Good Grape Wine Company

August 26 2009

Oregon Bounty: An Interview with Oregon Winemaker Lynn Penner-Ash

Often, particularly in areas of marketing and promotions, the rug doesn’t match the drapes, so to speak.

That is, the promotion is intended to convey a certain reality that doesn’t exist.  Think about the Swiffer floor mop and you’ll see that the advertising and promotions are designed to offer the softly spoken tangential benefit of a whistle-clean floor AND spare time to spend with your family. 

Now, using that Swiffer, my floor may indeed be super-duper clean, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a frolic in the park is in the offing with a precociously cute toddler and the shiny-coated Labrador Retriever – the main culprits in many a dirty floor anyways … Yeah, this flight of ideal and fancy imagery is stock-in-trade stuff for consumer packaged goods.  However, I would argue that the best marketing and promotions deliver on reality – as in, a reality that already exists if you seek it out.

Fortunately, the folks that manage the marketing and public relations for the statewide tourism program, Travel Oregon, can deliver on reality.  Not only do the rugs match the drapes, but the paint matches the décor, as it were.

Outside of the cornucopia that is California food and wine, Oregon leads the pack for those that are food and wine inclined with a richness and diversity in comestibles that makes a foodie and a wine geek rub their thumb and middle finger together in Zen-like bliss, and they do so without much of the well-heeled luxury spin that is the double-edged sword of California lifestyle marketing.

No, Oregon keeps it real. 

And, you can find out for yourself. Travel Oregon has launched the Oregon Bounty Cuisinternship promotion – an opportunity to win one of seven all-expense paid one week trips to Oregon to shadow with an expert in their field.

Partnered with a mentor, entrants can choose to work with a chocolatier, a brew master, a chef, a rancher, a fisherman, a distiller or a winemaker – Lynn Penner-Ash from Penner-Ash Wine Cellars in the Willamette Valley.

Personally speaking, an all-expense paid trip to learn at the knee of Lynn Penner-Ash, an award-winning winemaker who turns out lush Pinot Noir, seems like a pretty good deal to me.

And, it’s super-easy to submit to win the trip for your preferred experience – simply submit a short video to traveloregon.com/bounty and a Twitter-like statement of brevity in 140 characters on why you’re the perfect candidate.  Entries will be received now til September 18th and winners will be announced on September 28th.

As a volunteer judge for the promotion, representing the wine blogging community, I caught up with Lynn Penner-Ash for a couple of questions:

Good Grape:  What do you think the next 10 years holds for the Oregon wine scene, particularly the quality of the Pinot and its mark on the national and international scene? 

Lynn Penner-Ash:  We will see continued and greater consistency from the top tier wineries but wineries that didn’t manage to gain brand strength before this current economy will begin to populate a second tier - meaning lower price point.  I imagine Oregon will start to have more price levels for the Pinot Noirs and more wines to choose from in those tiers.  There are many acres of fruit just coming on line that were planted prior to 2008 when fruit seemed scarce and grape pricing was at an all time high.  I think we will see more fruit available and more negotiable prices - which will then develop more brands in the 20 to 30 dollar range and continued growth of the under 20 wines.

Good Grape: You don’t see much Viognier coming from Oregon and you produce a relatively small amount—what was the impetus for doing a Viognier instead of a Pinot Gris or other white more typically associated with Oregon? 

Lynn Penner-Ash:  I have always been fascinated by Viognier, it can be so lovely and intoxicating and at other times alcoholic and mean spirited.  We initially started working with Viognier to co-ferment with our Syrah.  Having made what seemed like a million cases of Pinot Gris and Chardonnay in my 20 years of winemaking, I wanted to make a white wine that wasn’t what everyone else had to offer.  Viognier was new to Oregon and a challenge for me. 

Good Grape: Portland is a progressive city ... any thoughts on Portland’s food and wine passion that play into Oregon Bounty? 

Lynn Penner-Ash: We have so much available to us locally - fresh produce, cheese, beer, meats, chocolate and wine that it encourages creative thinking.  The “community” for the most part doesn’t take themselves too seriously so there is a greater sense of support and friendship.  We get together with local chef friends, they make dinner, we open the wine and we all play a game of ping pong - we go camping and a friend creates the meal with what’s fresh or freshly caught and we provide the wine!  We’ve got the easy deal, great food, great chefs and all we have to do is bring the wine!  The best part is we enjoy each other’s friendship and don’t get caught up in the pretense. It’s an engaging lifestyle, supportive of experimentation and creativity.

Good Grape: Thanks, Lynn!

As we climb out of this economic hole, I’m personally pleased that we’ll do so with what seems to be a more grounded pragmatism about life and enjoyment – food and wine, friends and family, life experiences, those are the markers of a life well-lived, not necessarily the car you drove up in or the big house that you left ...  So, leave the floor dirty for just a couple of minutes, submit to reality, Swiffer or no Swiffer, and enter to win an all-expense paid trip in the Oregon Cuisinternship program.

if you’re interested in a 130 page free Oregon Bounty cookbook with food and drink recipes, hit this link (PDF download)

To get more of the spirit of what the Penner-Ash wine Cuisinternship might be like see the short video below with Chef Gabe Rucker (shhhh … he’s a Napa native, now a Portland resident) and Lynn from Penner-Ash.

Posted in, The Week in Wine. Permalink | Comments (2) |

Print

Comments