Maragas Winery: An Oregon High Desert Experiment

Posted March 9th, 2008 by Jen in features, health/cooking/food, product review
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The face of Central Oregon farming is changing, and wine grapes are the newcomer. Doug and Gina Maragas are the owners of the only winery in Central Oregon, and just last July planted their first acre of Vitis vinifera.

Doug, a Greek/Italian with a long family history of wine making, and his wife Gina, half-Italian herself, seem the perfect couple to be taking on this historic task. The idea for Maragas Winery was first dreamed up by the couple in 1999, and by 2001 Maragas had produced its first vintage - out of a four-bay garage on the east side of Bend, and by 2003 in a nice downtown Bend location. But all this with grapes from outside of Central Oregon - currently the Maragas wine is made from the grapes of Western and Southern Oregon, and California.

At this point, it’s helpful to know that Doug Maragas had a very industrious Greek grandmother. Anna Maragas and her husband owned a grocery store in Canton, Ohio in the 1940s. When good oranges were nowhere to be found, she said, “I can do better,” and set off to California. By herself. And came back with a train car full of delicious oranges, somehow obtained on credit. Anna began brokering fruit, and eventually grapes, up and down the west coast, her tenacity landing her with the only train car permit to do so during the war. Once the good lady had her hands on some fine grapes, she did what any industrious woman would do - she began to make wine.

So, I can imagine Doug Maragas paying the great amount of money that winemakers must pay for grapes, and saying, “I can do better.” And like his grandmother, doing it all against the odds and with great tenacity, despite the risks.

You may wonder why Maragas Winery is the only one operating in Central Oregon. Goodness, vineyards abound in the Willamette Valley of Oregon where the Pinot Noirs are as famous as anything from the Napa Valley. The freezing winter temperatures are probably the biggest deterrent. Spring and fall frosts can also be deadly to the crop - as Gina says, it can frost here at any old time, and lastly, Central Oregon has a short growing season. There simply must be enough heat to ripen the fruit.

There is some encouraging news, however.

The new Maragas Winery and Vineyard, completed in November 2006, is located about 20 miles north of Bend in a fortuitous microclimate. The 40-acre property is at a lower elevation and gets more sun than other parts of Central Oregon, possesses a beneficial sandy loam, volcanic soil, and most advantageous, is protected by rock cliffs that serve to draw cold air away from the vines.

With help from the Oregon State University viticulture experts, Maragas carefully picked 16 of the heartiest varieties most likely to survive and thrive and produce an excellent wine. The Maragases opted to not plant any hybrids at this point (which are actually more suited to cold-climate growing), instead cultivating the traditional Vitis vinifera varieties because of their status as the best-tasting wine grapes. So far, they have planted a one-acre pilot vineyard, to test the varieties before choosing the vines for the remainder of the acreage. It will take about three years to know the results.

The first vines are now springing forth with new buds, a hopeful sign of an agricultural breakthrough that will someday soon christen Central Oregon as wine country.

photo credits: Maragas Winery, Google Images, Wines and Vines.

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