What Comes Next?

Oregon wine’s next generation navigates a fresh path

By Aakanksha Agarwal

When Oregon’s pioneering wine families planted vineyards in the 1960s and ‘70s, succession wasn’t the pressing question. Survival was.

Dick and Nancy Ponzi were busy proving the Willamette Valley could produce world-class Pinot Noir. Bill and Susan Sokol Blosser were instrumental in establishing a new industry. Around them, a handful of families were planting vineyards and building wineries, often with children playing among fermenters or helping during harvest.

Half a century later, a new challenge has emerged: what happens after the founders step back. Increasingly, Oregon wine’s younger generation is redefining succession on its own terms – not simply by becoming winemakers, but by expanding the possibilities of a life in wine.

Alexander Blosser, the oldest member of Sokol Blosser Winery’s third generation, is shaping the family’s future through governance, applying his experience with Oregon politics to the boardroom.

Mia Ponzi Hamacher, granddaughter of Ponzi Vineyards founders Dick and Nancy Ponzi, has reimagined her family’s legacy through Sosta House, a hospitality destination on the original Ponzi property, and Lerzi Wine, a tiny wine label she launched with her mother, acclaimed winemaker Luisa Ponzi.

After her father, Moises Sotelo, was detained and deported by immigration authorities, Alondra Sotelo Garcia was forced to take over Novo Start Vineyard Service almost overnight, learning viticulture, managing clients and reassuring vineyard crews as she fought to preserve his business.

GROWING UP

When Ponzi Hamacher was young, harvest workers and interns gathered on the back deck of the Ponzi family home. “The lunches weren’t fancy,” she recalls. “But my grandmother took them very seriously.”

Bare feet replaced muddy boots. White tablecloths and flowers appeared each day, and Nancy Ponzi cooked lunch.

Ponzi Hamacher ran around that deck while interns from other parts of the world shared bottles, stories and cultures. “It felt like the entire world was happening in our backyard,” she shares.

Blosser’s early lessons were less idyllic. At 15, when he wanted a summer job, his parents handed him gloves and sent him into the vineyard. After starting early and working outside, Blosser scraped bird droppings off tasting-room chairs. Once he was old enough, Blosser poured wine for visitors.

“I got to experience every level of the business,” he notes.

Sotelo Garcia worked harvest alongside her father every year. When he first asked her to help with Novo Start Vineyard Service, it wasn’t for her.

“I told him, ‘Dad, this is your career. It isn’t mine,’” Sotelo Garcia admits. “‘I’ll help you because you’re my dad, but this isn’t what I want to do full time.’”

UNDERSTANDING THE LEGACY

Often confused with his winemaking uncle Alex Sokol Blosser– Blosser is the son of Nick Blosser. “I’ll never forgive my dad for doing that,” he jokes. “I get spam calls for the winery all the time.”

Blosser always assumed the winery would be part of his life, though not necessarily his career. He left Oregon for Oberlin College in Ohio, where he studied psychology and economics while developing an interest in statistics and research. After graduation, Blosser returned to Portland just as his family was beginning to consider how the third generation might relate to the business.

Blosser says they learned some sobering numbers. According to a 2010 Bloomberg Businessweek study, about 40 percent of family businesses make it to the second generation, but only about 13 percent survive into the third. His father, uncle and aunt concluded if the winery was going to remain meaningful to a growing third generation, connection could not be taken for granted.

“They realized they needed to start early,” Blosser reports. “They want us to understand every part of the business and become invested in it.”

In Sokol Blosser’s third-generation internship program, Blosser rotated through hospitality, the business side and the vineyard. He not only returned to fieldwork but also helped with vineyard research and replanting decisions, gaining a broader understanding of how the winery functions as an organization rather than simply a family symbol.

Today, Blosser works in the Oregon Legislature while gradually taking on a larger role within the family business.

“Growing up, I watched my family disappear into board meetings and then things would change,” he states. “I wanted to understand how those decisions actually get made.”

Blosser believes perspective matters because Oregon wine’s generational transition is no longer centered solely on who makes the wine. It is also about who understands governance, hospitality, vineyard crews, finance, politics and a new generation of consumers.

Working in politics has reinforced the importance of relationships, Blosser adds. The Oregon wine community reminds him of public service because collaboration runs so deep.

“Everyone genuinely wants others to succeed because a rising tide lifts all boats,” he observes.

Blosser says younger drinkers are looking for something different. “They don’t necessarily want long explanations about the wine itself,” he explains. “They drink wine while eating great food, listening to music, going to a concert or other event.”

BUILDING ON A FOUNDATION

Ponzi Hamacher didn’t initially imagine building a career in Oregon. At 13, she began working at her grandparents’ Dundee Bistro, where she fell in love with the diversity and pace of restaurant life. After studying sculpture at Parsons School of Design at The New School, she joined Daniel Boulud’s The Dinex Group before serving as opening sous chef at Forsythia in Manhattan.

Ponzi Hamacher credits New York for teaching her technique, discipline and precision, but she also realized what she had taken for granted during her youth.

“I could walk outside into a garden,” she notes. “I could go to the farmers market and talk directly to the farmer. I realized what an extraordinary gift it is to live someplace where food, farming and wine all exist together so naturally.”

The idea for Sosta House emerged while Ponzi Hamacher and her brother Nico were traveling through Iceland, where small family-run guesthouses captivated them– hospitality centered on welcoming visitors into a home rather than simply renting a room. Back in Oregon, they began looking at the original Ponzi family home differently.

Their grandparents’ house had sat largely empty after the winery production moved elsewhere; while the rest of the family saw an aging building, Ponzi Hamacher and her brother saw possibility.

“Everyone thought we were crazy,” she declares. “They kept saying, ‘Nobody wants to stay in that old house. It’s falling apart.’”

To Ponzi Hamacher, “the house was filled with memories.”

In 2023, she and her brother returned with friends from art school, family members and cousins to renovate it themselves, replacing the roof, windows and deck. During construction, everyone ate lunch together, with Ponzi Hamacher cooking alongside her grandmother.

Today, Ponzi Hamacher has fashioned Sosta House around those same ideas, blending hospitality, food, art and wine. Guests wake to breakfasts made with produce harvested from the property’s organic garden, while artists from around the world live on-site through an international residency program. She also prepares twice-weekly wine dinners crafted around the vineyard and garden outside the front door.

“People come here because they want to experience Oregon wine, and I get to cook for them,” she declares. “Being able to continue that tradition of hospitality is incredibly meaningful.”

That spirit also carries into Lerzi Wine. “My mom kept saying, ‘These are unusual grapes. People won’t understand them,’” Ponzi Hamacher continues. “I said, ‘Let’s just experiment. Let’s enjoy making wine again.’”

Today, many of the Lerzi wines are 40 cases or fewer. Ponzi farms the vineyards before mother and daughter make the wines together. Ponzi Hamacher designs the labels and delivers the bottles herself.

THRUST INTO ACTION

Sotelo Garcia’s story holds none of that romance. She was working for a dental company when her mother texted asking if she had heard from her father. His truck was found abandoned a few blocks from home. Sotelo Garcia tracked his phone; it was moving north on Interstate 5.

There had already been reports of nearby ICE activity, she asserts, “I had a gut feeling.”

From that morning on, Sotelo Garcia’s life changed.

Before her father’s detention, she imagined a very different future rooted in music, criminal justice and technology rather than vineyards.

While harvest itself was familiar, everything afterward– clients, insurance, banking, ownership documents and vineyard management– was not.

“Now what? Who do I talk to? How do I talk to clients? How do I get new clients?,” she recalls asking.

Sotelo Garcia confesses, “I told everyone, ‘You are the experts. I don’t know any of this. Please help me by taking the reins for now while I figure out what we’re going to do.’”

Months of administrative work followed before she enrolled in AHIVOY, where Sotelo Garcia began learning vineyard management while leaning heavily on vineyard manager Victoria Reader.

Sotelo Garcia quickly realized the employees were not simply staff but her father’s longtime friends and coworkers. Her priority was ensuring they felt secure, informed and respected. “They’ve been my rock through all of this,” she acknowledges.

Where succession once centered on who would inherit a winery, today’s challenge is broader: preserving the ecosystem of employees, hospitality, governance and community that made Oregon wine possible.

“The biggest lesson through this crisis has been people,” Sotelo Garcia shares. “My dad cares deeply about the people who work for us, and that became my priority too. I’m hopeful my dad will return one day. Meanwhile, I’m trying to protect his business for him.”

Aakanksha Agarwal is a wine, travel and lifestyle writer from India. Formerly a Bollywood stylist, she now resides in the U.S., embracing writing full-time while juggling family life and indulging in her passions for cuisine, literature and wanderlust.