New exhibit tracks the once unlikely rise of Oregon’s wine industry

A employee inspects a Redwood tank filled with wine at Salem’s Honeywood Vineyard. (Courtesy/Willamette Heritage Middle Library and Archive Collections)

Standing within the Mission Mill Museum within the Willamette Heritage Middle, Kyle Pine famous that Oregon’s wine trade is price $5.6 billion within the state, in accordance with one research.

However for many of Oregon’s historical past, winemaking was far much less worthwhile and a humbler enterprise. For many years, wine was constructed from fruit leftover from canneries. At one level, Salem had the one vineyard within the state. Throughout Oregon’s lengthy prohibition, there have been none.

“Toasting the Mid-Willamette Valley Winemaking Heritage,” a brand new exhibit on the Willamette Heritage Middle, appears at how the area’s wine trade’s roots from small farm-based operations within the late nineteenth century to the founding of Salem’s Honeywood Vineyard, the state’s oldest regularly working bonded vineyard.

Pine, the curator and collections supervisor, mentioned the exhibit grew out of the middle’s objective of telling the tales of native trade. For the exhibit, Pine drew on the Willamette Heritage Middle’s assortment of images and artifacts to inform the story. 

“Individuals have been making wine for themselves fairly early on,” mentioned Pine.

Earlier than Oregon’s wine trade grew to become world-renown, it was primarily based in smaller distilleries, equivalent to Salem’s Honeywood Vineyard, positioned on the sting of downtown at 350 Hines St S.E. and opened in 1934. Pine mentioned the vineyard had a 100,000-gallon wine-making capability and offered its merchandise all around the nation. Early on, the vineyard opened in Salem due to the straightforward entry to fruit that they may distill into wine and brandy. In addition they introduced down a Rabbi from Portland to oversee the manufacturing of Kosher wines, she mentioned.

“I feel a number of time, we expect Oregon’s wine trade began within the Seventies, however that’s not the case,” Lesley Gallick, a supervisor at Honeywood Vineyard whose mother and father took over within the Nineteen Eighties. As a substitute, it began with distilleries like Honeywood, she mentioned.

She mentioned they contributed some newspaper articles in addition to paperwork, like labels and formulation. As a result of there weren’t actually vineyards in Oregon till the Nineteen Sixties, Honeywood made wines from dates, berries and different fruits. Whereas it gives grape varietal wines, it nonetheless makes fruit brandies and wines that seize the sweetness of the fruit however aren’t overly sugary, she mentioned.

“We’ve held on to our historical past,” she mentioned.

The Willamette Heritage Middle exhibit contains an outdated wood press present in a barn. Additionally included is an outdated wine bottle from the 1800s that was recovered from an archaeological dig at an outdated home close to the waterfront, mentioned Pine.

At that time, folks have been making and promoting wine. European immigrants have been utilizing methods from the outdated nation to begin small-scale ventures, equivalent to Swiss-native August Aufranc who introduced with him a course of to make pink wine.

The exhibit contains oral histories that may be accessed on tablets and historic paperwork and artifacts protecting the short-term finish (a minimum of legally) of Oregon’s wine trade. In 1915, Oregon enacted a prohibition on alcohol, 4 years earlier than it was banned nationally (Salem grew to become a dry city in 1913). Pine mentioned the exhibit contains the Ladies’s Christian Temperance Union, which supported the ban, and the way supporters of prohibition celebrated the ban.

Kylie mentioned prohibition is broadly considered as a mistake in hindsight, and the exhibit explores the pondering behind these desirous to ban alcohol, which was blamed on home violence and different social ills. She mentioned prohibition was additionally tied up in different political currents of the day, equivalent to ladies’s suffrage and anti-immigrant actions.

“Why would you even take into consideration prohibition, one thing so foolish,” mentioned Pine of the prevailing hindsight. “This was a very heartfelt factor for (prohibition proponents) them that they wished to rejoice when it got here to go.”

Pine mentioned that as People gathered in speakeasies throughout prohibition, it modified social norms about public ingesting, notably ladies visiting ingesting institutions, that may keep on after the ban was lifted.

For the exhibit, Pine labored with Linfield College’s Oregon Wine Historical past Archive, which has tons of of hours of oral histories on the trade. A few of these interviews may be considered on the exhibit.

“There was wine in Oregon so much longer than folks understand,” mentioned Wealthy Schmidt, the archive’s director.

He mentioned the archives have interviews with pioneers of the state’s comparatively younger wine trade. The archives contributed interviews exterior of the Salem space that may be considered on the exhibit.

He mentioned the trade did not instantly growth following prohibition and laws have been sophisticated. It wasn’t till the Nineteen Sixties that wine entered American creativeness as being a part of positive dwelling, he mentioned.

Wine manufacturing didn’t choose up till the Nineteen Sixties when the trade’s pioneers began experimenting with varietals, wine constructed from a single kind of grape. Within the Seventies, the world started paying attention to Oregon’s wine trade, notably after a wine produced by Eyrie Winery within the Dundee Hills efficiently competed in a contest in Paris.

“Toasting the Mid-Willamette Valley Winemaking Heritage” is open via the top of the 12 months Tuesday via Saturday from 10 a.m. via 5 p.m. with the acquisition of Willamette Heritage Middle museum admission.

 Contact reporter Jake Thomas at 503-575-1251 or [email protected] or @jakethomas2009.

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