Behind the vine

Kate Norris - Division Wine Co. - Oregon, USA

When do you think you fell in love with wine, enough to make a career of it?

I grew up in London with a British father and a Malagasy mother. We also lived part time in France in a tiny village in the Auvergne called Boudes. It was only about 300 people, and we were surrounded by vines with a fair amount of winemakers in the village. We befriended one of the winemakers and I always remember wine being on the table in our house. It was the pride of the village, and it was part of our everyday life that my parents would share with me. So wine became something I really loved.

When my family moved to the US, my dad became really curious about wines from America. He got into Oregon and Californian wine, and I tasted alongside him. After I graduated college, I moved out to CA and got to experience the wine industry there. I met my business partner, Tom, who was from St. Louis, and we decided to move back to St. Louis. He went to business school and as part of his degree, we wrote a business plan about starting a winery.

During the recession of 2008, we moved to the Auvergne and Beaujolais and studied both academic and practical winemaking under the original winemaker who had been our dear friend growing up and a friend of his. We had gone into that experience with our eyes open - if we hated it, or if we were really bad at it, we thought it would still be a beautiful experience to have had - but we absolutely loved it. We moved back to Oregon and decided to go for it with our own winery and we were making wine right away.

My journey through wine has always been about these various touchpoints of familiarity, and a beautiful combination of luck and being in the right place at the right time, and hard work.

What story does your wine tell?

Wine is something I like to enjoy every single day, and I want people to be able to incorporate it into their lives. Simple complexity is the essence of who I am as a winemaker: wine that tastes delicious, is off the beaten path, but done it in a way that you can't deny it's good once you try it. It's not done for the sake of it, it's because of what we think tastes good. I've watched wine go from a luxury product all about what's right, what's wrong, and shrouded in all of these rules, but in order for wine to be a part of our everyday life, we need to break the rules a little bit or say no rules at all.

For example, our Pinot Noir Method Carbonique is a barrier breaker wine. Carbonic method fermentation is popular in Beaujolais, but when I moved to Oregon and started using that method in 2012, it wasn’t common. People were confused about why we’d use this Noble Grape that’s finicky and precious and apply a fermentation style that at the time was thought to be cheap and cheerful. It was considered something less serious, but that was totally fine by me! Why not make Pinot a little less serious?! I think it unravels something pure in the wine and shows the truest essence of the variety, with no added layers of anything covering it up. My hope is someone tries that and it opens Pinot Noir up to them - to try something new.

All of our wines start in a simple place that wine is accessible. I really want people to feel really comfortable with having wine where they know exactly how it's made and who makes it. We decided early on we'd work with local winegrowers from across our region: Washington State & the Columbia Valley - Willamette Valley - Applegate - Umpqua. We have long-term leases on vineyards and specific parcels, and I really enjoy working with different spots and farmers that I consider family to make something beautiful together. We think about the environment and business and of our vineyard. I can't only work with old vines. So we have to find other vineyards and work with growers with young wines to raise them to be exactly what we need and want them to be. We need to nurture the future.

What misconceptions about wine do you think people should forget?

Wine is seen as super stuffy and completely governed by rules. People try to assign importance and reverence to bottles and we're taught that we can easily make a mistake or put a foot wrong. People don't want to make mistakes - it's just about trusting yourself and trying. We all need to take some advice from wine - it's liquid and it flows. Let everything else go!

Another is that wine is really expensive, without a good value to price ratio. Of course, wine is special. It’s hard to make, hard to grow, and not inexpensive to do well, but if you look into why it costs what it does, it’s because it's made with people's hands and hearts. Really inexpensive wine might not be as soulful as a wine that's more pricey, but what you should look for is getting the most for the money you spend. That can happen at $20 or $700, but it's more rewarding when it happens at the lower end of that scale!

What great things about wine do you think people should remember?

Wine has a great duality. You can get serious and heady about it, or it can just be super relaxing and fun and something to blow off steam with.

Wine is about community and sharing. Most of the time I want to tell people about what I'm drinking and talk to them about it. You don't bottle your opinions about wine in.

For me, the most mystical, magical thing about wine is that it's a moment in time captured in a bottle. It’s about the moment when this grape was grown, that year, that harvest, the interpretation of that winemaker. All of that is put into a bottle with a cork or capsule and it's held there, slowly evolving and growing up, and when you open it, it is that moment again. There's nothing else like it on earth. I learn so much from all the years, and I'm so excited I have wines that were a part of me last year, but I can open them now.

What is a piece of advice you would give to a woman interested in breaking into the wine world?

Firstly, trust your instincts. Getting into wine can be scary, but lead with the knowledge you have, and go with your heart and guts. Our instincts as women are great. You have your power: you know what you like, you have your palate, so don’t let anyone tell you 'no'.

When I was younger in this industry, Tom and I would be standing at a tasting or an event together and everyone would automatically look to him. At first, I was angry on the inside, but then I decided enough is enough, no imposter syndrome here! I stepped up and stood firm.

When breaking in, I think girls have got to stick together, but also play amongst everybody. It’s important to be able to find strong women that represent who you are and who you want to align yourself with, but you should never shy away from standing at the table with the men. You do you.

Who is a woman that inspired you?

There's a lot!

Locally I think everyone should know about Mimi Casteel who is a winemaker and wine grower in Eola-Amity Hills with her own wine brand: Hope Well. Listening to Mimi speak about land, growing, sustainability and regenerative farming is jaw-dropping. What she has to say about the future of wine and grape growing is something that everyone should hear, and women will certainly resonate with her.

Where can women find your wine?

In the UK, we’re at Pull the Cork.

In the US, we're distributed in 27 states, and you can order directly on our website. If we're distributed in your state, a local wine shop can get it for you.

We're also distributed in Canada (Quebec and Ontario), France, Sweden and South Korea. We’re trying to send a little bit of Oregon love all over the world.