Mark Vlossak’s stellar reputation precedes him.  

He is known as one of Oregon’s most talented winemakers, a worldwide ambassador of Pinot Noir, and the founder of St. Innocent Winery. His wines have garnered some of the highest scores ever awarded to Oregon wines including an unprecedented 94+ Parker score. He has made six of the top 13 wines in Oregon’s history. What else can we say about Mark Vlossak? Quite a lot, it turns out.

We first met Mark in 1994 at the International Pinot Noir Conference (IPNC). This conference is an amazing opportunity to taste the best of the world of Pinot Noir – yes Oregon, but also California, Burgundy and New Zealand. It was here that we first recognized Mark’s talent and passion. His St. Innocent Pinot Noirs were our favorites of that tasting.

A year later we invited Mark do a winemaker dinner at our home at Cannon Beach for our Summit Wine Club friends. Mark has a certain intensity about him. It turns out he feels very strongly about the salad dressing you will be serving with his wines! Our group of New Jersey wine geeks were dazzled by Mark’s wines – we all became instant St. Innocent fans.

Fast forward five years to 2002. We were throwing a dinner party at our home in Chicago. We decided to open a double magnum of St. Innocent Pinot Noir from the O’Connor Vineyard. After hoarding it for years, it seemed like just the thing for our party of twelve. The wine was sublime. To this day I can still recall how it tasted (even if I could not tell you who we hosted for dinner that night). The next day I was moved to send an email to Mark telling him how much we had enjoyed our double magnum of O’Connor.

Six months later, my desk job in the Chicago Loop was eliminated and I needed a new career direction. One option was to go back to New York, but I had thoughts of starting a Chicago wine distribution business for my beloved Oregon Pinots. I called Mark to ask him about my idea, which he quickly shot down – he implied I might get my legs broken. But he also remembered my penchant for O’Connor Pinot Noir, and remarked that the O’Connor vineyard was for sale. Maybe we would be interested in buying it?

We loved wine country, we loved Pinot, we loved Oregon, and wine people were some of the most fun to hang out with. We knew Mark had made great wines from the O’Connor vineyard, what harm could come of looking?

After our first visit in September 2002, it took us exactly one weekend make the decision to buy O’Connor. But we were firmly in the camp of being “just a vineyard.” I thought we could manage the “process” of being a vineyard manager. Managing a vineyard is not so much about special knowledge and deep arts. It is more about making checklists and being vigilant– characteristics that played to my management strengths. And we had too much respect for the art of winemaking to presume we would ever make wine.

We knew that wineries with non-winemaker owners were frequently a revolving door for winemakers. Often, as a winemaker achieves some recognition, offers will come to him or her to strike out on their own with their own label. Besides, we were not looking for the “job” of running a tasting room and marketing wine. We made a bet with a close friend – he insisted we would have a winery within ten years – and we were willing to bet that we would not.

In 2006, we forged a deal with St. Innocent and Mark Vlossak which would change the whole dynamic. Mark wanted some stability in his fruit supply, and, having worked with O’Connor fruit for a decade, he liked the idea of getting it again. We loved the idea of having Mark make wine from our vineyard. Mark agreed to make up to 1,000 cases of wine for Zenith Vineyard, in exchange for fruit provided to St. Innocent. St. Innocent is committed to making wine for us for the duration of our business relationship – which we hope will be measured in decades. Now we don’t just have any winemaker, we have the winemaker who made those amazing O’Connor Pinot Noirs all those years. We have Mark, who is 100% passionate about making great wine. We have Mark, who The Wine Advocate twice named “Wine Personality of the Year.”

So how do you manage a great winemaker like Mark Vlossak? You don’t. We have given him full stylistic and creative control to do the best job he can with the fruit we provide. In a sense, we’ve won our bet (though we suspect we will have to pay). We are not winemakers, but rather trust Mark to do what he would do for St. Innocent–to make outrageous wines—and how he does that is completely up to him. 

Our production will be small. We didn’t want the job of selling wine so we decided that with a great winemaker, outstanding fruit and limited production, the wine will “sell itself.” Zenith Vineyard wines will not be distributed broadly. You will be able to buy the wine from our tasting room, our website and “list” and at our events facility. We hope Zenith Vineyard wines be a pure expression of the best Eola-Amity Hills fruit we can offer, made by the best Pinot Noir winemaker we know, in our new state-of-the art gravity-flow winery.

We hope you enjoy the fruits of our collaboration,

Tim & Kari Ramey
(with Mark Vlossak)