Cooperation in the Oregon Wine Industry

I have already posted two entries about our Wine Adventure in Oregon and this is the third. Somehow, I can't stay off the topic!

I think this is largely because our Wine Adventure in Oregon is so unique. Let's face it: other companies run tours in popular places like Burgundy, Tuscany, and Sonoma - even if these tours aren't the combination of activity and wine that we find so appealing. Almost no other adventure travel companies run tours in Oregon's wine country, however, and that makes Oregon a bit more special to us.

The other aspect of Oregon I find very unique is the cooperative nature of the wine industry. The Oregon wine industry is just not a cutthroat business, with one vintner competing against another, like you might expect. They are more keen to promote Oregon wines in general, knowing this will help each winery individually.

This cooperation continues when it comes to our Wine Adventure there. In fact, we have created a separate website (www.OregonWineAdventure.com) to promote this tour in concert with some of our key Oregon suppliers: wineries, hotels, tourism associations, etc. The amazing thing is almost everyone we approached about this was eager to help and we now have 14 local sponsors helping us to promote Oregon wine country, Oregon wines, and our Oregon Wine Adventure. In no particular order:

• Travel Oregon
• Lane County Tourism
• Oregon Wine Country
• Travel Salem
• Willamette Valley Vineyards
• Wy'East Vineyards
• VX Vineyard
• Carlton Winemakers Studio
• Iris Hill Winery
• Sokol Blosser
• Red Ridge Farms
• Bethel Heights
• Phoenix Grand Hotel
• Oregon Wine Services and Storage

Please visit our Oregon Wine Adventure site for links to these companies and organizations.

Press Trip in Oregon's Wine Country

I returned only a few days ago from Oregon's wine country where we completed our first-ever Wine Adventure. Zephyr's active wine tours will not run until 2008 but we decided to kick off the concept by inviting eight journalists to experience our Wine Adventure in Oregon.

Getting journalists to join in on our tours has been a primary goal of Zephyr Adventures for a decade and we have been very successful with this over the years. However, it is not an easy task. The reality is journalists and editors receive WAY too many emails, are faced with many potential story ideas, are burdened with busy schedules, and are sometimes prohibited from taking free tours.

Therefore, we were extremely pleased with the results of our six-week effort to contact the travel and wine media. We ended up with eight excellent journalists (I'll leave them unnamed since they might want to remain anonymous until their story comes out) and, just as importantly, are in contact with dozens more who liked the Wine Adventures idea but couldn't join us in Oregon.

From my experience, I think journalists face press trips with some trepidation. Often press trips are crammed to over-capacity with visits to museums, chambers of commerce, and other places that just aren't that fun. We decided to do things differently and gave these eight writers the real Wine Adventure experience - five days filled with tasting, meeting local vintners, and doing fun activities such as hiking, canoeing, biking, and horseback riding on and near the vineyards.

And the result was awesome. All ten of us (including my co-guide Reno and me) had a great time. I expect to see some great writeups of the tour in the near future but will foreshadow these by noting a few key points about this Oregon trip:

• Oregon's wine country is unique for its cooperation rather than competition. This impressed all of us. We rarely (in fact only once) heard a winemaker say something negative about another winery and often heard stories of cooperation and sharing as Oregon bucked the tide to become a reputable wine area.
• The inside access we had was impressive. We almost always met with the owner or winemaker at each vineyard and had plenty of time to ask inside questions. Although we were there during harvest and crush and each winery wanted to show off their operations, we tried to have each highlight something unique: barrel tasting, a vineyard walk, a unique grape varietal, etc.
• No one else is doing activities like we do. We set up a Vineyard Walk in the Eola Hills area of Oregon, walking through five separate landowner's holdings and tasting at three wineries. We canoed on the Willamette and stopped at a winery for lunch. We rode horses in and among the vineyards in the Dundee Hills area.

Working with journalists is always a risk; one never knows what will result. However, after five days of fun our relationship with these eight definitely turned from "press trip" to "group of friends". That gives me confidence we'll get some excellent exposure from this trip but also makes what we do worthwhile.

Oregon's Willamette Valley

I just returned from setting up the seventh of seven locations for our new Wine Adventures: Oregon's Willamette Valley. If you are reading this blog, you are probably at least somewhat aware of Oregon's growing prominence in the wine world. Oregon is the fourth largest wine-producing state in the US and has the third most wineries behind California and Washington.

However, those statistics don't mean much to an adventure wine traveler. I was blown away by Oregon's potential for adventure wine travel and would place it right up there with the world's best wine destinations.

At first, I was somewhat dismayed by Oregon's wine country. There are a few areas with clusters of vineyards and wineries but, for the most part, the Willamette Valley clings to its farming roots and vineyards are separated by large tracks of vegetables, berries, and other crops. This makes sense agriculturally, since wine is just coming into its own as a major cash crop, but I must admit it looked more like "Zephyr Farm Adventures" than Zephyr Wine Adventures for awhile there.

In addition, while the locals are starting to focus on wine tourism, it is just beginning. Plus, they have not gone past the traditional bus and van tours - get picked up at your hotel, drive to a few wineries for tours and tastings, and return home. This just doesn't cut if for travelers who want to be active on vacation in addition to drinking great wine and eating good food.

My employee Reno and I spent a week in the wine country, checking out many wineries and talking to dozens of locals in the wine and tourism industries. In the end, the lack of a sophisticated wine tourism industry in Oregon is what makes it such a great place to travel.

For example, we set up a canoe trip on the Willamette River where our tour participants will be able to stop at the Willamette Farms Winery, take a walk around the vineyard grounds, have a picnic with the vineyard's wines, and get back in the canoe to finish the day. We had to call three canoe outfitters before we found one who saw the potential in this idea.

As another example, we found three wineries in the southern Willamette Valley that are situated contiguously on three faces of a beautiful hillside. After explaining who we were, I would ask a series of questions. "What's over there on the other side of the hill?" "Would it be possible to walk from here to your neighbor winery?" "Has anyone done that?" "Well, would you mind if we did it right now?"

We spent a fantastic day walking through vineyards on foot paths and farming roads, looking out over the valley and knowing no one ever did this. Yet, it was such a better way to see Oregon's wine country than from the inside of a van!

In the end, we loved Oregon's Willamette Valley so much we decided to feature it as our very first tour, a Press Tour this September to kick off the marketing of our new Wine Adventures. You'll be able to experience it as well, during the summer of 2008 at our inaugural Oregon Wine Adventure.