Source: The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore.self storageSept. 29--Two winemakers from Down Under who were lured to Lane County by established wineries are striking out on their own.Mark Nicholl, who was head winemaker at Sweet Cheeks winery from October 2006 until April 2013 opened the Oregon Wine Lab at 488 Lincoln St. earlier this month for weekends only, noon to 6 p.m. Starting this week, the lab will be open seven days a week."It will be a home for my personal business, William Rose Wines and Bootlegger Wines, and act as an incubator for other small wine brands, other local winemakers that don't have their own facilities," said Nicholl, who hails from Sydney.Just a couple of blocks away at 540 Charnelton St., New Zealander Ray Walsh is transforming the former Lord Leebrick Theater into a tasting room and production facility for his label, Capitello Wines.Walsh was head winemaker at King Estate from 1993 to early 2005. Later in 2005 he began making wine under his own label, Capitello Wines, using space at other local wineries."I have my equipment at Territorial Winery," Walsh said. "And Sweet Cheeks Winery has leased me room for winemaking."Having his own facility and tasting room will enable Walsh to showcase the wines he makes in Oregon and in New Zealand. The move, Walsh said, will enable him by next year to boost Oregon production to 3,000 cases, up from 2,000 cases, and eventually up to 5,000 cases. He also makes about 1,000 cases in Marlborough, New Zealand, which he ships to Asia and Eugene.Oregon Wine Lab and Capitello Wines, on the eastern edge of Eugene's Whiteaker neighborhood, will join urban wineries Eugene Wine Cellars and Territorial Vineyards & Wine Co., which opened in the Whiteaker more than a decade ago. That was back when some real estate agents referred to the area as "felony flats," Territorial owner Alan Mitchell said."There's still a perception we see today that the neighborhood is not safe to be in," he said. "That's not true. We found the neighborhood to be quite charming right off the bat, from the get-go."The root of its charm, Mitchell said, is "just the funkiness. ... It's sort of an alternate universe -- you think of Berkeley or some of these other places. It may be a little more Bohemian. It's not straight-laced. It's not square. That's pretty much it -- the nonsquareness of it."With its growing concentration of breweries, wineries and restaurants, the Whiteaker is attracting visitors from other parts of town and from out of town. The two new wineries are near upscale shops and the Inn at the Fifth and will form an "urban wine trail" along with Eugene Wine Cellars at 255 Madison St., in the shadow of the Washington-Jefferson Street bridge, and Territorial at 907 W. Third Ave., which is just east of Ninkasi Brewing Co. in the Whiteaker's core."It's really creating a nice little trail from downtown to the fermentation district," Walsh said."We're just kind of trying to steal a bit of the brewery thunder," Nicholl said. "Everyone is talking about the brewing industry, but the wine industry has been here for years. There are a lot of local wines that we're trying to get people aware of."Fermentation district mapActually Whiteaker's vintners and brewers are a collaborative bunch. About a dozen of them are hoping to produce by Thanksgiving a fermentation district map to let visitors know about the beer, wine and mead makers in the Whiteaker.It's an advantage to be located near Eugene's major breweries: Ninkasi, Oakshire and Hop Valley, Nicholl said."The brewery boom that's happening in the marketplace at the moment is happening because people are interested in trying a product that has been handcrafted," he said. "It's the same concept with wine."In a nod to those who prefer a pint over pinot noir, several of Eugene's urban wineries have beer taps in their tasting rooms.Walsh said his tasting room probably will have one tap for a small, local brewery, and he'll offer Blue Dog Mead, in which he has a small ownership interest.Responding to customer requests, Territorial has long had two taps for local beers in its tasting room, Mitchell said.Before Eugene's brewery boom, "it used to be easy -- we just had Ninkasi and Oakshire," he said. "Now we may add some more taps because there's always someone being left out."Territorial's tasting room is pouring Claim 52 and Oakshire beer, but Mitchell said he's constantly rotating different beers, and newcomer Viking Braggot, a blend of traditional mead and beer, through the taps."It's 迷利倉 good problem to have," he said, "There are so many great beers. We're just trying to give everyone equal time on the taps."Tasting room reopensThe foot traffic at Oakshire Public House since it opened this May at 207 Madison St., helped nudge neighboring Eugene Wine Cellars to reopen its tasting room Memorial Day weekend after a five-year closure.Eugene Wine Cellars opened its urban winery in the Whiteaker in 1999 -- long before the fermentation district emerged.The winery hosted free appetizers, winemaker dinners and live music on Wednesday nights from about 2001 until 2005. Then "we decided that we really weren't staffed properly and when the recession hit, it just didn't make sense for us to have a tasting room," owner Bruce Biehl said. "It wasn't a good neighborhood for retail. It was still kind of a rough place for folks from south Eugene to drive to and want to hang out."That's all changed now, with the explosion of wineries, breweries and dining spots in the Whiteaker, Biehl said."Especially with Oakshire being right next door, we get a little bit of cross marketing and folks will come over and maybe not everyone in the group wants to drink beer," Biehl said. "Plus, we do have a nice place."It's the scene, not sceneryUrban wineries are more about the scene and less about the scenery than traditional rural wineries."The urban tasting room has a completely different dynamic than the tasting rooms out in the country," said Territorial's Mitchell. "We're more of a scene. We have regulars. It's more of a hangout, (while) out in the country you tend to get more tourist traffic."Mitchell opened Territorial in the Whiteaker in 2001. He said he had looked into building a winery near his vineyard west of Junction City, but the costs "were astronomical."It was much more economical to buy the former Boyd's coffee facility at 907 W. Third Ave, he said."The cost of purchasing that space was a fraction of what it would have been building new out in the country," Mitchell said.An economical choiceMore than a decade later, the same financial realities drew Walsh to the former Lord Leebrick space."As much as I wanted to be out in the country, because for me wine tasting in the country is a pleasure trip, you have to have some serious coins to do that," Walsh said. "You have to buy the land, build the facility, then plant at least 15 acres of vines and gardens. I started adding all this up and I realized it was quickly becoming out of my reach. I'm not coming at this with bags of money, so we kind of had to take a step back and (say) 'Do we look at downtown?' That's when we came across the Lord Leebrick."Walsh plans to spend $50,000 on renovations to the 3,300-square-foot building he will lease from Diamond Parking.Nicholl declined to say exactly how much he'll spend to remodel the 5,000-square-foot building he will be leasing at 488 Lincoln St."I'm putting everything I've got at it," he said.Marketing is a necessityNicholl and Walsh said they realize that people won't travel the urban wine trail just because it's there."We've got to give people a reason to come," Walsh said. "I definitely intend to host other winemakers and winery brands, so we'll have evenings where they may have a release party and this keeps the interest alive.""It's not just the complacency of opening doors and people will come," he said. "We're going to be creating events and interest."Nicholl's Oregon Wine Lab will feature his wines, as well as other small wine brands processed at the facility. He also plans to hold classes on wine and wine and food pairings."It's going to be about creating an experience -- creating a reason to come down and not just go down and imbibe," Nicholl said."I've been to some of the urban wineries in Portland," he said. "It's about creating an enjoyable, pleasant environment that's nice to sit down and have a glass of wine and chat with friends, and maybe chat with the winemaker as he or she is walking through."Oregon Wine LabHome of William Rose Wines and Bootlegger Wines and an incubator for other small wine brandsFounded: September 2013Address: 488 Lincoln St.Owner and winemaker: Mark NichollAnnual production: Less than 500 casesCapitello WinesFounded: 2005Address: 540 Charnelton St.Owner and winemaker: Ray WalshAnnual production: 2,000 cases in Oregon; 1,000 cases in New ZealandCopyright: ___ (c)2013 The Register-Guard (Eugene, Ore.) Visit The Register-Guard (Eugene, Ore.) at .registerguard.com Distributed by MCT Information Services自存倉
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