Wine industry loses a titan

A pioneer of the Oregon wine industry has fallen.

Dick Erath, among an aspiring group lured to the Willamette Valley in the 1960s by cheap land and ideal growing conditions for a varietal called pinot noir, died March 29 in Vancouver, Washington. He was 87.

Erath was among a handful of pioneers who settled in Oregon and began establishing what became an industry generating hundreds of millions in sales every year. The group also included David Lett, Myron Redford, David Adelsheim, Dick and Nancy Ponzi and David Coury in the northern Willamette Valley, and Richard Sommer in the Umpqua Valley. A few years later they were joined by grower Jim Maresh, winery owners Susan and Bill Blosser and Cal and Julia Knudsen, and others.

"We relied a lot on each other in those early days," Ponzi said in a March edition of Wine Spectator magazine. "We all had the same hardships and shared information with each other freely. (Erath) was a charitable guy and would share his time and expertise."

Erath was an engineer, but like some of his contemporaries also studied in the enology program at the University of California – Davis. He bottled his first vintage of wine in 1965 in his California garage before he moved his family into a log cabin in the Dundee area in 1968. The move coincided with his hiring as an engineer at Tektronix in Beaverton in February 1968.

Soon he bought 48 acres of former homestead land on Dopp Road on the south-facing slope of Chehalem Mountain, a perfect place to grow grapes.

“If you want to make great pinot noir you have to go to a climate that matches its requirements,” he told the Oregon Wine History Archive. “You can’t force it into a mold it won’t take.”

In 1969, Erath planted 23 varieties of grapes. The year 1972 marked Erath’s Winery’s first vintage in Oregon — 216 cases were produced despite the fact that the winery wouldn’t be constructed until four years later. In 1974, Erath was one of the first Oregon winemakers to eschew California varietals and began importing French pinot noir clones instead.

The winery exceeded the 10,000-case mark in 1982, 35,000 cases in 1987, and began to garner awards domestically and abroad.

The success didn’t go unnoticed: industry giant Ste. Michelle Wine Estate bought Erath Winery in 2006. Proceeds from the sale, according to Wine Spectator, went toward establishment of the Erath Family Foundation, which has donated millions to wine and viticultural education programs at area colleges.

“Dick Erath was a true pioneer and a visionary in the Oregon wine industry,” said Amy Prosenjak, president of Oregon operations at Ste. Michelle Wine Estates. “His Erath Family Foundation has been generous in supporting the wider community and particularly the wine industry, including grants to Linfield College, Salud, Chemeketa, Southern Oregon University, Umpqua Community College, the Oregon Wine Board and for agricultural research at Oregon State University.”

His attraction to the northern Willamette Valley and to producing pinot noir was simple.

“It’s the Holy Grail of winemaking. … It’s the best grape to work with to make the best wine possible,” he said.