Back to the Future of Wine: The Richard Sommer Story
Written by Jack Costa.
The Umpqua Valley is known as the birthplace of Pinot Noir in Oregon, but many people might not know the story of how it all started and who started it?
That man is Richard Sommer, the catalyst who ignited the Oregon wine scene and founded HillCrest Vineyard, the first estate winery in Oregon since Prohibition, just 20 minutes from Roseburg.
The wine world has many colorful characters, and Sommer was no exception. Encounters with Sommer were anything but predictable. More than once, visitors walking along the gravel path to his tasting room were startled by a shirtless man jumping up from the vineyard, only to find out it was the owner himself.
So, who was Sommer? A farmer, scientist, and what sounds like the wine equivalent of Doc Brown in “Back to the Future.”
Often seen wearing overalls, round spectacles and carrying a pencil in one pocket, Sommer filled notebook after notebook (and subsequently box upon box) with notes, documenting every thought that crossed his complex mind. Some say that brilliance was the half-sibling of madness, and for Sommer, the scientific streak was likely hereditary; his father was California’s first marine biologist and the first scientist to study Red Tide, the poisonous bacteria in shellfish.
Sommer was a California native and a veteran of the Korean War. After concluding his studies at the University of California, Davis, he migrated to Oregon armed with a degree in agronomy and vine cuttings from Louis Martini’s Carneros vineyard.
“Martini’s vineyard was the site of the first Napa Winery,” said Dyson DeMara, the now owner and winemaker at HillCrest Vineyard. “The winery was named Talcoa, which was originally started by the father of the Missouri wine industry, George Hussman.”
With cuttings ready for planting, Sommer began surveying land from the Applegate Valley, near Medford, to the Willamette Valley in hopes of starting a winery.
Colleagues and professionals from UC Davis warned Sommer that Oregon was simply too cold and wet to grow grapes. But after meeting the Doerner brothers in the Umpqua Valley, a German immigrant family who had produced Zinfandel in Melrose since the late 1890s (and distilled brandy until their distillery closed in the 1960s), those myths were quickly shattered.
Using the Umpqua Valley as his base of operations, Sommer took a job at the Douglas County assessor’s office and lived modestly in a tent near the Steamboat Inn. During this time, he purchased fruit from old pre-Prohibition vineyards across the Willamette, Rogue and Umpqua Valleys, fermenting them separately and evaluating each region. He found the Umpqua Valley fruit to be his favorite.
“(Sommer) was here to make wine that competed with the famous European wine regions,” said DeMara. “He wanted to be a pioneer and had a natural draw to innovate. With his Swiss upbringing, wine was simply a daily accompaniment to meals. They made wine to share with family and friends around the table.”
Still searching for a proper vineyard site, Richard received word from the Doerner brothers about a neighboring retired turkey farm in the Umpqua Valley. Purchasing the 20-acre plot in the Melrose area of Roseburg, Richard transplanted vine material he had been nurturing on his uncle’s Valley View Vineyard and Orchard in the Applegate Valley.
Sommer’s newly established vineyard property in the Umpqua Valley soon became a living experiment. Different trellising systems could be seen dotting the landscape, some with 10 to 20 wires. According to DeMara, Sommer called the vines his “babies,” and his vineyard occasionally looked more like a Rube Goldberg machine than a manicured wine estate.
Historically speaking, Sommer is most widely recognized for introducing the first Pinot Noir vines to Oregon –the state’s most widely planted grape. Sommer’s first Pinot Noir bottling – his inaugural 1967 vintage – will forever grace the history books of Oregon wine, launching an unprecedented movement in the state’s wine history. Few realize, however, that he was also the first to bottle Malbec and Barbera, and the first post-prohibition Riesling, (not to mention a dozen of other grape varieties). In total, his estate housed over 35 grape varieties. For context, most wineries today grow 5 to 10 varieties, but 35 was fitting for Sommers’ experimental mindset.
In Sommer’s April 29, 1970, article in The News-Review, he outlined what drew him to Roseburg to grow wine grapes: “Roseburg is blessed with a climate remarkably similar to the great wine growing regions of France,” he said. “We have the potential of making some of the finest wines in the world that cannot be matched or duplicated, and the key to this is our unique climate.”
Surprisingly, Sommer had no formal winemaking experience. He learned entirely from observation and the scientific curiosity that results in surprising innovation. Sommer purchased dairy tanks from Los Angeles, shipped them to Oregon, and repurposed them for winemaking, long before stainless steel became industry standard. At the time, only Château Latour winery in Bordeaux had begun experimenting with stainless steel tanks; most wineries still used leaky, unsanitary wooden tanks.
Newcomers to the wine industry sought Sommer’s help in those early days. Philippe Girardet of Girardet Vineyards was one such individual, working under Sommer before starting his own winery. A black-and-white photo immortalizes that history: Girardet, soaked to the bone during harvest, standing in Sommer’s HillCrest Vineyard.
The 70s were a time of significant growth for HillCrest Vineyard and Sommer’s wines, which eventually lined grocery store shelves, proving there was a promising future. His wines were gaining traction, particularly his Rieslings (the most expensive wine varietal in the world at the time). It wasn’t until one fateful evening, however, that it became clear that HillCrest Vineyard wasn’t just making wine for family and friends, but wines unlike anywhere else in the world.
That evening was coordinated by Howard Hinsdale. Hinsdale was a wine distributor — in fact, the first statewide wine distributor in Oregon. Hinsdale had invited a certain Frenchman for dinner, but this was no ordinary guest: he was from Burgundy, France, and an expert in wine. His name was Robert, and his last name was widely known as the head of Burgundy’s great winemaking house — Drouhin — his family having made wine in this “holy land” of Pinot Noir since the late 1800s.
One of Hinsdale’s initial goals in bringing Drouhin to Oregon was to help the small group that comprised the state’s modest but promising wine industry gain knowledge and connections. Drouhin had been accompanying Hinsdale on a networking tour, meeting the various clients in Oregon who had been buying Drouhin wines.
It is no surprise, then, that a simple meal at Hinsdale’s home with Drouhin and this small group of Oregon winemakers that Oregon history unfolded. Among those in attendance was none other than the man we wrote about last week: Richard Sommer.
As dinner concluded, Hinsdale proposed a blind wine tasting and began pouring Drouhin 3 Pinot Noirs, all grown and produced in Oregon. Carefully evaluating each, the Frenchman was surprised by one in particular.
“This tastes very similar to the wines near my home,” he said.
In fact, the wine he had found most appealing was grown over 5,000 miles from his home. The winery was Sommer’s HillCrest Vineyard in Roseburg. The vintage? 1967.
Unbeknownst to Hinsdale, this glass of ‘67 Pinot had solved an ongoing dilemma for Drouhin. He had been scouring California for an appropriate vineyard site in hopes of planting his family’s legacy in the New World. Unsatisfied with the results, it was — as Drouhin later told Hinsdale — the 1967 Pinot Noir from HillCrest, crafted by Sommer, that made him realize that Oregon was key to establishing his family’s name in the United States.
Fifty years later, in 2024, the Drouhin family secured the No. 6 spot on Wine Spectator’s “Top 100 Wines of the Year” for their Oregon-grown Pinot Noir. You could argue that Roseburg’s own Sommer helped lay the foundation for that global recognition.
If you read last week’s column, you’ll remember that Sommer was a California native, farmer and innovator in search of the winemaking promised land. Stumbling upon Roseburg in the early 1960s, he began experimenting and researching. With a radically innovative and curious mind, Sommer was, without knowing it, transforming wine history — eventually earning the title “Father of Oregon Wine” in Oregon wine canon.
Richard Sommer had gone from making wine in a tent near the Steamboat Inn to producing Oregon’s first Pinot Noir — in Roseburg — and a wine that would eventually convince even the Burgundians that Oregon was a place of promise for wine.
But Sommer could easily have remained in California. Why did he choose Roseburg and the Umpqua Valley? The fertile valleys of Napa and Sonoma offered more sunshine than a grape could dream of, and every major California city, from LA to San Francisco, was thirsty for wine in the 1960s. Yet Sommer’s ambitions extended beyond simply making wine and selling it–he was in search of a diamond in the rough.
Sommer wrote in a column for The News-Review on April 29, 1970 stating “the main reason for raising certain wine grapes in Oregon and especially in the Roseburg area is that the quality of these grapes cannot be surpassed anywhere in the United States. During the progressively cooler weather in the fall, ripening will proceed slowly, making a nice sugar-acid balance and saving the aromatic constituents.”
“If these same varieties were grown in a warmer area, ripening will proceed rapidly, the aromatic constituents will be lost, and the sugar will be high and acid low, and therefore producing just a standard wine,” Sommer said in the column.
Approaching winemaking like Doc Brown from “Back to the Future,” Richard’s eccentric personality, while difficult for many to understand, was the reason he transcended the usual struggles of winemaking and excelled at crafting a product so different from anywhere else. He documented the climate, the soils and the grape varieties he cultivated. The vineyard was his lab, and for over 4 decades, “he made good wine—and lots of it,” according to Dyson DeMara, the current owner and winemaker at HillCrest.
“Richard made good wine; he made 25,000 cases at one point, and even hired 15 employees to help manage his operation,” DeMara said.
Following the start of HillCrest, the great Oregon Wine Rush began. During the 1970s and ’80s, winemakers flocked to Oregon in droves — including the Drouhin family — and the Willamette Valley became the epicenter of Oregon’s wine trade. In 1970, the Willamette Valley was home to just five wineries. By 1980, that number had grown to 34. Today, the region boasts over 800 wineries and counting.
Richard saw the Umpqua Valley as a hidden gem — a diamond that remains one of the most unassuming wine regions in the country. While Sommer became known within the tight group of Oregon wine pioneers, the Umpqua Valley remained somewhat overlooked by many prospective winemakers, leaving the broader public unaware of his full impact on Oregon wine.
Then, after 40 years of winemaking, Sommer’s old age caught up to him and began to present several difficulties. In the early 2000s, two men came forward, presenting Sommer with an enticing offer. Whatever transpired that day, it was evident Sommer was in decline, and his legacy was on the same trajectory. Before he knew it, he was being evicted from his property and given a check for $1,000.
With the help of friends, local winemakers, and Sommer’s sister, a court battle ensued. It eventually resolved in Sommer’s reclaiming the historic property that had been deviously taken from him. Despite the fortunate outcome, Sommer knew it was time to step away, but he needed someone willing to continue his legacy.
Enter Dyson DeMara.
DeMara, a Californian and a Robert Mondavi veteran, took the reins of HillCrest Vineyard and Winery in 2003. Learning of the other potential buyers, you might say it was nothing short of a miracle that DeMara and his family would become the heirs to Sommer’s legacy.
With DeMara as the new owner, Sommer was able to live on the property. Most wineries undergo rebranding after purchase, becoming unrecognizable and often a shadow of their former selves. However, when DeMara purchased HillCrest in 2003, he became both the heir to Sommer’s legacy and the steward of Oregon’s first post-prohibition estate winery. After fighting cancer at the age of 80, Sommer passed away in 2009, but before his passing, DeMara made a deathbed promise to him: to protect and preserve his legacy.
DeMara kept that deathbed promise when, in 2009, an attempt to diminish Sommer’s historic work suddenly appeared. According to DeMara, folks had begun to claim the Willamette Valley was the birthplace of Oregon wine and the first Pinot Noir, a belief echoed across countless websites, blogs and magazines. A court case ensued.
Thanks to Sommer’s meticulous record-keeping — including photographs and detailed cellar logs — DeMara was able to quickly prove that Sommer was the first winemaker to plant Pinot Noir in Oregon, and establish the first post-prohibition estate winery in the state. Upon concluding the case, the State of Oregon officially recognized Sommer’s pioneering work by installing a historical marker at the entrance to the property located at 240 Vineyard Ln in Roseburg. Though it’s been 16 years since Sommer’s passing, DeMara continues to work the land and make wine just as Sommer did.
Today, HillCrest Vineyards is truly a family affair, run by Dyson DeMara, his wife, Susan DeMara, and their children, Hannah DeMara and Tucker DeMara. While visiting, you’ll likely meet one or all of them. It’s hard not to feel the spirit of Sommer still walking among the vines. HillCrest Vineyard and Winery remains an artifact, a living time machine of Oregon wine history.
“I want this place to be a community icon; an Umpqua Valley icon,” Dyson DeMara said. “This place was Richard’s legacy, but it’s also our legacy as a community.”
HillCrest Vineyard is located at 240 Vineyard Ln in Roseburg, Oregon.
