Eugene weekly., May 17, 2012, Page 40, Image 40

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M O R G A N B R OA D L E Y O F
B R O A D L E Y V I N E YA R D S
P H OTO S B Y R O B S Y D O R | D I G I TA L L AT T E . C O M
Romancing the Vines
Broadley Vineyards prove Monroe can produce a perfect pinot BY LANCE SPARKS
T
he year was 1981, not really auspicious.
The place was Monroe, Ore., population
about half a thousand, a village, really, ap-
proximately halfway between Eugene and
Corvallis.
Experts said it shouldn’t be done, couldn’t be done.
Nope, the viticulture expert/consultant scolded Craig and
Claudia Broadley, explaining that they wouldn’t be able to
ripen grapes on this particular slope, this particular hillside
in, of all places, Monroe, all the way down at the south end
of the Willamette Valley.
Sure, some folks — David Lett at Eyrie, the Eraths, the
Ponzis and others — were planting such “cool country”
varietals as pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot gris, mostly in
the hills at the upper end of the valley, around McMinnville,
and getting really good wines.
But not here, not on this northeast-facing slope; it
should be facing south, basking in what little sun reaches
the soggy, sodden south valley, even though this particular
stretch had the reputation of being in the “banana belt.”
But Craig, then 35, and Claudia, 34, had spent ten years
searching for just the right hillside, and Craig had carefully
studied the slopes of France’s Burgundy region, where the
world’s best pinot noir was grown and vinifi ed. Craig also
enrolled in enology and viticulture classes at UC-Davis,
and he was convinced that this was the place.
Besides, the Broadleys were deep in the throes of
several powerful passions: fi rst, for each other, and they
still make each other laugh a lot, still take care of each
other and their growing family; second, they were fi rmly
gripped by the back-to-the-land movement launched in the
late ‘60s and ‘70s; and, lastly, they had become dedicated
4 EUGENE WEEKLY’S UNCORKED
pinot-heads, for which there’s no known cure, though the
treatment — quaffs of good pinot noir — is not so horrible.
Too, they had just about reached the end of another
passion — for books. In the early 1980s, Craig and
Claudia were the principals in The Subterranean Company,
wholesale booksellers. They mainly fronted for City Lights
Books, owned and operated the by the poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, publishing such luminaries of the era as Allen
Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, the best of
the Beats. Craig and Claudia kept their day jobs, kept
moving books — from Monroe, a place where the Beats
would be distinctly out of place, even now.
The Broadleys were bold, young city-slickers —
urbane, sophisticated foodies hailing from Los Angeles,
via Sacramento and, later, San Francisco, then, as now,
home to some of the best dining on the West Coast: music,
art, fashion, a vortex of the counterculture. Monroe was
then, as now, a rather sleepy little burg (current pop. 680)
surrounded by grass farms, its hillsides growing Christmas
trees. The main restaurant was the Chat ‘n Chew.
Of course, there were vineyards not too far south, along
Territorial Road: Lee Smith had Forgeron in Elmira (it’s
now LaVelle and thriving); Doyle Hinman had started
Hinman Vineyards (now Hinman/Silvan Ridge, also
thriving) in 1979 just south of Veneta. And slightly north,
in tiny Alpine, Dan and Christine Jepsen were trying to
make Alpine Vineyards (est. 1980) a success, with cabernet
sauvignon as their primary grape and wine. Not many folks
were fi guring that the south Willamette Valley promised a
future of gold in wines.
Despite contrary advice, Craig and Claudia Broadley
bought the hilly 15 acres just upslope from “downtown”
Monroe. They needed help from Craig’s parents, Leighton
and Marcile Broadley, nice folks who owned a large
company manufacturing glass electrodes in Santa Ana,
Calif. With the ‘rents’ help, C&C began planting their
“impossible” vineyard in 1982. Their 12-year-old son,
Morgan, labored alongside these slickers-turned-farmers:
“That fi rst summer I got to be the water boy,” Morgan says
now, recalling the labor of hand-watering each skinny vine.
In those fi rst years, Craig and Claudia had to live in
Eugene — Craig: “We couldn’t get fi nancing for a home
on a vineyard” — and Morgan did his schooling in the city,
eventually graduating from South Eugene High School.
They made their fi rst harvest in ’86, not a great year for
Oregon but good for the Broadleys; they sold all their wine
and got ready for the 1987 vintage.
Oregon winemakers spent most of 1987 apologizing
for over-hyping the vintage, but the Broadleys made good
wine, and persisted. In 1996, the widely read and respected
Wine Spectator listed the Broadley 1994 Claudia’s Choice
Pinot Noir at #24 in their Top 100 Wines of the World,
giving that bottling 94 points on their 100-point scale. And
one French expert awarded the wine 97 points, a signal
of extraordinary excellence. Success has followed success
since then.
Now, 30 years later, “water boy” Morgan, 42, has
stretched out to six feet, four inches, and has taken a much
stronger role in Broadley Vineyards and wines. In 1996, he
married the dynamic Jessica Waldren; lately, some of the
Broadleys’ best wines carry Jessica’s name or the names of
their two daughters, Olivia, 11, and Savanna, 9.
Morgan has learned winemaking mainly “from my
pappy,” though he’s taken enology classes at OSU and
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