NEWS / FEATURES

2024 OWP Person of the Year: Eugenia Keegan

Jackson Family Wines & Keegan Cellars

Eugenia Keegan, the Oregon Wine Press 2024 Person of the Year, standing in a vineyard. ## Photo by Carolyn Wells-Kramer
Eugenia Keegan preparing equipment before harvest. ## Photo by Carolyn Wells-Kramer
Eugenia Keegan holding a glass of Pinot Noir while looking out over a vineyard. ## Photo by Carolyn Wells-Kramer
Eugenia Keegan holding open a cellar door. ## Photo by Carolyn Wells-Kramer
A Keegan Cellars Pinot Noir label from the 1994 vintage. ## Image provided
In 1991, while serving as Auction 
Napa Valley Chairperson. ## Photo provided
Working at Hop Kiln Winery. ## Photo provided
Making Keegan Cellars wines 
in the Russian River Valley. ## Photo provided
Running Bouchaine Vineyards in 
Napa Valley s Los Carneros AVA. ## Photo provided
Pruning old Grenache vines 
in Roussillon, France. ## Photo provided
Representing Jackson Family Wines. ## Photo provided
Eugenia Keegan standing with long time partner and well-known Oregon wine pioneer David Adelsheim, founder of Adelsheim Vineyard. ## Photo by Carolyn Wells-Kramer

Story by Gail Oberst

Eugenia Keegan, who recently completed her 50th harvest season, has been chosen the 2024 Oregon Wine Press Person of the Year. 

“Eugenia has been incredibly successful at promoting Oregon, our wines and sustainable farming practices around the world. She has accomplished a great deal during her career and truly embodies the collaborative, generous spirit of Oregon wine in all she does,” said Michele Francisco, editor of Oregon Wine Press.

Over coffee one wintry morning, Keegan leans across the table close enough for me to see her brilliant blue eyes as she talks. Her headful of curls, despite silver streaks, lend a youthful air. When I stand, I tower over her; but then, I’m a bit of a giant.

Still, there’s nothing small about Keegan. She has been a powerful force in the wine industry, possibly since her birth in Sonoma County. When she speaks of her grandfather, Eugene Slusser, patriarch of the family farm where she spent her early years, her Western bravado glints diamond tough. Jackson Family Wines, for whom she now works, tried to buy her family’s fifth-generation farmland when they built La Crema in the early 1980s. The family refused, a story she told Jackson family executives when they visited Oregon to tour new company acquisitions.

“We were your difficult neighbors, I told them,” Keegan said. “They cracked up.”

The anecdote, not to mention Keegan’s vast experience in the wine business, impressed Jackson’s officials enough to offer her a job overseeing winery operations in Oregon. That was a dozen years ago. Back then, she’d been involved in nearly 40 winegrape harvests in California, Oregon and Europe. My thought was: Smart Jackson Family Wines’ officials. They knew they’d hit pay dirt when they met her.

When Keegan tells me, “My real love is farming,” she’s not joking. As we talk, it’s apparent her love for the agricultural lifestyle– both European and American– inspired her moves. She’s traversed acres of vineyards, cellars full of wine, over miles of travel across continents, and motivated years of land and business purchases along with jobs practical and passionate. Each time she landed as an owner or administrator that distanced her from the field, she always found her way back.

We can thank David Adelsheim, one of Oregon’s OG winegrowers/vintners, for luring this fifth-generation Californian to settle here. Keegan had been visiting Oregon since the 1980s and 90s at the exclusive and infamous Steamboat and IPNC gatherings, where she and Adelsheim met as colleagues. When their longtime business friendship bloomed into romance, Keegan first commuted to Oregon, then set up business here. She was general manager of The Four Graces and Black Family Estate in Dundee before Jackson Family Wines crowned her queen of their Oregon brands and properties.

Keegan had long been passionate about involvement in community affairs (her early years involved helping to found the Russian River Valley Winegrowers and Premiere Napa Valley), so it was natural for her to fully adopt the her new home state. Her board service pedigree includes several local wine industry organizations as well as advisory council positions at both Linfield University and Chemeketa Community College. She joined Jackson Family Wines in 2013 and has been instrumental in the growth of the company’s Oregon brands: Gran Moraine, Penner-Ash Wine Cellars, WillaKenzie Estate and Zena Crown Vineyard. In 2019, she joined the court of the Jackson Family Wines kingdom as a senior vice president of winegrowing, now consulting on 40 brands ranging from California, Oregon, Washington, France and Italy in the northern hemisphere, to South Africa, Australia and Chile south of the equator.”

Her work today, helping to sustain the Jackson family’s brands, both on the ground and in the public sphere, addresses a future of political and environmental challenges. To tackle climate change, for example, the company is investing in cooler regions– recently in the United Kingdom and Canada’s Vancouver Island. Biodynamic farming and other sustainable practices remain integral parts of the company’s plan to maintain long-term health in the vineyard, “So that we can keep making great wine for people to drink for a long time to come,” she said.

Obviously, this is no short-term project.

“We’re hedging our bets for the future,” she said. “We’ve been asked to make investments for Chris Jackson’s (in his early 30s) great-grandchildren, 200 years out.”

Although the senior vice president position for Jackson Family Wines would appear the pinnacle of her girl-boss success, I have a feeling Keegan’s idea of her best life revolves around the days she spends in the vineyards, perhaps hiking her own five acres in Roussillon, France, and being the winegrape-growing farmer she was destined to become. “I’m a dirt-loving gal,” she remarked in a decade-old blog she wrote about her Old Vine Grenache project in France. No need to read between the vines there.

“It was a solid life,” she said of her youth on her grandfather’s farm. “I think that’s where I was bitten by the agricultural bug.”

Boards & Awards

Oregon Wine Board
Lifetime Achievement Award (2024)

Portland Business Journal
Women of Influence (2022)

Special Congressional Recognition
US House of Representatives (2022)

Wine Enthusiast Magazine
Wine Star Awards Wine Executive of the Year (2021)

Wine Business Monthly
Industry Leaders Award (2019)

Linfield University
Wine Education Advisory Council, Member (2021-Present)

Chemeketa Community College
Wine Studies Advisory Committee, Member (2015-Present)

Willamette: The Pinot Noir Auction
Co-Chair (2019) Auction Steering Committee (2016-Present)

Oregon Winegrowers Association
Member (2017-2019), President (2019)

LIVE
Board of Directors (2014-2018)

Willamette Valley Wineries Association
Member (2014-2019), President (2016)

Oregon Wine Board
Member (2017-2022), President (2019)

Premiere Napa Valley
Founding Steering Committee (1997)

Auction Napa Valley
Chair (1991)

California Wine Institute
Board Member, Napa Valley (1990-1992)

Napa Valley Vintners
Board Member (1988-1992)

Carneros Quality Alliance
Board Member (1985-1989)

Russian River Wine Trail
Board Member (1976-1980), President (1978)

Life and times of Eugenia Keegan

1953: Born in Sonoma County, California to a fifth-generation farming family

1970s: Travels in Europe, earns a bachelor of arts degree in European History from U.C. Berkeley

1975 – 1978: Joseph Swan Vineyards, cellar/vineyard worker, Russian River Valley

1978 – 1981: Hop Kiln Winery, general manager, Russian River Valley

1981: Domaine de la Pousse d'Or, harvest intern, Volnay, France

1982: Bouchaine Vineyards, cellar/vineyard worker, Carneros, Napa Valley

1984 – 1994: Bouchaine Vineyards, president/CEO, Los Carneros, Napa Valley

1995 – 1997: Vine Cliff Winery, president, Yountville, Napa Valley

1994 – 2003: Keegan Cellars, owner and winemaker, Russian River Valley

1996: Etienne Sauzet, harvest intern, Puligny-Montrachet, France

2003 – 2009: Tsarina Wines, owner, Portland, Oregon

2010 – 12 harvest: Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Domaine de Cristia, Rhône Valley

2012: Keegan Cellars purchases two small Grenache vineyards in Roussillon, France

2013: The Four Graces, acting general manager, Willamette Valley

2013 – 2015: Gran Moraine, winemaker and general manager, Willamette Valley

2015 – 2019: Jackson Family Wines operations, Oregon general manager,
7 estates (650 acres in the Willamette Valley)
4 wineries (Gran Moraine, Zena Crown, Penner- Ash Wine Cellars, WillaKenzie Estate)

2016: Keegan Cellars purchases land in Dundee Hills, Willamette Valley

2018: Keegan Cellars plants Thirsty Boots Vineyard, Dundee Hills

2019 – current: Jackson Family Wines, senior vice president, winegrowing, Willamette Valley

Web Design and Web Development by Buildable