My father’s business success in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, enabled him to indulge his love of wine and become our partner in 1974. He invested as soon as he was convinced we were serious about our project. He invested only a bit of cash, but he encouraged us to expand by guaranteeing loans for us at the Milwaukee bank that handled his business. His help was crucial, because local banks thought we were just as crazy as everyone else did and refused to lend money to such a risky project. With my father’s help, we were able to buy adjoining parcels of land as they came up for sale. We benefited from having our vineyards contiguous. On the other hand, financing our operation so completely through debt left us undercapitalized and financially vulnerable, a condition that plagued us for years.
Daddy envisioned a family winery where we could ferment the grapes we grew and craft them into fine wines on our own land and by our own hand. Bill and I, barely able to keep the vineyards and orchards under control, were daunted at the thought of adding a winery. But spurred on by my father, Bill started researching startup costs and building materials and hired a marketing consultant to help estimate income and costs for the first ten years. He hired a winery design consultant to help lay out the winery and select equipment. As Daddy’s enthusiasm grew, he talked my three older brothers into investing.
The next step, getting permission to site a winery on our property, became an unexpected hurdle. The land use regulations we both strongly favored became our stumbling block. Because of his training, Bill was a firm believer in land use planning and didn’t mind having to go to the county planning commission for approval to construct a winery on farm property. Oregon had just buttressed its land use laws, the legacy of Governor Tom McCall, one of the state’s most colorful and well-loved politicians. McCall took a forceful stand on controlling growth that gained national attention. In a CBS interview in 1971, he quipped, “Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.”
When Governor McCall pushed the Oregon legislature to pass a state land use bill in 1973, mandating that each county decide how the land within its boundaries should be used—what should be designated agricultural, residential, commercial, or industrial—Bill put his planning degree to use by getting involved. His goal was to convince county planners to designate the hillsides where we had vineyards as agricultural, rather than as residential “view property,” which was the route they were headed. Hillside soils, with their lower fertility and excellent drainage, suited wine grapes, and gave the vines natural frost protection because they were a few degrees warmer than the valley floor. The small group of winegrowers worked together to convince the county that vineyards were the wave of the future and the hillsides should be designated agricultural.
The designation of hillsides as agricultural, with twenty- and forty-acre minimums, became vital protection for the wine industry. The efforts of the early winegrowers meant the hillsides in Yamhill County would become dotted with vineyards instead of trailer parks or subdivisions. In neighboring counties, where the growers were less active in shaping the law, hillside housing developments encroached on farms and vineyards as the population of metropolitan Portland expanded.
Oregon entered the twenty-first century as the only state in the nation with a comprehensive land use program. Governor McCall’s land use initiative, Senate Bill 100, passed at an extraordinary time in Oregon’s history, when visionary and strategic politicians from both political parties found a way to work together, thinking of future generations and the betterment of the state. Its implementation coincided neatly with the development of Oregon’s new wine industry.
As we moved ahead with our winery plans and applied for the land use permit, we saw a side of Yamhill County that we had known was there but hadn’t paid much attention to—teetotaling religious fundamentalism. Without our knowledge, a few fervent winery opponents carried around petitions requesting that the county deny our permit. While the petition said nothing about God, religion, or the evils of alcohol, we found out that the leaders of the petition drive were either Mormons or members of the Church of God, a fundamentalist Christian denomination. Both groups were vigorously anti-alcohol. As long as we only farmed, we were accepted into the community. But the winery we were proposing represented something new and threatening. We suddenly found ourselves thrust into the role of outsiders.
Our neighbors’ imaginations ran wild thinking about the terrible possibilities. “Do you want drunks from the winery roaming the hills?” the petition carriers would ask their neighbors. They mentioned rape. “Our homes and women wouldn’t be safe.” Petitioners asked their neighbors to imagine the flashing neon signs that would undoubtedly be on top of our winery to attract people off the highway a quarter mile away. In sum, a winery would be a blight on the neighborhood, threaten the well-being of their families, and endanger their quality of life. If I had believed all the things they said would happen, I would have been against us too. The petition recorded fifty-three signatures. I was saddened to see the signatures of some of my Unity Club friends. No one had talked to me about their concerns—they had just signed.
Adding fuel to the religious opposition was political opposition roused by Bill’s work on the county land use plan. Saving hillsides for agriculture might have been good long-range planning, but it infuriated farmers who had wanted to divide their land into smaller parcels or build more than one house on it. After working on the county plan, Bill was appointed to the Yamhill County Planning Commission, whose task was to uphold the new plan. He recused himself when we applied for our winery permit. People who had been denied their petitions saw a chance for revenge. One opponent stated flatly, “Blosser kept me from getting my request; I’m sure as hell going to keep him from getting his.”
The hearing before the Yamhill County Planning Commission, February 17, 1977, took place in the basement of the Yamhill County courthouse. The low-ceilinged hearing room was packed when we arrived. I wondered what had brought out all these people and was shocked when I found out they were there for us. Or rather, against us. We were blindsided. The fierce looks on people’s faces made it clear that Bill and I were the enemy and it was their mission to defeat us. Our permit request was the second item on the agenda. The commissioners never got to the third item; our hearing took up the rest of the evening.
The anti-winery faction had turned out in force, bringing an attorney, people to testify, and their petition full of signatures. Many of the complaints had nothing to do with the proposed winery but spoke to vineyard issues—the use of noisy air cannons to scare away birds, fear of the migrant workers employed during harvest. “Technical” reasons for opposition were that a winery would lower the water table by using too much water, cause pollution, lower property values, create traffic jams, generate offensive odors with fruit waste, promote drunkenness, be a visual blight in the neighborhood, and be incompatible with the existing development in the area.
Bill quietly and methodically presented our case and painstakingly rebutted the opposing testimony, point by point. He had put in a full day of work in Portland and barely had time to grab dinner. Alone and vulnerable in the face of such intense opposition, I could see him struggling to stay calm and not rise to the emotional pitch of his opponents. Surrounded by a sea of angry people, wishing I were anywhere else, I listened to people around me condemning our project. I could feel my shoulders hunching up around my ears.
A tension-relieving moment came when Howard Timmons, a retired farmer who owned a large parcel at the top of our hill, stood up to testify against the noise from our bird-scaring air cannon. He was feisty and agitated about how bothersome that was. When he finished, Bill asked him to clarify one of the allegations. Silence. The audience looked expectantly at Howard until his wife, Hazel, finally interceded to explain that he hadn’t heard the question; he was almost deaf. People couldn’t help laughing, even though Howard had most certainly damaged their case. The absurdity of Howard complaining about the air cannon he couldn’t hear epitomized, for us, the whole anti-winery campaign.
After three hours of testimony, the planning commissioners, apparently perplexed by the strength of the opposition, questioned their staff, which had recommended approval. After making sure the opponents’ arguments were unsubstantiated, they voted unanimously to approve the project