Lazy River Vineyard

We were seated at the picnic table in the crew shed one winter day in 2001 eating home-made bean soup and drinking wine out of water glasses. The fire in the Jotel stove gave steady heat. It was raining. We were entertaining a visitor and fine winemaker, Eric Hamacher. As we talked, the outline of a business took form. Eric needed a winery; we needed a winemaker. Ned was a contractor with grapes; Eric was a winemaker seeking expertise in construction. In their 2000 session the Oregon State Legislature passed a landmark bill allowing individual wineries to share a facility. Until then, many winemakers were vagabonds, moving from one winery to another as space allowed. The Studio facility meant Eric and other winemakers could have a home with state of the art equipment designed especially to be shared by a number of small wineries, a base for a year or for ten. As far as we knew it would be the first such facility in the United States. He strongly felt other winemakers would be interested. We became partners-Eric, his wife Luisa Ponzi, Ned and I. The project began. After visiting property throughout the Willamette Valley, land was purchased on the north side of Carlton, Oregon, a small town with a center square, turn of the last century brick buildings, a river front park and several other wineries located in town and the surrounding countryside. Wishing to use the environment wisely, we worked with consultant Scott Lewis to understand and adopt LEED specifications, in anticipation of silver certification. In order to accommodate multiple winemakers at harvest, our facility required very efficient production equipment and flexible barrel storage. Joe Chauncey of Boxwood did the formal design based on Eric’s concepts of the necessary ebb and flow, which Ned had blocked out guided by the slope of the site. Wine made here would gravity flow. It would be made in small fermenters. It would be handcrafted.