Description

When we looked in 1971 for land to plant grapes on in Southern Oregon, there was no commercial production and no wineries. We bought land that year and moved to the Illinois Valley knowing the property we purchased was not good grape land, but it got us to the valley where we could look for a plantable site.

We built a house and sold it when we moved to the present Foris Vineyards site. Our reason for picking the Illinois Valley was the price of land, forty years of temperature records at the Smoke Jumper Station in Cave Junction, and several years of ripening records at the Experiment Station in Jacksonville.

Having made home wine after college from grapes in Gilroy, California, the man who sold me the grapes said he had a friend in Roseburg, Oregon that was having success in ripening wine grapes – Bejellian Vineyards. The Gilroy grower’s advice was, “Move to Oregon. You can get started with a strong back and little money.” That described us. Part of the lure to this valley was a back-to- the-land movement that came out of the 1960’s. We soon learned self-sufficient had several draw backs – moss is not a good toilet paper, it causes rashes.