The place would be my uncle’s “hobby” vineyard outside of Winlock, WA.  (When you have as many vines planted and purchase as many tons of grapes as he does, the word hobby just doesn’t quite fit right.)  It took me about a year of helping him out with harvesting, winemaking, pruning, bottling, etc, to figure out that it was what I wanted to be doing with my life.

I first studied Russian and Creative Writing in undergrad, and worked a variety of jobs in the writing field prior to getting into winemaking, the most recent being writing for Rural Electrification Administration publications. However, after writing for other people for nearly ten years, I was burned out with it looking for a change. I moved to Oregon, started helping said uncle out at his vineyard, and then enrolled in OSU’s Food Science program. They offer a concentration in Enology and Viticulture, and at the time had a 100% job placement rate, which was the percentage I was looking for. I went right from that program into the wine industry.

It’s made me very comfortable with uncertainty and mistakes. With so many moving parts, and the fact that you’re dealing with biological systems, there’s always something unexpected bound to come up. Whether it’s a power outage that takes down your chilling for the day, or missing a nutrient add, you learn to take what comes, adjust, and not get too hung up on things not going exactly to plan. I guess to boil it down, I’ve become more resilient.