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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 2020)
B4 THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2020 Oregon wine industry frustrated by lockdown By SIERRA DAWN McCLAIN Capital Press DUNDEE — Friday the 13th of November, Pamela MacLellan, operations director of Dusky Goose Winery, got the news that Oregon was going into a second lockdown because of the surging coronavirus pandemic. Gov. Kate Brown soon released further details: Win- eries are part of the so-called “freeze” for at least two weeks that started Wednes- day, and are prohibited from providing indoor or outdoor wine tastings or meals. Tast- ing rooms are still open for deliveries, takeout or curb- side service. “The news was so disap- pointing to us — and not just for us. Every winery here in the valley is feeling the pain,” said MacLellan. Winery owners say the order blindsided them, fl icking suddenly like a light switch. And the tim- ing, many say, could not be worse. The weekends around Thanksgiving are typically some of the most profi t- able of the year. Growers and winery owners told the Capital Press they are espe- cially frustrated by the exec- utive order because many invested in new infrastruc- ture for socially distanced indoor and outdoor seating. Dusky Goose Win- ery, MacLellan said, just installed new heaters, stools and furniture on its outdoor veranda so guests could safely celebrate the holidays with wine tasting. MacLellan’s winery was not the only one. Industry lists show Yam- hill Valley Vineyards, Apol- loni Vineyards, Cana’s Feast Winery, ROCO Winery, Penner-Ash Wine Cellars, Stoller Family Estate, Parrett Mountain Cellars, Furioso Winery, Knudsen Vineyards and Chris James Cellars are Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press The tasting room at Willamette Valley Vineyards in Turner. among the many wineries that were planning to offer socially distanced, heated and covered outdoor spaces for wine tasting this fall. They plan to reopen on-site tasting as soon as they are allowed. One winery director who did not wish to be identi- fi ed told the Capital Press their small winery has spent upwards of $15,000 install- ing heaters and other equip- ment the past few months. The director said it’s frus- trating to be shut down again after investing so much money. “It’s just wrong (tastings) got shut down after all that ‘IT’S JUST WRONG (TASTINGS) GOT SHUT DOWN AFTER ALL THAT EXPENSE. AND THEY’VE BEEN SO CAREFUL, TOO. SOME OF THE TASTINGS, IT’S LIKE GOING INTO A SURGICAL ROOM. THEY WORK TO BE SO SANITARY, IT’S LIKE YOU’RE IN THE ICU.’ Jim Bernau | founder of Willamette Valley Vineyards in Turner. expense. And they’ve been so careful, too. Some of the tastings, it’s like going into a surgical room. They work to be so sanitary, it’s like you’re in the ICU,” said Jim Bernau, founder of Willa- mette Valley Vineyards in Turner. Bernau said he hasn’t heard of any case yet of someone tracing the contrac- tion of COVID-19 to a wine tasting room. Just as they did during the fi rst lockdown, wineries are pivoting to e-commerce, home delivery and retail and other sales venues. But for many wine busi- nesses — especially small ones that rely on tasting room sales and wine club memberships — the second lockdown could prove seri- ously harmful. Dusky Goose Winery and others have had to can- cel holiday events. Nor- mally, wineries make a large percentage of their annual revenue from special holi- day wines sold on-site with higher price tags that they won’t be able to sell as eas- ily this year. Bernau estimated small wineries often make 40% of their annual revenue the weekend before Thanksgiv- ing through the end of the holiday season. “Local wineries depend on visitors and club mem- bers. They’re our bread and butter, and this closure is going to be hard,” MacLel- lan said. ‘Interior Chinatown,’ Malcolm X book win National Book Awards By HILLEL ITALIE Associated Press NEW YORK — Charles Yu’s “Interior Chinatown,” a satirical, cinematic novel written in the form of a screenplay, has won the National Book Award for fi ction. Tamara Payne and her father, the late Les Payne’s Malcolm X biog- raphy, “The Dead Are Aris- ing,” was cited for nonfi c- tion and Kacen Callender’s “King and the Dragonfl ies” for young people’s litera- ture. The poetry prize went to Don Mee Choi’s “DMZ Colony” and the winner for best translated work was Yu Miri’s “Tokyo Ueno Sta- tion,” translated from Japa- nese by Morgan Giles. Honorary medals were given Wednesday night to mystery novelist Walter Mosley and to the late CEO of Simon & Schuster, Caro- lyn Reidy, who died in May at age 71. The children’s author and U.S. youth ambassador for young adult literature Jason Reynolds served as emcee, and along with Bob Woodward and Walter Isaacson was among the Simon & Schuster writ- ers who appeared in a taped tribute to Reidy. Because of the coronavi- rus pandemic, one of pub- lishing’s most high-profi le gatherings was streamed online, with presenters and winners speaking every- where from New York to Japan. The traditional din- ner ceremony is the non- profi t National Book Foun- dation’s most important source of income and is usually held at Cipriani Wall Street, where publish- ers and other offi cials pay thousands of dollars for tables or individual seats. The foundation instead has been asking for dona- tions of $50 or more. As of Wednesday evening, just over $490,000 had been pledged from 851 donors. “It’s hard in a pan- Charles Yu’s ‘Interior Chinatown,’ a satirical, cinematic novel written in the form of a screenplay, left, and ‘The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X,’ a biography by Tamara Payne and her late father, Les Payne, won this year’s fi ction and nonfi ction National Book Awards. demic. We were scared we wouldn’t be able to do this show,” said founda- tion executive director Lisa Lucas, speaking online from the children’s room of the Los Angeles Public Library. Lucas, the exec- utive director since 2016, will depart at the end of the year to become publisher for the Penguin Random House imprints Pantheon and Schocken. Her succes- sor has not been announced. Along with the pan- demic and the presiden- tial election, diversity has been an ongoing theme in the book world this year and remained so Wednes- day night, from Lucas urg- ing publishers to work at transforming a historically white industry to the win- ners themselves. Yu’s novel is a sendup of Chinese stereotypes and of the immigrants’ confl ict between wanting to assim- ilate and asserting their true selves. “DMZ Colony” combines poetry, prose and images in its exploration of the history between the United States and South Korea. Mosley, the fi rst Black man to win the medal for Distinguished Contribu- tion to American Letters, spoke of his debt to such literary heroes as Ishmael Reed, John Edgar Wideman and Ralph Ellison. The award for “The Dead Are Arising” is the second time in a decade a Malcolm X biography has received a high honor for nonfi ction and the second time the honor was, at least in part, posthumous. The scholar Manning Marable died right before the 2011 publication of “Malcolm X,” which went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and receive a National Book Award nom- ination. Les Payne, a Pulit- zer Prize-winning journal- ist, died in 2018. “This is such a bitter- WANTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500 sweet moment,” Tamara Payne said upon accept- ing the award Wednesday night. “I really wish my father was here for this.” Few references were made to the recent election, though politics did help inspire Yu, whose previ- ous books include the story collections “Third Class Superhero” and “Sorry Please Thank You.” He had struggled with “Interior Chinatown,” wondering if there was a reason to tell an immigration story, until the surprise victory of Donald Trump in 2016. “Before then, I felt it lacked a real reason for being,” Yu said in a recent interview. “It seemed that reference to things in the past like the Chinese Exclusion Act (a racist law passed in 1882) had rele- vance. I started thinking, ‘This does still matter. This is a story you should try to tell.’” Winners in each of the competitive catego- ries receive $10,000, and other fi nalists $1,000, with the money divided equally between the author and translator for best trans- lated book. Roxane Gay, Rebecca Makkai and Dinaw Mengestu were among the authors, book- sellers and others in the publishing community who as awards judges selected fi nalists from more than 1,600 books — many of them read digitally because of the pandemic. CONCEALED CARRY PERMIT CLASS MULTI-STATE 3 PM CLASS SATURDAY NOV 28 TH Limited space available Best Western 555 Hamburg Ave, Astoria *The Multi-State Permit is valid in 35 States including Washington PLEASE WATCH OUR WEBSITE FOR UPDATES Oregon Only $45 Multi-State $80 Oregon included no-fee Firearm Training NW 360-921-2071 or email: FirearmrainingNW@gmail.com | www.FirearmTrainingNW.com
