wiest, one of the top German Wine importers in the US. He introduced me to older German Rieslings and how beautifully they aged. It really opened up a whole new way of looking at white wine for me. Gradually my brain absorbed more information and my body more wine and I became the Wine buyer at several wine shops around the Twin Cities. I dove into wine regions known and obscure, but never lost my passion for Germany and its wines.
After a few years I met my beautiful wife who happens to be German and who was studying here in the States. I’m sure that my enthusiasm for German culture and German wine certainly didn’t hurt my chances and probably provided some smokescreen for at least a couple of my many faults. It was on our yearly travels to Germany that I really got exposed to the diversity and breadth of what that Country has to offer as wine goes. Many of us simply don’t see an accurate or complete picture of German wines based on what is available on US shelves and wine-lists including the many amazing dry Rieslings and excellent Pinot Noir produced there these days
After a year or two, I took a job as a sales-rep for the best wine importer/distributor in Minnesota. The company culture was one that focused on education through tasting, travel and eating well. Along with the rest of the extraordinary selection of wines from around the world, we started to represent the Terry Theise portfolio of excellent German wines. Terry became an invaluable source of information and insight for me and I probably wouldn’t be here without him.
In 2009 on one of our trips to overseas, my wife and I made the decision to sell everything we couldn’t carry on our backs, leave family, friends, and the best company I could ever hope to work for and move to Germany while our children were still young enough to do it (aged 2 and 5 then.) In May 2010 we moved first to Hessen, spent the summer further exploring different regions of the country, and then finally decided upon the Pfalz (just north of Alsace, France) because of the scenery, warmer climate, and the myriad of different wines that are grown there. I found a job at a winery in the Südpfalz and enrolled at the Wine and Agricultural school in Neustadt an der Weinstraße while our children enrolled in Kindergarten. I landed in Germany with only a very basic knowledge of classroom German (from taking a couple of years of night-classes here in the US) but after only a few months had expanded my vocabulary to include much of the local dialect (which is difficult even for other Germans to understand) and the scientific vocabulary required to take Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Technical, and Enology classes all in German, not to mention cuss-words, insults and all sorts of sexual innuendo.
I was extremely impressed with the German apprenticeship system. It is certainly the best, most thorough in the World and the teachers are second to none. Nearly two-thirds of all German winemakers go through the program at one of several colleges around the country. Students are required to take and pass classes relating to all aspects of winemaking, cellar-techniques, equipment operation, farming, and running a business. They are required to work at wineries during this time (normally three wineries in three years to learn different techniques from different philosophies) and to pass written and practical tests conducted by the Chamber of Agriculture. I am quite fortunate to be one of two American Graduates of this school over the past 115 years. It is really quite remarkable to realize that every German resident (even an American) has the opportunity to go to such schools (in most any trade) and not only receive an education, but to get paid to do it. It was truly an incredible experience.
The face of German wine has been changing for the past few decades. There is more focus on organic and Biodynamic vineyard practices, which I was immersed in while apprenticing at Weingut Odinstal, one of the top Biodynamic wineries in Europe. It was there under Andreas Schumann that I learned how to execute the philosophies that I have admired for years –namely less intervention in the cellar, and more care and hard-work in the vineyard. This is the crux of the teachings of Hans-Günter Schwarz, perhaps Germany’s greatest winemaker, who has apprenticed many of the top winemakers in Germany including Andreas. I am fortunate to have gotten to know him during my time at Odinstal and proud to be part of his winemaking-tree.
After my graduation, armed to the teeth with knowledge and confidence (and a mouthful of Polish cusswords to go along with the German ones) we made the difficult decision to move yet again. I felt that in Germany I would be just another German-trained winemaker (of several thousand with more coming every year) so we started a nationwide search of the United States for a suitable climate and geology for the growing of the wines that I had worked with in the Pfalz (especially Riesling, but also Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Gewürztraminer, Silvaner etc.) Oregon was the only place that met all of my criteria and the one with by far the most potential for Riesling. I had previously visited the Willamette Valley when I used to sell many of the best producers’ wines. I loved the area and the people and it wasn’t hard to convince my wife and kids that we needed to be there.
So we sold everything we owned again, landed in Minneapolis and drove out to Oregon where my family finally made it to the west coast from Ellis Island after a one hundred+ year layover in the Midwest. I worked the 2013 harvest at Brooks wines, got a job at a Willamette Valley Vineyard management company farming other wineries vineyards and early this year I decided to rent some space at an existing winery, sign some acreage contracts for Riesling in an area dominated by Pinot Noir and start a new leg of this journey.
Cheers,
Bill
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