07.17.06
Our first visit to Duck Pond Cellars winery was accidental. My wife and I were heading from Portland, OR, to the Pacific Coast of the United States for a vacation, and I drove past the entrance without even noticing the sign. What grabbed my attention was a spectacular flower display along Route 99W, with a beckoning lane lined with more flowers. I found a turnaround and went back, thinking it was a nursery or some unusual floral garden. That was our initial impression of DPC, and it became the first of many stops over the past eight years.
When one visits a tasting room and gift shop that has "friendly" and "family" written all over it, you just know that you've found one of those wonderful hideaways that you'll revisit. And that is for both the wine and the gifts, as well as other surprises, like the Italian sodas we found in the cooler last fall.
A family operation, the four vineyards of Duck Pond Cellars in Oregon and Washington are run by founder Doug Fries. His wife, JoAnn, handles administrative and operational tasks, and the rest of the family is actively involved: Daughter Lisa Jenkins does the marketing and promotions, and her husband, Scott, handles sales; son Matt and his wife, Erin, assist in vineyard development in Oregon, and son Greg is the winemaker for the total operation.
A graduate of the University of California at Davis, Greg puts his degree in fermentation science to good use. His wines are lauded as being of high quality yet value priced, in keeping with his stated goal of producing wines that are accessible price-wise to all consumers yet keeping the quality consistent with wines priced two to three times higher. Consumers agree, judging from the growth at DPC - from a few hundred cases a year beginning in 1993 to more than 100,000 cases in each of the past couple of years. The company has a goal of 250,000 cases once the Prosser, WA, vineyard is really up and running.
I spoke at length with Lisa Jenkins for this article. She has, in addition to other assignments at the vineyard, the responsibility for ordering the labels. She and her mom came up with many of the duck ideas for the illustrations, and she credits brother Matt, a hunter, with the idea of using the Egyptian goose and the spur-winged goose, two very large African specimens.
"While we make slight changes in the labels from year to year, we want the overall illustration to remain very similiar to the prior year vintage," Lisa says. "This makes it easy for our customers to find a specific wine on the shelf because, for example, our chardonnay will always have a blue-winged teal on the label." She adds that they want the duck or goose to be as large as possible on the label to further assist consumers with selection.
The vineyards around the winery and tasting complex make up only a tiny fraction of the total acreage; 15 of the 35 acres are planted with pinot noir vines. Another 325 acres are in the Willamette Valley near Salem, OR, which has the fairly poor quality, red clay-based soil called Jory. The vines have to struggle because of the soil quality, so most of their effort goes into ripening the grapes. Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir wines are grown at the three Oregon vineyards near Salem: Hilo, Delaney and St. Jory. The largest Duck Pond Cellars area, 520 acres, is at the Desert Wind vineyard, east of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state's Columbia Valley, on the Wahluke Slope. Despite its proximity to the mountains, the region can reach a scorching 110 F in the summer, and go down to 15 F in winter.
When you have seven different wines under the Desert Wind label and another 16 under the Duck Pond label, how do you order the right amount of labels?
"It can be a very simple operation, especially when you have supportive and quality-minded label partners," says Lisa Jenkins.
"Of course, it can also get to be a zoo when you realize that you cannot order labels at all until you know exactly what the alcohol content is, or at least be within one-half of a percent. Since we try to put a tasting note on the back label, we also have to know what the wine characteristics are, so that introduces another variable."
Some of the wines are bottled in 1.5 and 3 liter special sizes in addition to the popular 750ml size, with appropriately sized labels.
The company uses two label vendors currently. Dana Labels in Beaverton, OR, is the largest and oldest supplier. They are also a "preferred vendor" for the Oregon Winegrowers Association. Lisa credits Dana Labels with coming to Duck Pond Cellars with the suggestion that they switch from a paper label to a film label to overcome the effects of moisture in coolers. "We received an additional benefit," she adds. "Because of the strength of the film, if a label has to be removed we have a little window of time that we can do this easily."
The second vendor, which the winery recently began using as the volume from Desert Wind vineyard increased, along with the meteoric growth in sales of the merlot, is Taylor Made Labels of Oswego Lakes, OR. Both of these companies are actively involved with label application equipment as well as the production of quality labels. According to Lisa, their outstanding customer service makes her job much easier.
When one visits a tasting room and gift shop that has "friendly" and "family" written all over it, you just know that you've found one of those wonderful hideaways that you'll revisit. And that is for both the wine and the gifts, as well as other surprises, like the Italian sodas we found in the cooler last fall.
A family operation, the four vineyards of Duck Pond Cellars in Oregon and Washington are run by founder Doug Fries. His wife, JoAnn, handles administrative and operational tasks, and the rest of the family is actively involved: Daughter Lisa Jenkins does the marketing and promotions, and her husband, Scott, handles sales; son Matt and his wife, Erin, assist in vineyard development in Oregon, and son Greg is the winemaker for the total operation.
A graduate of the University of California at Davis, Greg puts his degree in fermentation science to good use. His wines are lauded as being of high quality yet value priced, in keeping with his stated goal of producing wines that are accessible price-wise to all consumers yet keeping the quality consistent with wines priced two to three times higher. Consumers agree, judging from the growth at DPC - from a few hundred cases a year beginning in 1993 to more than 100,000 cases in each of the past couple of years. The company has a goal of 250,000 cases once the Prosser, WA, vineyard is really up and running.
I spoke at length with Lisa Jenkins for this article. She has, in addition to other assignments at the vineyard, the responsibility for ordering the labels. She and her mom came up with many of the duck ideas for the illustrations, and she credits brother Matt, a hunter, with the idea of using the Egyptian goose and the spur-winged goose, two very large African specimens.
"While we make slight changes in the labels from year to year, we want the overall illustration to remain very similiar to the prior year vintage," Lisa says. "This makes it easy for our customers to find a specific wine on the shelf because, for example, our chardonnay will always have a blue-winged teal on the label." She adds that they want the duck or goose to be as large as possible on the label to further assist consumers with selection.
The vineyards around the winery and tasting complex make up only a tiny fraction of the total acreage; 15 of the 35 acres are planted with pinot noir vines. Another 325 acres are in the Willamette Valley near Salem, OR, which has the fairly poor quality, red clay-based soil called Jory. The vines have to struggle because of the soil quality, so most of their effort goes into ripening the grapes. Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir wines are grown at the three Oregon vineyards near Salem: Hilo, Delaney and St. Jory. The largest Duck Pond Cellars area, 520 acres, is at the Desert Wind vineyard, east of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state's Columbia Valley, on the Wahluke Slope. Despite its proximity to the mountains, the region can reach a scorching 110 F in the summer, and go down to 15 F in winter.
When you have seven different wines under the Desert Wind label and another 16 under the Duck Pond label, how do you order the right amount of labels?
"It can be a very simple operation, especially when you have supportive and quality-minded label partners," says Lisa Jenkins.
"Of course, it can also get to be a zoo when you realize that you cannot order labels at all until you know exactly what the alcohol content is, or at least be within one-half of a percent. Since we try to put a tasting note on the back label, we also have to know what the wine characteristics are, so that introduces another variable."
Some of the wines are bottled in 1.5 and 3 liter special sizes in addition to the popular 750ml size, with appropriately sized labels.
The company uses two label vendors currently. Dana Labels in Beaverton, OR, is the largest and oldest supplier. They are also a "preferred vendor" for the Oregon Winegrowers Association. Lisa credits Dana Labels with coming to Duck Pond Cellars with the suggestion that they switch from a paper label to a film label to overcome the effects of moisture in coolers. "We received an additional benefit," she adds. "Because of the strength of the film, if a label has to be removed we have a little window of time that we can do this easily."
The second vendor, which the winery recently began using as the volume from Desert Wind vineyard increased, along with the meteoric growth in sales of the merlot, is Taylor Made Labels of Oswego Lakes, OR. Both of these companies are actively involved with label application equipment as well as the production of quality labels. According to Lisa, their outstanding customer service makes her job much easier.