Friday, September 10, 2021
CapitalPress.com
5
St. Josef’s Winery: An Oregon pioneer
By BRENNA WIEGAND
For the Capital Press
Brenna Wiegand/For the Capital Press
Tara McKnight of St. Josef’s Winery
with their line of sparkling wine.
CANBY, Ore. — Josef and
Lilli Fleischmann, founders of
St. Josef’s Winery near Canby,
Ore., can now sit back and enjoy
the fruits of their labor. It’s been a
long haul.
Josef and Lilli met in Germany,
where both families landed after
fl eeing the Eastern Bloc in the
wake of World War II.
Though he always wanted to be
a winemaker like his Hungarian
grandfather, Josef, now 87, was
trained in baking and after coming
to the U.S. worked in that capacity
in Chicago for many years.
It was a dream come true in
1970 when they were able to pur-
chase a 64-acre farm in Oregon’s
Willamette Valley.
The Fleischmanns worked
to build a winery while raising a
family and running a string of arti-
san bakeries for 23 years to fund
it, little knowing they were help-
ing pioneer an entire industry.
“They got in on the ground
fl oor before there was a ground
fl oor,” son-in-law Carl McKnight
says. McKnight, the winemaker,
is married to Tara (Fleischmann)
McKnight, company president.
Brother Kirk runs the 40 acres of
vineyards and 22 acres of organic
vegetables.
By 1978, Tara and Kirk helped
plant the fi rst vines. When the win-
ery was bonded fi ve years later,
Oregon had fewer than 30 winer-
ies. The Oregon Wine Board puts
the current number at 908.
The family strives for food-
friendly wine like their parents
grew up with around the dinner
table.
“The Willamette Valley is great
for that,” Carl said. “The nights
are cooler and when temperatures
drop the acids brighten up so the
wine cuts through the fat in food.
“Growing our own lets us dic-
tate how the grapes are grown
and the quantities we want,”
Carl said. “We can also harvest
and start crushing the same hour.
When it takes fi ve or six hours
the grapes start fermenting during
transport.”
The family, shipping 5,000
to 8,000 cases annually, aims
to make the wine experience
approachable and fun for newbies
and afi cionados alike.
Tara coined a phrase that
appears on some labels: “Serious
wines for the not so serious.”
“…Because it is a fun indus-
try,” she said. “It’s not brain sur-
gery and we’re not going to fi nd
a way to save the world, but we
can certainly help people enjoy
life with a nice glass of wine.”
The business is unique in its
start-to-fi nish nature.
“We are growing the prod-
uct and even with mechanized
equipment each vine has to be
touched by hands eight times
during the year,” Carl said. “Peo-
ple don’t see how labor intensive
it is.”
Abacela Winery: Brings unique varietals to Oregon
By CRAIG REED
For the Capital Press
WINSTON, Ore. — Dr.
Earl Jones enjoys research.
His professional career
included studying and teach-
ing medicine.
And then his urge to do
research and his enjoyment
of wine led him to study the
wine industry. He discov-
ered that Tempranillo grapes
were not being commer-
cially grown for wine in the
U.S.
“I visited Europe a lot
as a medical researcher
and I drank wine there,” he
explained. “Nobody had an
answer as to why no Tem-
pranillo was being pro-
duced in America. That
raised the question in me,
‘Why doesn’t somebody fi g-
ure out the mystery behind it
and grow it?’” Jones found
Tempranillo vines need a
hot growing season between
mid-April and October, cool
nights and little rain before
being harvested in late Octo-
ber before the fi rst frost.
His research found a
match for Spain’s climate
in southwestern Oregon. In
1992, Jones and his wife,
Hilda, purchased property
Craig Reed/For the Capital Press
Dr. Earl Jones did the research on Tempranillo wine-
grapes before deciding to plant a vineyard on rolling
hills outside Winston, Ore., in 1995.
just outside Winston, Ore.
They planted 12 acres, four
of them with Tempranillo.
They named their vine-
yard Abacela. It means “he/
she/they plant a vine.”
Over the next 15 years,
the vineyard was expanded
four times and now totals
76 acres. Tempranillo vines
cover 25 acres and other
varieties such as Albarino,
Grenache, Malbec, Syrah
and a few others are grown
on fewer acres.
After 27 years of being
involved in the daily opera-
tion of the vineyard and win-
ery, Jones is slowly turning
responsibilities over to oth-
ers. Gavin Joll was named
the general manager 18
months ago and then in July,
Greg Jones, Earl and Hilda’s
son, took over as Abacela’s
CEO.
Greg Jones is an atmo-
spheric scientist and viticul-
tural climatologist. He has
done research and taught at
Southern Oregon University
in Ashland, Ore., and at Lin-
fi eld University in McMinn-
ville, Ore. His research has
connected climate change
to biological changes in
grapevines.
“This transition fulfi lls a
long-term objective of fam-
ily succession,” Earl Jones
said in a statement. “Greg
is a dynamic leader with
creative energy who under-
stands the local, regional
and global wine industries
which makes him uniquely
suited to carry on our family
business.”
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