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Volcano Vineyards owners Scott and Liz Ratcliff, seen Tuesday in their Minnesota Avenue tasting room in downtown Bend, are among a growing number of local merchants selling wine in Bend.
Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
Wine savvy
Bend may not be home to many vintners, but with a dozen grocery store wine stewards and a handful of small shops, some consider it a bona fide wine town
By Andrew Moore / The Bulletin
Published: November 26. 2009 4:00AM PSTWith so many breweries, it’s easy to call Bend a beer town.
But Bend likes its wine, too, says Scott Ratcliff, owner of Volcano Vineyards in Bend.
If you need proof, consider the number of wine shops, tasting rooms and wine-centric restaurants that have sprouted up in the city. Just on the two blocks of downtown Bend’s Minnesota Avenue, there are two wine shops as well as the Volcano Vineyards tasting room, which recently relocated from its former home on Brooks Street to 126 N.W. Minnesota Ave.
The supermarkets in Bend also give great focus to wine.
Scotty Whigam, a wine distributor with Columbia Distributing in Bend, said there are 12 supermarkets in Bend and Redmond with wine stewards. Portland has more, but exclude it and Central Oregon and there are only four supermarket-based wine stewards scattered throughout the rest of the state, he said.
Bend may not be a wine town — there are no vineyards here, though Maragas Winery, which has a tasting room at 643 N.W. Colorado Ave. in Bend, has planted a vineyard in Culver — but it is a “wine-savvy town,” Whigam said.
“It’s so savvy that there are little wineries that know they can sell wine here because they know they can get (distribution) here as opposed to places in the rest of the state,” Whigam added.
Dennis Sienko owns and operates the Bend Wine Cellar, a wine shop at 1444 N.W. College Way at the foot of Awbrey Butte. Lots of his clients are residents of the butte, but he also sells wine all over the country through the Internet, he said.
To Sienko, Bend is a wine town.
“Where you have lots of wine drinkers, you have lots of shops,” he said.
Carefully selected
So how does a wine shop differ from a supermarket? Sienko said the sheer number of different labels means consumers often turn to the experts at wine shops to help them pick a special wine or a certain wine to match a dinner.
Supermarket wine stewards can do likewise, Sienko said, but shops tend to stock their shelves with select wines rather than cram them with as many different labels as they can fit.
“We don’t have as much wine, but we have very carefully selected stuff,” Sienko said. “We provide a niche. I’m a serious (wine) consumer that doesn’t want to pay too much but wants to drink good wine, and that’s what customers ask me about.”
Sienko said wine sales haven’t slowed during the recession but that more consumers are sensitive to price. More consumers are choosing $20 bottles of wine rather than $30 bottles, he added.
Melanie Betti, who owns The Wine Shop and Tasting Bar, at 55 N.W. Minnesota Ave., said she sells lots of small-label wines from Italy and other hard-to-find wines. She said there are approximately 12,000 wines people can buy, so getting advice can be helpful for some.
“I think people are looking for that one-on-one specialty advice, and it’s a relationship with myself and my employees and my customers who come in looking for the hottest new wine or a small label from Umbria (in Italy),” said Betti.
However, Ratcliff, — who makes his Volcano Vineyards wine in Medford using grapes he buys from several vineyards in the Rogue River Valley — said 95 percent of wine is sold in the supermarket.
That can be a challenge for vintners like him. Ratcliff, who makes a merlot, a syrah and a blended red, only bottles 1,000 cases a year, which classifies his label as a “microwinery.” Because he’s so small, he has a hard time getting distributed to supermarkets, though the Fred Meyer in Bend carries his wine thanks to the relationship he’s struck with its wine steward, he said.
Local presence
Without mass distribution, Ratcliff uses his tasting room to get the word out about his wine. He first opened it three years ago on Brooks Street, then moved earlier this year to be closer to the pedestrian traffic on Minnesota Avenue.
“It’s the street of the future,” said Liz Ratcliff, Scott’s wife and a co-owner of the winery. “It has great foot traffic, plus you have the Phoenix Inn and (the soon to open) Oxford Hotel feeding into it.”
In addition, Liz Ratcliff said they wanted to be close to the other wine shops downtown, including Betti’s and The Good Drop Wine Shoppe, at 141 N.W. Minnesota Ave., which opened last month. She said they’re not so much competitors as they are attractions for serious wine lovers, adding that having their businesses so close creates a shopping destination.
“(Like) car dealerships how they cluster, we knew it would be beneficial for everyone, especially given how different the three of us are,” Liz Ratcliff said.
Betti agreed, saying Minnesota Avenue has become “Vino Strada,” which is Italian for “Wine Street.”
Perhaps fitting for Bend, the Ratcliffs’ tasting room has beer on tap. Scott Ratcliff also makes small batches of peach-flavored sangria he sells by the glass. He said he’s working to open a production facility in Bend where he can scale up his sangria production, which he also makes in kiwi, strawberry and mango flavors.
Wine, though, is Scott Ratcliff’s passion. He and his wife moved to Bend from San Francisco, drawn to the town for its quality of life and because they thought it would be a great place to start their family. Because he doesn’t make pinot noir — for which Oregon is famous — Scott Ratcliff said it hasn’t been easy to get his label well-recognized, but it’s starting to gain traction.
In his tasting room Tuesday was Prineville resident John Unruh, who stopped in for a glass of merlot and to purchase a bottle as well.
“I like wine, and I like his wines,” Unruh said. “He has a really great merlot.”
Unruh said he often shops for wine when he comes to Bend. He said he knows he can ask questions and get answers.
“There are lots of people here that know about wine,” he said.
Andrew Moore can be reached at 541-617-7820 or amoore@bendbulletin.com.
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