A Grape Achievement

Weisinger Family Winery celebrates 35th anniversary

By Paula Bandy

Last July, John Weisinger, accompanied by his wife, Janey, returned to Ashland from Fredericksburg, in the Texas Hill Country. On a perfect summer evening, Weisinger Family Winery held a special winemaker dinner to celebrate 36 years of Southern Oregon winemaking. Diners sat on decks overlooking the Cascade and Siskiyou mountain ranges while John, always the storyteller, narrated winery history. His son Eric spoke eloquently about the wines.

In the Beginning

Raised on a ranch in east Texas, 15-year-old John was instructed by his grandmother “to take the tractor and go get some of the muscadine grapes out of the river and make jelly or wine.” He complied, but, “Jelly didn’t sound nearly as interesting as wine. I began searching for books on how to make wine and have made some everywhere I’ve lived.”

John tells the story of a job he lost at a church in Alaska because he’d listed winemaking as a hobby on his resume. They told him if he removed it, he would be hired. John considered it but wondered “What’s the next thing they’ll want me to take out of my life?” he says laughing. “So, it’s been a part of my life.”

In 1978, John moved to Ashland from Klamath Falls where he’d been a Presbyterian minister for eight years at the Mount Laki Church. His “transition” work, as he calls it, was with youths as Clinical Director for Southern Oregon Child Study Center. But, John says, “Having grown up on a ranch, I have never been comfortable in towns, or city living. I started looking around and found this 10-acre property. I couldn’t really afford it but thought I’ll try it anyway.”

After settling in Ashland, he befriended Valley View Winery’s Frank Wisnovsky, who offered him some Gewürztraminer vines. John planted them… and that was the beginning. He grew those grapes for 10 years before Eric came home from school one day wondering about “the big hole in the ground.” His dad answered, “It’s a cellar for a winery.”

The first vintage of Weisinger’s of Ashland was in 1988 with Gewürztraminer, Cabernet Sauvignon and a blend called Mescolare. As John says, “We’ve been going ever since.”

John describes his “early philosophy was more about the people than wine. I had visited a lot of wineries, but didn’t enjoy many because of the way people were treated. I never met the owner for one thing. I wanted to create a winery where people felt part of our family, and that’s now included in new name, Weisinger Family Winery. I always tried to be available and was often in the tasting room.”

Marketing was somewhat different in those days also. John says he would “mimeograph pieces of paper and go out around town placing them under cars’ windshield wipers. The flyers listed the winery with a little map on how to get here. By the time I’d return, people would start showing up.”

On the day they opened in 1988, someone asked him to sign their bottle. “I’ve done that now for over 30 years,” he says. During that time, John also served on the Oregon Wine Advisory Board and as President of the Oregon Winegrowers Association.

The Next Generation

Eric worked in the vineyards while attending school in Ashland. In 1990, he left for the University of Oregon, studying International Studies with German, minoring in Environmental Science, with a focus on geology. His final college years were spent in Germany. After returning, Eric advanced further into the business, and began making his first wines in 1997-8. The winery was honored with the 1997 State Award for Best New Family Business of the Year, based on progressing to the next generation.

Eric thought he’d develop another career before returning to the family business but was always attracted to winemaking. After working several years at the winery, he yearned to broaden his experience. John attributes Eric’s work in Australia and New Zealand as a significant role in Weisinger’s history. During the 10 years Eric traveled seasonally between the regions, John says he learned not just about winemaking but also, “a lot about managing bigger operations and helped us run a better business here.”

With over 43 harvests in his life, Eric realizes he spent an entire decade without spring. He’d go down under for their harvest, our spring, and return to Oregon for fall harvest, completing two each a year. “I had two autumns, two summers, two winters… and no spring,” he says. But, during this time, Eric met Julie, now his wife, one day at the tasting room. Soon he started traveling less, and returning sooner.

Tastings

One element both father and son agree on is staying relevant. Generally, doing so involves change. The original wine labels featured a colorful drawing of a hawk that lived on the Texas ranch John called home. He brought this with him to the winery. In 2011, Eric changed the label to a modern, minimalist depiction with the silhouette of the tasting room on the hill. A fitting tribute to his father, the original winery and where he grew up. The relevance of these wines continues as we discovered in tasting three sets of wine, each comprised of one young and an older bottle.

Gewürztraminer

These are the oldest vines in Ashland, planted in 1978 (about 80 percent of the original plantings still remain). A gnarly one hangs as art on a wall in the tasting room. When younger, the grapes were ripe and picked the last week September or beginning of October. Now harvest occurs two to three weeks earlier with yields about half of what they once were. He speaks about an experience he had with the legendary Southern Oregon winemaker Sarah Powell. Eric asked how she decided when the grapes were ripe and ready to be picked. “Rosewater,” she answered, “When you taste rosewater.”

Comparing the 2006 heritage Gewürztraminer to the 2023 vintage, the older white’s aroma of lychee follows through on the palate with original character and fruit flavors of melon. The hue is deeper yellow with an off-dry, creamed honey richness, an aged wine characteristic. The 2023 is so light it’s almost clear. Crisp and expressive, backed by light citrus and floral notes with rosewater detail on a fresh finish. Mock orange blossom infuses on the nose. There’s light acidity in both vintages.

Mescolare

Eric calls this wine “the supporting actor for all the others.” In 1988, the original blend was not all from the same vintage so John called it Lot 1. While all subsequent blends are now made from the same vintage, the name stuck. In this tasting we had Lot 2 from 1989, and Lot 26 from 2020.

Lot 2 blends Southern Oregon Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir, Troon Zinfandel and estate Nebbiolo, a varietal they experimented with for six years. This 35-year-old wine has an expressive old brandy perfume and distinct light bronze color. Quintessential Weisinger style wine with polished intrigue, an earthy, savory dimension– and a taste of honey!

Lot 26 is a blend of Tannat, Touriga Nacional and estate Tempranillo: soft, textured velvet with creamed black cherry and leather accents.
Eric “feels wine is one of the only true time capsules that exist…you’re drinking the year, the rain, sunlight, efforts of the producer, all captured in a bottle where the wine is alive, dynamic, and changing. Wine is a culmination of all these small things, and time amplifies those efforts.”

Tempranillo

Eric remembers 2011 as a cooler year and notes the ripeness compared with 2021. “Many people don’t realize that certain Tempranillo can age beautifully for years, a decade even like we’re tasting here.” (Their 2014 Estate Tempranillo won Double Gold and Best of Show at the 2017 Oregon Wine Experience.)
The 2011 Estate Tempranillo is showing beautifully with up-front flavors of cigar tobacco and leather so indicative of the variety. Imbued with dark plum, this lushly layered red possessed a beam of fig, adding complexity.

The younger 2021 Estate Tempranillo shows dark garnet in the glass. This well-balanced wine is fruit-forward with good tannins and smoldering Mediterranean herbs on the long finish.

I’ve been enjoying Weisinger wines for 27 years and have always felt they had deeper, earthy quality to them than many Southern Oregon wines. When I mentioned this to Eric, he nodded, saying, “We’ve always been willing to push the envelope on ripening, letting the fruit hang a bit longer, taking the risk of time. I prefer fruit a little riper because I feel you get more varietal character as the grapes ripen.”

Forty-six years and counting

Weisinger Family Winery is Ashland’s first winery, and the oldest between there and Grants Pass (excluding the Applegate Valley). John recalls how he used to step over the now roof-topping fir at the corner of their deck. He says it was a “volunteer” and felt it was strong, so he left it alone. Two crabapple trees frame the main entrance to the tasting room. Years ago, John felt there should be a pair so he cut off a limb from the first one, grafted it on the other side, and it grew.

The original acreage remains unchanged; although varietals have come and gone, the winery has sustained two families. John also notes how they wouldn’t be in business today if the community– he’s referring to the State of Jefferson which includes Northern California to Grants Pass– hadn’t been “so kind, generous and supportive. We’ve been through some really hard times. When the banks refused to help, club members and friends stepped up. This dinner is to say thank you,” he states.

After John retired and moved to Texas, he aided in the launch of Signor Vineyards. The Fredericksburg wine area reminds him of early Southern Oregon. Eric currently works with the Hill Country winery, overseeing their production, spending 6-8 weeks a year in Texas.

One fact Eric says he learned early on is “Winemaking is the art of the intelligent compromise.” Now 55, he reflects on the year his father was his age, 1996, a year before he returned from college. “I think now where I was, where my dad was, where the winery was, what we’ve accomplished, and what we’ve done, seems to be working. Where will we be in 2040? I don’t know, but we’ll be here one way or another.”

Paula Bandy and her dachshund, Copperiño, are often seen at Rogue Valley’s finest wineries, working to solve the world’s problems. She has covered wine, lifestyle, food and home in numerous publications and academic work in national and international journals. For a decade she was an essayist/on-air commentator and writer for Jefferson Public Radio, Southern Oregon University’s NPR affiliate. Most recently she penned The Wine Stream, a bi-weekly wine column for the Rogue Valley Times. Paula believes wine, like beauty, can save the world.She’s also a Certified Sherry Wine Specialist and creates a line of jewelry, pb~bodyvine, offered through boutiques and galleries. @_paulabandy.