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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2016
Gorge’s wine success rooted in Wright’s old vine legacy
Other vineyard owners
call him mentor,
advocate and friend
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
THE DALLES — The pump is on for the
irst time this season but things aren’t working.
Alejandro Rojas, Lonnie Wright’s foreman and
friend for 20 years at The Pines 1852 vineyard,
says there isn’t enough pressure to water the
grapes up on the slope: the syrah, the merlot, the
“Young Zin” and, of course, the Old Vine Zin-
fandel that grows at the heart of Lonnie’s story.
Wright doesn’t like what he’s hearing. Truth
is, he’s fuming. He says there must be a leak
in the system. He wants Rojas and two other
employees to chop a path down to Mill Creek to
see if there’s a problem in the pipe down there.
Rojas demurs; he has other options to check
irst. And besides, he just had a bout with poison
oak and doesn’t savor crashing through brush to
examine the creek pipe.
“You got a machete?” Wright asks. “I’ll do
it.” And next thing he’s rummaging through
a tool shed, muttering, looking in vain for a
machete and grabbing a couple of big clippers
instead.
Daddy of wine in the Gorge
Wright, 67, bears the ruddy look of some-
one who works outdoors, with a thick mus-
tache and salt and pepper hair swept back from
his forehead. He’s the acknowledged daddy of
wine in the Columbia River Gorge, a pioneer on
the level of the visionaries who made the Willa-
mette Valley an internationally acclaimed pro-
ducer of pinot noir.
He’s planted, planned or consulted on hun-
dreds of acres of vineyards on both sides of the
river from Hood River east to Maryhill, Wash-
ington, a region that includes two American
Viticultural Areas and produces robust reds, del-
icate whites and boasts of “a world of wine in
40 miles.”
Other vineyard owners call him mentor,
advocate and friend. In 2011, the Oregon Wine
Board gave him its Lifetime Achievement
Award. He was nominated by his peers.
But right now he’s just another dirt farmer
dealing with a dang problem. The issue is
resolved a few minutes later when Rojas, the
vineyard foreman, inds a closed valve on an
irrigation well. Water soon lows to the drip
lines strung through the legacy vines up on the
hill, and Lonnie Wright is smiling again.
Gorge takes off
Columbia River Gorge wine is on a roll.
Vineyards, wineries and tasting rooms dot
the towns that line the river and now compete
with orchard stands and brew pubs for tour-
ists. Increasingly, the region is tapping the big
Portland market on the shoulder and reminding
wine lovers that Interstate 84 through the Gorge
is a much quicker drive than creeping out Ore-
gon 99W to the pinot noir vineyards of Yam-
hill County. An April “Portland Grand Tasting”
held in the city’s posh Pearl District was packed
with people eager to sample gorge wines. In the
meantime, Wine Press Northwest, an insider
trade publication, named Hood River’s Mount
Eric Mortenson/Capital Press
Lonnie Wright is considered the pioneer of Columbia Gorge wines, having planted or
managed dozens of vineyards over the past 35 years. In 2011 he was given a Lifetime
Achievement Award by the Oregon Wine Board.
Hood Winery as its 2016 Oregon Winery of the
Year.
The Gorge itself, a national scenic area
known for its massive basalt formations and
dazzling waterfalls, is part of the attraction
and is key to the variety of wines grown in the
region. The river bisects the spine of the Cas-
cade Mountain Range, which divides Oregon
and Washington state into western wet and east-
ern dry sides. Wine enthusiasts like to say the
region loses an inch of rain with every mile trav-
eled east.
The west side of the Hood River Valley
gets 36 inches of precipitation annually, while
only 15 inches falls in The Dalles and only 10
beyond that.
As a result, the region produces at least 40
types of wine from grapes that grow in a wide
range of heat and water, from zinfandel, mer-
lot and pinot noir to pinot gris, riesling and
chardonnay.
For winemakers, the Gorge represents the
“blessing and challenge” of a diverse American
Viticultural Area, said Mark Chien, program
coordinator of the Oregon Wine Research Insti-
tute at Oregon State University.
“They are well on their way to making great
wine,” Chien said. “It’s sort of like where the
Willamette Valley was 25 years ago: You igure
out what the heck you’ve got and what to do
about it.”
Vineyard revival
That might have been Lonnie Wright’s line
34 years ago as he stood on a slope above Mill
Creek a few miles southwest of The Dalles.
He’d heard — through the grapevine, if you
will — that an orchardist planned to revive an
8-acre, century-old zinfandel vineyard that had
been abandoned for about 20 years. Wright
showed up unbidden at 7 a.m. and found the
orchardist literally reading from a University of
California-Davis pruning textbook.
Wright grew up in Indiana, where he earned
a scholarship and played guard on Butler Uni-
versity’s basketball team and igured he’d most
likely teach and coach hoops. But the call of the
road eventually led by way of Central Amer-
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ica to the Paciic Northwest, where in 1978 he
found himself part of a crew planting the irst
vineyards at Columbia Crest, a winery owned
by Chateau Ste. Michelle in Paterson, Washing-
ton. He learned he had a knack for the work,
soaked up information, became a manager and
supervised the irst harvest.
The road called again, however, and he went
off for the irst of two trips to Libya to install
irrigation systems — adventures that seem
crazy given the current state of affairs in the
Middle East. In 1982 he was back in the Gorge,
starting a family with his wife, Linda, and the
idea of getting in on the start of reviving the old
vineyard appealed to him.
The rest is Gorge lore. The long-neglected
vineyard apparently is among the oldest in
the Paciic Northwest. Wright learned it was
planted by a stonemason, Louis Comini, prob-
ably between 1890 and 1900. Comini also
made the headstones placed at the local Cath-
olic cemetery, built a couple of stone houses in
The Dalles and worked on The Grotto, a Catho-
lic shrine in Portland.
Early photos, one dated 1910, show the Old
Zin vines weren’t grown on a trellis system but
were “head-trained on the ground,” essentially
grown like low bushes. The method provided
protection against freezing but left grapes sus-
ceptible to bunch rot.
Wright revitalized the Old Vine Zin and
eventually bought the vineyard and adjoin-
ing property, which among other iterations had
once been a dairy. Today the wine made from
the old block is highly praised by connoisseurs
and sells for $35 a bottle at The Pines 1852 tast-
ing room Wright opened in Hood River.
He also started a “Young Zin” block from
Old Zin cuttings 25 years ago, and planted mer-
lot and syrah grapes as well. In 1983 he planted
a chardonnay vineyard for a neighbor along Mill
Creek, veterinarian and beef cattle rancher Terry
McDuffee. From that irst job, he emerged as
the go-to consultant, cheerleader and vineyard
manager among people likewise drawn to the
prospects of growing grapes and making wine
in the dramatic landscape framed by the Colum-
bia River, Mount Hood and Mount Adams.
Eric Mortenson/Capital Press
Bottles of Old Vine Zinfandel and Pinot
gris await customers at the The Pines 1852
tasting room in Hood River. Hostess Liz
Marable is in the background.
‘Guru’ to ask
Bob Morus, president of Phelps Creek Vine-
yards in Hood River, tells a familiar story. Arriv-
ing in the Gorge in the late 1980s, he learned
Wright was the “guru” to ask about starting a
vineyard.
Wright “came up to the place and kicked the
dirt,” and asked Morus what type of grapes he
wanted to grow. Morus answered pinot noir,
then becoming Oregon’s signature grape.
“I suppose we can do that,” Wright drawled,
but he cautioned that he’d not planted pinot noir
before. Wright and his crew planned and planted
the irst 8 acres. Phelps Creek has expanded
over the years and its wines enjoy a sterling rep-
utation with reviewers.
“He got me going and we’ve remained
friends ever since,” Morus said. He jokes that
he eventually had to “ire” Wright “because I
needed to make my own mistakes.”
A break came when King Estates of Eugene,
one of the state’s largest and most prominent
wineries, came looking for grapes. Wright was
friends with the late Brad Biehl, King Estates’
viticulturist, and introduced him to Morus and
others who became King’s suppliers.
“The combination of Brad and Lonnie really
bootstrapped grape growing in the Gorge,”
Morus said. The company liked what it found
and paid promptly, critical to the beginning
Gorge vineyards.
“All those formative years sucked us into
growing more grapes,” Morus said with a laugh.
“It really helped us get established.”
Morus said Wright also pressed for recogni-
tion of the Gorge within Oregon’s wine industry.
“He’s such a strong advocate for grapes in
the Gorge,” he said. “It was really a struggle to
get the Oregon Wine Board to recognize people
were growing grapes somewhere other than in
the Willamette Valley.
“When they write the history of the Gorge,
they’ll need to talk about Lonnie.”
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