A QUICK HISTORY OF ZENITH VINEYARD

Zenith Vineyard is the story of two people who loved wine long before they ever imagined owning a vineyard—and more than two decades spent developing a remarkable piece of ground into both a recognized Oregon vineyard name and a winery producing outstanding estate wines of its own.

Tim and Kari Ramey both grew up in Seattle and have known each other since junior high. Their careers eventually took them to the East Coast, where Tim worked on Wall Street as an Equity Analyst covering consumer packaged goods companies. Wine became an increasingly important interest for both of them—not professionally at first, but through collecting, tasting, traveling, and dinners with friends built around different wines and regions.

Eventually that interest led to a much bigger question:

Could we actually make wine and vineyards part of our lives?

The answer ultimately brought them back to the Pacific Northwest and, in 2002, to the property that became Zenith Vineyard.

Today, Zenith is a 133-acre estate in the Eola-Amity Hills with 93 acres planted to wine grapes. It is a working vineyard, winery, custom crush facility, and hospitality destination.

But the vineyard remains at the center of everything.

1. BEFORE ZENITH: A LOVE OF WINE

Zenith didn't begin with a family farming tradition. It began with a fascination with wine.

Tim and Kari were Seattle kids who eventually moved East. While Tim's career was in New York City finance, wine gradually became a serious passion for both of them.

They organized dinners with friends around particular wines, regions and food. Wine became a way to learn about agriculture, geography, history, food and people.

Tim's work as an analyst also gave him an unusual window into the wine business. When Robert Mondavi Winery became publicly traded, he began following wine companies professionally.

That background gave him some understanding of the economics of an industry that can consume capital very quickly.

Good tour line:

"We came to the wine business as wine lovers first. We weren't inheriting a vineyard and neither of us grew up farming grapes."

Another useful Tim line:

"My financial background didn't necessarily help me buy the right tractor, but it did help me understand the economics of the wine business."

Eventually the interest in wine led Tim and Kari to ask whether they could actually make vineyards and wine part of their lives.

2. FINDING THE O'CONNOR VINEYARD

By the early 2000s, Tim and Kari were looking seriously at Oregon and the possibility of owning a vineyard.

In 2002 they purchased what was then known as the O'Connor Vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills.

Pat and Patty O'Connor had first planted the property in 1982, making it part of the early development of the modern Oregon wine industry.

It was an established vineyard in an exceptional location.

But it was certainly not the Zenith Vineyard guests see today.

Tour line:

"We didn't buy a finished vineyard. We bought a site that we thought had tremendous potential—and then discovered just how much work realizing that potential was going to require."

3. PHYLLOXERA BECOMES AN OPPORTUNITY

One of the most important parts of the Zenith story came almost immediately.

35 of the 60 acres of the then-existing vineyard was planted on its own roots and was suffering from phylloxera, the tiny insect that attacks grapevine roots.

That meant Tim and Kari couldn't simply take over the existing vineyard and continue farming it.

Large portions had to be removed and replanted on phylloxera-resistant rootstock.

But what initially looked like a major problem became an opportunity.

Rather than simply duplicate what had been there, they could rethink the vineyard: rootstocks, clones, varieties, vine spacing, trellising and individual vineyard blocks.

Pinot Noir became the dominant variety, but Zenith also grows Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Chardonnay, Auxerrois, Gamay, Pinot Meunier and Tempranillo.

In a very real sense, much of the Zenith Vineyard guests see today was rebuilt block by block.

That distinction is central to the Zenith story.

Tim and Kari bought the land and inherited its potential. The vineyard that exists today is something they spent the next two decades developing.

4. PEDRO MARTINEZ — THREE DECADES AT ZENITH

There is another important part of the vineyard story: Pedro Martinez, our Vineyard Manager.

Pedro actually predates Tim and Kari at Zenith. He began working here around 1996, when the property was still the O'Connor Vineyard.

When Tim and Kari bought the property in 2002, Pedro stayed.

That means Pedro has participated in virtually the entire transformation from the old O'Connor Vineyard to the Zenith Vineyard guests see today.

Pedro is, quite simply, a master farmer.

He knows this vineyard in a way that can only come from working the same ground, the same slopes and the same individual blocks for roughly three decades.

Zenith also farms all 93 acres of vineyard with our own vineyard crew. We do not turn the vineyard over to an outside vineyard-management company.

The people pruning the vines, managing the canopy, tending the fruit throughout the growing season and harvesting the grapes know this vineyard because they work here year after year.

That continuity matters.

Tour line:

"Tim and Kari have owned Zenith since 2002. Pedro has been here longer than they have."

5. WHY THIS PARTICULAR PLACE?

Zenith sits in the Eola-Amity Hills AVA, one of the premier Pinot Noir and Chardonnay growing regions in the world.

The vineyard lies roughly between 200 and 350 feet in elevation.

Its predominantly sedimentary soils and the cooling afternoon marine air that enters the Willamette Valley through the Van Duzer Corridor help define the site.

Warm summer days allow grapes to ripen. Then the afternoon winds cool the vineyard and help preserve natural acidity.

That combination allows Zenith to produce fruit with concentration, structure and freshness and wines with the ability to age.

Simple tour explanation:

"We need enough warmth to ripen the fruit, but we don't want to lose acidity while doing it. Those cool afternoon winds are an important part of why the Eola-Amity Hills works so well for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay."

6. BUILDING A VINEYARD THAT WINEMAKERS WANTED TO NAME

Replanting Zenith wasn't simply a matter of replacing dying vines.

It was an opportunity to create the vineyard Tim and Kari wanted Zenith to become.

And the objective was never simply maximum production.

It was to establish Zenith as a vineyard capable of producing fruit that serious winemakers would seek out—and would want their customers to know where it came from.

That distinction is important.

There are many vineyards that sell grapes to wineries.

A much smaller number routinely appear by name on the front of the bottle.

When a winery produces a Zenith Vineyard-designated wine, it is putting Zenith's name and reputation alongside its own.

Over the years, Zenith fruit has gone to an extraordinary group of Oregon producers, including Adelsheim, Broadley, Bryn Mawr, Domaine Nicolas-Jay, Lytle-Barnett, Grochau, Lingua Franca, Ponzi, Soter, St. Innocent and others.

Many have made wines specifically designated Zenith Vineyard.

One of the things we're proudest of is seeing another winemaker put "Zenith Vineyard" on a bottle.

They are effectively putting the vineyard's reputation alongside their own.

And that eventually led to an important recognition of what Zenith had become.

7. ONE OF FIVE GREAT OREGON VINEYARDS WORTH KNOWING

In 2016, Wine Enthusiast wine critic Paul Gregutt published an article called "Five Great Oregon Vineyards Worth Knowing."

The five were:

Zenith Vineyard
Shea Vineyard
Temperance Hill Vineyard
Freedom Hill Vineyard
Momtazi Vineyard

The significance of the article wasn't simply that these were five excellent vineyards.

Gregutt was making a larger point about how to understand Oregon wine.

Oregon has hundreds of producers. Even serious wine drinkers cannot possibly know all of them.

But there is a shortcut:

Know the vineyards.

Certain vineyards combine exceptional quality with enough size to supply fruit to a number of outstanding winemakers.

When those winemakers repeatedly choose to put the vineyard's name on their bottles, the vineyard develops an identity and reputation independent of any single producer.

That is what makes Zenith particularly interesting.

Zenith is large enough to supply a significant number of wineries while maintaining the quality necessary for those wineries to make vineyard-designated wines.

That is the company Zenith was placed in alongside Shea, Temperance Hill, Freedom Hill and Momtazi.

So a consumer might encounter a bottle from an Oregon producer he or she doesn't know particularly well.

But if the bottle says:

ZENITH VINEYARD
EOLA-AMITY HILLS

a knowledgeable consumer already knows something important about that wine.

The consumer knows where the fruit came from.

The same is true when an Oregon wine drinker sees Shea Vineyard or Temperance Hill Vineyard on a label.

The producer changes.

The winemaker changes.

The winemaking techniques change.

The vineyard is the constant. The winemaker is the variable.

That's one of the fascinating things about vineyard-designated wine.

One winemaker may emphasize fruit. Another may emphasize structure. One may use more new oak, another very little. Fermentation and extraction decisions may differ enormously.

But they all begin with fruit from the same place.

That allows a wine drinker to experience different interpretations of Zenith Vineyard.

And that is why being included among Wine Enthusiast's five great Oregon vineyards was particularly meaningful to us.

It wasn't simply recognition of a wine we made.

It was recognition of the vineyard itself.

8. MARK VLOSSAK, ST. INNOCENT AND BUILDING THE WINERY

Another important chapter began in 2006 when Tim and Kari partnered with Mark Vlossak of St. Innocent Winery.

The relationship brought together complementary needs.

St. Innocent wanted a dependable source of exceptional vineyard fruit and a permanent winery home.

Zenith wanted winemaking expertise and a winery operation on the property.

The partnership led to the creation of Zenith Vineyard LLC and ultimately to construction of the winery on the property.

Mark became the original winemaker for the Zenith label.

Tim deliberately did not try to become the winemaker.

Tour line:

"I knew I wasn't going to become a winemaker. Vineyard management appealed to the analytical side of me. Winemaking is partly science, but it's also art—and I knew that wasn't my skill set."

That decision—to find talented winemakers rather than pretend to be one—has remained an important part of Zenith's philosophy.

9. A WINERY DESIGNED FOR BOTH WINE AND PEOPLE

The 28,000-square-foot building guests see today was conceived as something unusual from the beginning.

It wasn't simply a production winery to which an event room was added later.

Kari brought a background and interest in design, hospitality and events, and hospitality was part of the concept from the beginning.

The building was purpose-built to accommodate serious wine production and serious hospitality under the same roof.

That was unusual.

Instead of trying years later to squeeze weddings and events into an agricultural building, Zenith was designed from the beginning to do both.

Today Zenith hosts approximately 80 weddings and other events each year, and over our history we have hosted more than 1,200 events.

Those numbers help explain the scale of the facility.

This isn't a winery that occasionally clears barrels out of the way to hold a wedding. Wine production and hospitality were both incorporated into the original design.

Tour line:

"We didn't convert a winery into an event venue. We designed the building from the beginning to do both."

But buildings don't create hospitality.

People do.

And that brings us to Shellie Croft.

10. SHELLIE CROFT — THE HOSPITALITY GENE

Shellie Croft is Zenith's Hospitality Manager and brings a wealth of skill and experience to the position.

But experience alone doesn't explain what makes Shellie so good at what she does.

Shellie has the hospitality gene.

She has the ability to anticipate what guests need, make people comfortable, keep track of an extraordinary number of details and somehow make all of that work appear effortless.

That is particularly important when you host approximately 80 events every year.

A wedding involves hundreds of moving parts. The bride and groom shouldn't have to see any of them.

Recent reviews of Zenith repeatedly single Shellie out for exactly that ability—warm, organized, attentive, knowledgeable and seemingly a step ahead of what the guest needs.

And Shellie has another interesting relationship with Zenith.

She and her husband, Bryan, are also custom-crush clients here. They make wine for Syntonic Wine Company at Zenith using Zenith Vineyard fruit.

So Shellie understands Zenith from two different perspectives: she manages hospitality for our guests, and she and Bryan are themselves winemakers making wine from the vineyard.

11. SUSTAINABLE FARMING

Zenith's farming philosophy has always been practical rather than ideological.

The vineyard has been sustainably farmed and LIVE certified for more than 20 years.

Tim has described the philosophy as "pragmatic organic."

That means using organic approaches where they make sense while focusing on the health and long-term sustainability of the vineyard and the quality of the fruit rather than farming according to a slogan.

For example, Zenith does not routinely use herbicides and instead mechanically cultivates beneath the vines.

That isn't because we have an ideological objection to glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide.

Our winery customers strongly prefer fruit grown without herbicides, and our farming practices reflect what our customers want as well as what we believe works well in the vineyard.

The objective is straightforward:

Deliver exceptionally clean, high-quality fruit year after year while leaving the vineyard healthier and better than we found it.

12. BECOMING AN INDEPENDENT WINERY

The partnership with St. Innocent eventually came to an end.

In 2018, Zenith acquired the winery and tasting-room interests and began the next phase of its development as a fully independent operation.

That was a significant transition.

Zenith had already established its credentials as a vineyard.

Other respected winemakers had demonstrated what could be produced from the site.

The vineyard, winery, Zenith wines, custom-crush operation and hospitality businesses increasingly became parts of one integrated property.

But the transition also presented an interesting question:

What should Zenith Vineyard itself make from Zenith Vineyard?

That brings the story to Dan Duryee.

13. DAN DURYEE — ZENITH'S WINEMAKER

Today Zenith's wines are made by Dan Duryee, who came to Zenith with more than 20 years of winemaking experience.

His career included significant experience at Lady Hill Winery, Cana's Feast and other Oregon wine operations.

Dan had also developed strong relationships with custom-crush clients during his career. Those relationships were strong enough that when he came to Zenith, some of those clients followed him here.

Dan came to winemaking by an unusual route.

His original training was as a chemist.

That is a terrific foundation for a winemaker.

Fermentation is biology and chemistry, and understanding what is happening in a tank or barrel is an important part of making consistently excellent wine.

But Dan also spent part of his earlier career as a junior-high school teacher.

We sometimes joke that this may have been equally valuable preparation for his other job at Zenith: managing a custom-crush winery.

During harvest, Dan may be managing wine for seven or eight different wineries, all sharing the same production facility, all with grapes arriving at different times, and all with their own ideas about how they want their wines made.

Managing all of that can be a little like herding cats.

Or perhaps teaching junior high.

Dan has the unusual combination of technical knowledge, winemaking experience, organization, patience and temperament required to make it work.

But ultimately we judge a winemaker by the wines.

And we believe the wines Dan is making at Zenith today are outstanding and among the finest wines we have ever produced.

14. PATRICK HOUSBY — FROM THE CELLAR TO THE TASTING ROOM

Patrick Housby joined Zenith in 2023 and works with Dan in the cellar while also spending part of his time in the tasting room.

That combination makes Patrick particularly valuable when talking with guests about our wines.

When Patrick discusses what happened during harvest, fermentation or barrel aging, he isn't simply repeating something from a tasting sheet.

He was there.

He can help connect what guests see happening in the winery with what they eventually taste in the glass.

15. THE VINEYARD IS THE CONSTANT. THE WINEMAKER IS THE VARIABLE.

There is a particularly interesting connection between Dan's wines and Zenith's history as a vineyard-designated site.

Over the years, many talented winemakers have made wines from Zenith fruit.

Each interprets the vineyard differently.

Different yeast choices. Different fermentation techniques. Different extraction. Different barrels. Different aging decisions.

But the fruit comes from the same place.

The vineyard is the constant. The winemaker is the variable.

For years, we have been able to see what other talented winemakers could do with Zenith fruit.

Today Dan gets to give us Zenith's own interpretation of Zenith Vineyard.

And three wines in particular illustrate what we are doing today:

Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Tempranillo.

16. CHARDONNAY

Chardonnay may be one of the most exciting developments in Oregon wine today.

For decades, Oregon was identified internationally primarily with Pinot Noir.

Increasingly, serious wine drinkers are discovering that the same cool climate that produces world-class Pinot Noir can also produce extraordinary Chardonnay.

We think Zenith is particularly well suited to it.

Our Estate Chardonnay demonstrates the style we are looking for: beautiful fruit and texture balanced by the natural acidity that comes from our Eola-Amity Hills site.

The 2023 Zenith Chardonnay, for example, was made primarily from Clone 95 Chardonnay with a small component of Clone 548 and spent ten months aging in barrel.

The objective isn't to make an oversized, heavily oaked Chardonnay.

It is to make a Chardonnay in which fruit, acidity, texture and barrel influence are in balance—and which reflects this vineyard.

Tour point:

"Pinot Noir made Oregon famous. Chardonnay may be the next great chapter in the Oregon wine story."

We think Zenith belongs in that conversation.

17. PINOT NOIR

Pinot Noir remains at the heart of both the Eola-Amity Hills and Zenith Vineyard.

It is also perhaps the best grape through which to understand the idea of place in wine.

Pinot Noir is extraordinarily sensitive to where it is grown. Soil, elevation, exposure, temperature and vintage all show themselves in the finished wine.

That is one reason vineyard designation matters so much with Pinot Noir.

For decades, other winemakers have chosen Zenith Pinot Noir fruit specifically because they wanted to make a wine expressing this site.

Today Dan has that same opportunity with our Estate Pinot Noir.

Our objective isn't simply to make a technically correct Oregon Pinot Noir.

We want to make a Pinot Noir that tastes like Zenith.

That means beautiful fruit, structure and complexity, but also the freshness and natural acidity that come from our location in the Eola-Amity Hills.

When guests taste a Zenith Estate Pinot Noir here, they are tasting the culmination of the entire story:

the site, the soils, the wind, the replanting, the farming, the fruit and finally Dan's interpretation of it in the winery.

18. TEMPRANILLO — THE UNEXPECTED ZENITH WINE

Tempranillo may be the wine that surprises guests most.

It is the great red grape of Spain and certainly isn't the variety most people expect to encounter at an Eola-Amity Hills vineyard.

We first planted Tempranillo at Zenith in 2003, and it has become one of our most sought-after wines.

The reason we continue growing it is straightforward:

It works here.

Our 2023 Estate Tempranillo was aged for 12 months, with 30% of the wine in new American oak and the balance in neutral barrels.

The result combines fresh berry fruit and barrel spice with the tannic structure that makes Tempranillo such a wonderful food wine.

It also tells guests something important about Zenith.

We respect Oregon tradition, but we aren't bound by it.

If a grape grows beautifully on this site and produces an outstanding wine, we're interested.

19. MORE THAN THREE WINES

While Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Tempranillo are wines of which we are particularly proud, they are also part of a much broader vineyard story.

Today Zenith grows Pinot Noir along with Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Auxerrois, Gamay, Pinot Meunier and Tempranillo.

That gives Dan an unusually broad palette with which to work.

Auxerrois is one of Zenith's most distinctive varieties. Zenith has grown Auxerrois since 1999, has one of Oregon's older plantings, and today is the state's largest grower.

It is a relatively obscure grape, which makes it particularly fun to introduce to guests.

Wines such as White Veil, made from estate Pinot Noir with very limited skin contact, give Dan another opportunity to show a completely different expression of a grape guests think they already know.

These aren't wines made simply to fill positions on a tasting-room menu.

They are different expressions of the vineyard.

20. GWEN SYLVESTER — THE NEXT GENERATION

Zenith remains very much a family business.

Gwen Sylvester, one of Tim and Kari's three daughters, is Co-Manager of Zenith Vineyard LLC and also runs the tasting room and wine club.

Gwen represents the next generation of the family at Zenith.

Her role connects two important parts of the business.

As Co-Manager she is involved in the operation of Zenith as a whole. In the tasting room and wine club, she is responsible for developing the direct relationship between the vineyard and the people who drink our wines.

A guest may discover Zenith during a tasting or event, but the wine club can turn that first experience into a relationship that continues for years.

21. EMILIA ALBESIANO DELFINO — WINE, SCIENCE AND HOSPITALITY

Emilia Albesiano Delfino recently joined Zenith, working in both our events business and tasting room.

Emilia grew up in Italy, where wine and hospitality were simply part of everyday life.

She also brings an unusual combination of science and wine experience.

Emilia holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Pathology from the University of Genoa and worked for years as a research scientist.

She subsequently spent seven years operating an Oregon wine import and wholesale business with her husband, specializing in artisanal Italian and French wines, and managed their tasting room in Albany.

Her wine experience includes importing, retailing, wine-club management, educational tastings, wine dinners and event planning.

That makes Emilia particularly well suited to Zenith, where wine, education, events and hospitality constantly overlap.

22. FROM GREAT VINEYARD TO GREAT WINE

There is a useful way to connect the historical Zenith story with what a guest has in his or her glass today.

For many years, one of the strongest validations of Zenith was what other winemakers did with our grapes.

They bought Zenith fruit.

They came back for more.

And many thought the vineyard name was important enough to put Zenith Vineyard prominently on their bottles.

That established the pedigree of the vineyard.

Today, under Dan Duryee, we are increasingly able to tell the other half of that story:

These are the wines Zenith itself makes from that vineyard.

The vineyard and winery are no longer separate stories.

They are one story.

There is a nice symmetry to where Zenith finds itself today.

Twenty years ago, we were trying to establish the quality of the vineyard.

One of the greatest compliments we could receive was having an excellent winemaker buy our fruit and put:

ZENITH VINEYARD

on the bottle.

That remains a source of enormous pride.

But today we're also able to put those same words on our own wines.

Under Dan Duryee, Zenith has become not simply a source of exceptional grapes, but a winery producing exceptional wines from them.

That completes an important part of the journey:

First we had to build a great vineyard.

Now we're showing what Zenith itself can make from it.

23. ZENITH TODAY

Today Zenith is a 133-acre estate with 93 acres of wine grapes in the Eola-Amity Hills.

It is simultaneously:

A working vineyard farmed by Pedro Martinez and our own vineyard crew.

An estate winery producing outstanding wines under Dan Duryee.

A source of vineyard-designated fruit for other respected winemakers.

A custom-crush winery producing wines for other brands.

A tasting room and wine club.

A place for vineyard and winery experiences.

And a purpose-built wedding and event venue hosting approximately 80 events each year and more than 1,200 over its history.

Those may look like very different businesses.

But they really aren't separate.

They all begin with one thing:

THE VINEYARD.

Pedro and our crew farm it.

Dan and Patrick turn its fruit into wine.

Our winery partners make wines from it.

Our custom-crush clients make their wines here.

Shellie and Bryan are an interesting example of the overlap: Shellie manages hospitality for Zenith while they make Syntonic wines here from Zenith fruit.

Patrick can help make a wine in the cellar and later pour it for a guest in the tasting room.

Gwen helps manage the company while building the tasting-room and wine-club relationships that bring people back to Zenith.

Emilia brings both scientific training and years of wine and hospitality experience to the guests visiting us.

And Shellie and the events team introduce thousands of people every year to Zenith through weddings and celebrations.

So while Zenith has several different businesses, they aren't really independent businesses.

They are different expressions of the same vineyard, winery and team.

Without the vineyard, none of the rest of Zenith exists.

Agriculture remains at the center of Zenith.

24. THE BIGGER STORY

When Tim and Kari arrived in 2002, Oregon wine was considerably smaller and less established than it is today.

They bought a vineyard with significant problems, replanted much of it, developed the site, built the winery, established relationships with leading winemakers, created their own wines and built the hospitality business.

They didn't inherit a famous vineyard.

They bought the O'Connor Vineyard because they believed this particular piece of ground had extraordinary potential.

Phylloxera forced them to replant much of it.

But they didn't do that alone.

Pedro Martinez has been farming this ground since before they arrived and remains Zenith's Vineyard Manager today.

Over more than two decades, the team replanted and redesigned the vineyard, developed relationships with some of Oregon's best winemakers, built a winery and watched Zenith Vineyard become a name with meaning of its own.

In 2016, Wine Enthusiast put Zenith in the company of Shea, Temperance Hill, Freedom Hill and Momtazi as five great Oregon vineyards worth knowing.

That recognition said something very important:

Zenith had become more than the place where a particular wine was made. Zenith had become a vineyard whose name itself meant something.

But that wasn't the end of the story.

Today, with Dan Duryee as winemaker, Zenith has matured into something more.

We remain proud when another excellent producer puts Zenith Vineyard on its bottle.

But we're equally proud to put it on ours.

Because after more than two decades developing this vineyard, the wines Dan is making today allow us to express Zenith in our own voice.

At the same time, Zenith has become a place where thousands of people have celebrated important moments in their lives. More than 1,200 weddings and other events have taken place here.

And today a remarkably experienced team carries the story forward—in the vineyard, cellar, tasting room, wine club and events business.

FIVE THINGS EVERY GUIDE SHOULD MAKE SURE GUESTS REMEMBER

1. Tim and Kari didn't inherit Zenith. They came to wine from entirely different careers, bought the former O'Connor Vineyard in 2002 and substantially rebuilt it after confronting phylloxera.

2. Zenith has become a vineyard name with meaning of its own. Wine Enthusiast placed it alongside Shea, Temperance Hill, Freedom Hill and Momtazi as one of five great Oregon vineyards worth knowing.

3. Vineyard designation is central to understanding Zenith. A consumer may not know every Oregon producer, but seeing "Zenith Vineyard" on the bottle tells that consumer something important about the origin and pedigree of the wine. The vineyard is the constant; the winemaker is the variable.

4. Zenith today is also a serious estate winery. Under winemaker Dan Duryee, we are making outstanding wines, particularly Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Tempranillo, from the vineyard whose reputation we have spent more than two decades building.

5. Everything begins with the vineyard—but people make Zenith what it is. Pedro and our vineyard crew farm it; Dan and Patrick make the wines; Gwen runs the tasting room and wine club and co-manages the LLC; Shellie leads hospitality; Emilia brings deep wine, science and event experience; and together the team connects the vineyard to the thousands of people who drink our wines and visit Zenith.

THE ONE-SENTENCE ZENITH STORY

Zenith is the story of two wine lovers who bought a promising but phylloxera-stricken Oregon vineyard in 2002, rebuilt it with a team whose roots at the property go back even further, developed it into one of Oregon's recognized vineyard-designate sites, and today produce outstanding estate wines under winemaker Dan Duryee while welcoming thousands of guests each year to experience the vineyard for themselves.

A GOOD WAY TO END THE TOUR

For many years, the measure of what we had accomplished at Zenith was seeing another great winemaker put "Zenith Vineyard" on the bottle.

It told us that the vineyard had developed a reputation beyond our own winery.

Today there are really two complementary ways to understand Zenith.

If you find an excellent Oregon producer you've never encountered before and the bottle says "Zenith Vineyard," that vineyard name tells you something about what is inside.

And when the bottle says "Zenith Vineyard" twice—once as the vineyard and once as the producer—you are tasting our own interpretation of the place we've spent more than two decades building.

But perhaps there is one more part to the story.

Wine ultimately exists to be shared with people.

After more than 1,200 events, countless tastings and more than two decades of farming and winemaking, Zenith has become not just a vineyard or a winery, but a place where people come to experience both.

That's Zenith today.