Making Wine in Oregon, Part 1—by Joshua Mason
This past week, I had taken a working vacation with one purpose; to make wine. The winery I was given the opportunity to work was at Maysara, a little winery tucked away in the hills just Southwest of McMinnville, Oregon. To give you an idea of where it is, go southwest of Portland for about 40 miles to the heart of the Willamette Valley.
Maysara is under a sort of rebirth. The once tiny winery is currently building what locals call a “palace” of a new winery that will more than quadruple their size (Approximately 42,000 square feet) upon completion in a few months. This new palace is the brainchild of owner Moe Momtazi, an engineer by trade who has passed the winemaking duties to his daughter and my friend, Tahmiene.
Albeit she is under 30 years old, she is a veteran to the wine industry having helped make wines for places as popular as New Zealand’s Kim Crawford and being no slouch, has already turned in monster ratings from Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate and Wine & Spirits with her latest release of wines. She is now the next in line of this strong family business with her sister Naseem overseeing sales and her parents Moe and Flora with oversight duties.
This family came from very humble roots with Moe and Flora having fled from Iran when the Shah was deposed and Khomeini came into power, eventually making it to the United States where they lived throughout from Atlanta to now McMinnville.
Now that you know a little of their background, you might have an idea of their willingness to succeed. To start off, they grow some of the most sought after grapes in the valley. Winemakers from St Innocent, Kelley Fox, Dobbes and Willamette Valley Vineyards just to name a few, constantly check on the fruit that the Momtazi Vineyards produce and more often than not, they purchase this fruit to make wines under their labels.
For those of you that don’t know, buying grapes from different vineyards is common practice in winemaking, not only to demonstrate different styles of wine, but to show off the winemaker’s abilities.
The fruit that the Momtazis keep goes into their own label, ranging from their estate Pinot Noir to their high end private select Pinot Noir (“Asha”), and they are highly rated. But before we get into the actual winemaking, I want to talk about a wine that is produced there: Three Degrees. It is a 91 Point wine (Wine & Spirits) that is priced under $20. Now, truth be told, this is a favorite wine of mine. I sell through about 10 cases every two months. Large Oregon wineries can sell Pinot Noir under $20 such as A to Z, Erath and Willamette Valley Vineyards and they produce quality juice. But for a small winery to produce a Pinot Noir for under $20? It isn’t impossible, but to have such quality is improbable.
Now, all of this having been said, here is why I think that every wine produced should be at least $80/bottle (thank God it isn’t). Here are some of the basics from my week of winemaking:
Cleaning

I know for a fact that everyone in the restaurant industry can relate to having to clean… every day and many times within that day. In a winery, it is no different. Having worked as a waiter, busboy, and general employee in restaurants, I knew there were times where pretty much everything had to be bleached and scrubbed down. Well, the Maysara winery is listed as Demeter certified 100% biodynamic. What that translates to is that there are no harsh chemicals used (only organic compounds) and that the winery is self-sustaining. What does this mean? I will explain this in further detail later.
There were so many pieces of equipment to clean. There are all the fermentation tanks that hold anywhere from 2000 to almost 5000 gallons of grape juice that will be converted into wine. Those tanks are all power washed with steaming hot water. But before the grapes make it there, they have to go into the crusher.
The crusher is a large tank (imagine a gas truck tank, but about half the size) with a bladder inside of it. When grapes are put inside of the tank, the bladder is inflated with air, thus pressing the grapes and squeezing all of the juice out into a holding tray. The inside of this tank must be scoured with a few basic ingredients: Proxy Carb (Sodium Percarbonate—a natural “wash” that when mixed with water, produces hydrogen peroxide and sodium carbonate) to clean, Citric Method to rinse and elbow grease…me. Let’s just say that there is a lot of scrubbing involved in a large tank, but when it is complete, the tank is hospital grade clean.
There are many other components to the process that need to be cleaned as well such as the sorting line, de-stemmer, and the bins that will hold the freshly picked grapes, but I’m running out of writing room for this week.
Next time, I’ll talk about more processes that I participated in and why my hands turned completely purple.
--Cheers!