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Transforming a vision of producing world class sparkling wine into reality did not happen overnight. It started in 1975 as an epiphany for physician-scientist Jack Bagdade after he and two friends started Pike & Western Wine Merchants, a retail wine store in Seattle. It took more than twenty years to actually happen. It required three essential ingredients: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and maybe Pinot Meunier grapes grown in Oregon's cool climate, a winemaker skilled in the production of Methode Champenoise sparkling wines, and money from patient investors.

Grapes were abundant, though not much Pinot Meunier. But how to find a winemaker with bubbles in his/her background willing to make a commitment to a start-up project in Oregon? Happily, the "search" for this person undertaken in 1991 (well in advance of Meriwether's first harvest in 1998!) turned out to be of short duration. It was facilitated by none other than the esteemed (and sometimes reviled) Wine Spectator. In a 1991 holiday issue report that ranked twenty non-Champagne sparkling wines, the number 1 and number 5 wines both showed a distinctive Champagne style. It was no coincidence that they were both made by the same winemaker, Jean-Louis Denois, a sixth generation grower from Cumieres, a village to the north and west of Epernay in the Vallee de la Marne area of Champagne.

Because Denois fit the profile of the winemaker we sought, Bagdade wrote him to see if he might be interested in participating in a project in Oregon. Denois proved to be a person who welcomed the challenge of making wine in places distant from his native Champagne. He had already achieved considerable success as a consulting winemaker in South Africa at the Boschendal and Villiera wine estates. The Meriwether project piqued his interest and he agreed to meet in France and review the Meriwether business plan. When attending a medical meeting in Paris the following year, Bagdade and his wife Harriet drove to the Champagne region and met Denois and his wife Celine in their home in Fere en Tardenois near Rheims and gave him an early edition of the business plan. He requested that they return in two days after he had an opportunity to review it.

Two days later he answered "yes, but..." And what followed were a number of key suggestions and a series of visits to Oregon that shaped subsequent drafts of the business plan and the structure and operational model that was ultimately adopted.

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Who We Are Transforming a vision of producing world class sparkling wine into reality did not happen overnight. It started in 1975 as an epiphany for physician-scientist Jack Bagdade after he and two friends started Pike & Western Wine Merchants, a retail wine store in Seattle. It took more than twenty years to actually happen. It required three essential ingredients: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and maybe Pinot Meunier grapes grown in Oregon's cool climate, a winemaker skilled in the production of Methode Champenoise sparkling wines, and money from patient investors. Grapes were abundant, though not much Pinot Meunier. But how to find a winemaker with bubbles in his/her background willing to make a commitment to a start-up project in Oregon? Happily, the "search" for this person undertaken in 1991 (well in advance of Meriwether's first harvest in 1998!) turned out to be of short duration. It was facilitated by none other than the esteemed (and sometimes reviled) Wine Spectator. In a 1991 holiday issue report that ranked twenty non-Champagne sparkling wines, the number 1 and number 5 wines both showed a distinctive Champagne style. It was no coincidence that they were both made by the same winemaker, Jean-Louis Denois, a sixth generation grower from Cumieres, a village to the north and west of Epernay in the Vallee de la Marne area of Champagne. Because Denois fit the profile of the winemaker we sought, Bagdade wrote him to see if he might be interested in participating in a project in Oregon. Denois proved to be a person who welcomed the challenge of making wine in places distant from his native Champagne. He had already achieved considerable success as a consulting winemaker in South Africa at the Boschendal and Villiera wine estates. The Meriwether project piqued his interest and he agreed to meet in France and review the Meriwether business plan. When attending a medical meeting in Paris the following year, Bagdade and his wife Harriet drove to the Champagne region and met Denois and his wife Celine in their home in Fere en Tardenois near Rheims and gave him an early edition of the business plan. He requested that they return in two days after he had an opportunity to review it. Two days later he answered "yes, but..." And what followed were a number of key suggestions and a series of visits to Oregon that shaped subsequent drafts of the business plan and the structure and operational model that was ultimately adopted.
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