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About Illinois Valley news. (Cave City, Oregon) 1937-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 8, 2007)
Page 9 Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, OR Wednesday, August 8, 2007 Draper Valley Vineyard a juicy matter for Curtices By SCOTT JORGENSEN IVN Staff Writer What began as a health problem eventually became a new beginning for Draper Valley Vineyard owners Al & Sandy Curtice, of Selma. The couple was living in California’s Napa Valley, where he was an electrical contractor and she worked at St. Helena Hospital, when Al was diagnosed with Meniere’s disease in 2001. That ailment had caused Al to experience dizziness, vertigo and nausea. After talking to a specialist, he learned that improvements in his diet and lifestyle could help recover the hearing he had lost. “It made me start think- ing about what I could do,” he said. The couple purchased property at 1751 Draper Valley Road in Selma in August 2002. During spring 2004, Al remodeled the house on the property, which was built in the early 1900s, then brought Sandy and their infant son, Nelson, up to Oregon. The 48-acre property was already a vineyard, but needed some work. “It was in disrepair,” said Al. “It had been neglected for five to eight years.” So the Curtices brought in a “couple of tons of grapes,” he said, and began planting them. Now, the vineyard grows a total of four grape varieties -- Cabernet Sauvi- gnon, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling. But these grapes will not end up in wine glasses. Rather, they will go to make nonalco- holic juice. While Draper Valley Vineyard follows many of the same processes as the average vineyard, it uses sterile filtration instead of pasteurizing. “This way, we get to keep the fresh goodness of the grapes,” said Al. “Our process is what really sets us apart.” Part of what simplifies the process is the fact that since they won’t be used for alcohol, the grapes do not have to ferment. It also al- lows Draper Valley Vine- yard to develop its own spe- cial niche. “It’s an all natural prod- uct that’s good for you,” Al said. “It’s a classy beverage that the entire family can enjoy.” Al Curtice with juice processing equipment. (Photo by Scott Jorgensen) Draper Valley Vine- yard’s juice has been selling commercially for the past eight months, and is carried at Taylor’s Country Store in Cave Junction, Gooseberries in Grants Pass, and Harry & David in Medford among other locations. With the fall season rapidly approaching, the Curtices are anticipating their busiest time of the year. Aside from harvesting the grapes, they have to process and bottle the final product. “There’s no time to sit and wait,” said Al. “It has to be done all at once.” He added that the busi- ness may add a testing room next year, depending on how business goes during the next few months. He also might expand the vineyard beyond its cur- rent 18 acres, and would like to try mixing blends of grape juice with other fruit flavors, like pears or peaches. For more information on Draper Valley Vineyard, phone 597-4737 or visit drapervalleyvineyard.com. Biscuit Fire study contends natural regeneration resulted in lesser fire severity The Biscuit Fire of 2002 -- which nearly caused evacuation of all 17,000 Illinois Valley residents -- burned more severely in areas that had been salvage logged and replanted, com- pared to similar areas that burned in 1987, but were left to regenerate naturally, a new study concludes. The analysis, one of the first to quantify the effect of salvage logging and replant- ing on future fire severity, was published in Proceed- ings of the National Acad- emy of Sciences, a profes- sional journal. It was pub- lished by scientists from Oregon State University at Corvallis and the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service. It found that fire sever- ity was 16 to 61 percent higher in logged and planted areas vs. those that had burned severely and were left alone in a fire 15 years earlier. The study was con- ducted in areas that had burned twice -- once in the 1987 Silver Fire, also in Illinois Valley, and again in the massive 2002 Biscuit Fire, one of the largest forest fires in modern U.S. history. “Many forest managers in the past have assumed that salvage logging after a severe forest fire, along with replanting new trees, will reduce future fire severity,” said Jonathan Thompson, a doctoral student at OSU in the Dept. of Forest Science, and lead author on the study. “This is based on the as- sumption that removing dead trees reduces fuel loads and planting conifers has- tens the return of fire- resistant forests. “However, those as- sumptions have never really been tested,” Thompson said. “This analysis showed that, after accounting for the effects of topography, Silver Fire severity and other envi- ronmental variables, the Biscuit Fire severity was higher where they had done salvage logging and plant- ing.” It’s not completely clear from these data, Thompson said, what the causative mechanism is -- the tree removal, the addition of more fine fuels to the forest floor during the logging op- eration, or the growth of new trees that for several decades may be very vulner- able to new fires. The study is not, re- searchers said, an indictment of salvage logging -- it may still have value for eco- nomic purposes or to assure the establishment of desired tree species. However, “the hypothesis that salvage- logging, then planting, re- duces reburn severity is not supported by these data,” the scientists said in their report. “Young forests in this region are susceptible to recurring severe fires,” Thompson said. “Compared to an older forest with branches high above the forest floor, young trees are very vulnerable, whether they are planted or naturally regenerated.” However, in the after- math of a wildfire, removal of large, dead trees, fol- lowed by planting conifer seedlings, does not appear to lessen the risk of severe fires during the first 10 to 20 years, Thompson said. This may be because the logging process leaves more available fuel on the forest floor; the dense, ho- Serving the Illinois Valley since 1979 Auto Home Business Life Health Motorcycles Bonds Boats 592-2176 Representing: S a fe co Met-Life Pr ogr e ssive AIG Viking Dairyland or 800-500-5635 mogenous replantation of young trees provides a good setting for fire; or some combination of these factors over time. “Dead woody fuel ... is only part of the fire risk story, and it may not be the most important after a few years,” the study noted. By contrast, natural re- generation of forests, he said, appears to result in at least slightly -- and some- times significantly -- less risk of severe future fires. This could be because the regenerating trees are patch- ier, have open gaps, more species diversity, or other factors. But the study showed that total consumption of tree crowns in a recurring fire situation is more severe in the managed stands than the natural ones, at least when there are one to two decades between fires. This research was con- ducted with satellite data, government agency records and aerial photography, in the mixed-conifer, mixed- evergreen hardwood zones of the Siskiyou Mountains. It analyzed burn severity patterns with a commonly used metric of fire damage (Continued on page 10)
