Linfield University DigitalCommons@Linfield Oregon Wine History Transcripts Bringing Vines to the Valley 5-22-2012 Oregon Wine History Project™ Interview Transcript: Diana Lett Diana Lett Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/owh_transcripts Part of the Oral History Commons, and the Viticulture and Oenology Commons Recommended Citation Lett, Diana, "Oregon Wine History Project™ Interview Transcript: Diana Lett" (2012). Oregon Wine History Transcripts. Transcript. Submission 3. https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/owh_transcripts/3 This Transcript is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It is brought to you for free via open access, courtesy of DigitalCommons@Linfield, with permission from the rights-holder(s). Your use of this Transcript must comply with the Terms of Use for material posted in DigitalCommons@Linfield, or with other stated terms (such as a Creative Commons license) indicated in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, or if you have questions about permitted uses, please contact [email protected]. Diana Lett Transcript subject to Rights and Terms of Use for Material Posted in Digital Commons@Linfield This interview was conducted with Diana Lett (DL) on July 9, 2010 at Eyrie Vineyards in McMinnville, Oregon. The primary interviewer was Jeff D. Peterson (JDP). Additional support provided by videographers Mark Pederson and Barrett Dahl. The duration of the interview is 49 minutes, 18 seconds. [00:00] JDP: So today we are interviewing Diana Lett for the Oregon Wine History Project™. It’s July ninth and we’re here at Eyrie Vineyards to talk to her about the early days of wine. So why don’t you start by telling me a little bit about yourself, and about how you came, wound up coming to Oregon with David [Lett]? [00:24] DL: I was raised in the South, and I went to school in Dallas, Texas, University of Dallas. And just a few days after I finished my last term at the university, I got a job with Scott Foresman Publishing, which published college textbooks. I had been at work for about three days and I got a call from the head office in Chicago, and they said, We’d like to send you back to Chicago to attend the New Man’s Conference, and learn all about the new books, and meet some of the people that work all around the country with Scott Foresman. And so my friend who had helped me get the job said, “Well, while you’re in Chicago–” Oh, I said, “First of all, what’s the New Man’s Conference?” And they said, It’s all the new people that we’ve hired this past year or so and we’re bringing them all into Chicago, so it will be eighteen men and you. Sounded fine, all the new men and me. I was a new man, also. So my friend Al Dolan said to me, “While you’re there, make sure you meet Dave Lett. He’s covering our Northwest Territory, but he’s also—I think you’ll really like him, and he's starting a winery in Oregon.” So I didn’t know anything about wine, or anything like that, but the first person I met when I got to the New Man’s Conference was David Lett. And we liked each other immediately, and, well, to make a long story short, we were married eight weeks later in Dallas. I flew out to Oregon and my wedding present was an L.L Bean rainsuit and a shovel. That first week we got busy transplanting the little baby plants that he had planted the year before, he had planted in 1965. We spent our honeymoon year, ’66, ’67, digging out all these little vines and transplanting them over to what would become the Eyrie Vineyards. That was my introduction. When I told my friends and my family that I was running off to an unknown place with an unknown man to do an unknown thing, I dropped a few jaws. And I look back on it now and I think, That was crazy. [03:07] JDP: So how old were you about then? [03:09] DL: I had just turned twenty-three, and David had just turned twenty-seven. He came to Oregon in the winter of 1965. After he had finished getting his—let’s see, maybe we should back this up a little bit. I don’t know if you have the story of how he got involved in all of this. Let me start off and back up on that. David went to the University of Utah. He was born in Chicago, but then his family moved to Utah, and had a little apple farm in Utah. Their farm was right at the :! ! "#$%$!&'((!)%('*+#',!-*$%./*#0(!1!2345!67!89:9! !"#$%&'()&#'*)+,%"-'."%/#0,1' foot of the Wasatch Mountains, and he really enjoyed the whole natural splendor and being outside. They were very in touch with nature, they did a lot of hiking, and skiing, and all that sort of thing. But his grandfather had been a doctor back in Chicago, and his family really wanted him to be a doctor, so he went to University of Utah and majored in medicine and philosophy, thinking that the medical schools would want somebody who was really well-rounded in the liberal arts as well as sciences. And then when he graduated, and made application to the medical schools that he wanted to go to, all of which were coincidentally nearby really good sailing areas, he found that most medical schools were not that interested in somebody that was that well-rounded. He decided then he would have a fall back position of going to dental school, but he was not terribly excited about that. But he went for an interview in San Francisco at Physicians and Surgeons College there in San Francisco. And while he was there, the Donner Pass to get back to Utah got snowed in so he couldn’t go back. So he thought, I’m just going to go out to the Napa Valley and kind of see what’s going on. [05:30] And not much was going on in the Napa Valley at the time; there were only maybe two or three really good wineries and not many wineries at all, really. And he happened to go to Mayacamas for a visit. He went up to see Lee Stewart at Souverain Cellars, which was one of the other nice, small, premium wineries in the Napa Valley at that time. And it was a cold, foggy day, and it was in January, and he came up the drive and he saw a young man out in the courtyard there rolling barrels around and rinsing them out and doing all that, so he engaged that young man in conversation and they talked about winemaking, and wine, and traveling all around the world, and all the wonderful people who are involved in the wine business. And David said he felt like he just had a lightning bolt; that’s what he wanted to do and he could use his science, and he could use his more liberal self and he could be involved with nature, and it all came together for him. And he came back home and told his parents, kind of like when I told my parents what I wanted to do. Because at that time there was absolutely no glamour, no cache, no history, no—Really, it just wasn’t part of our culture at all to even be involved in wine, to even drink wine. So they were underwhelmed, for that as a career choice. But he got a letter shortly after that from Lee Stewart, who was a very respected winemaker, offering him a job at Souverain to see if he wanted to do that. So his parents said, Well, David, if you really are serious about doing this, we’ll help support you, but is there some place you can go and get a serious education in it? So he found out about the program at University of California at Davis, and he applied, and was accepted and so he attended Davis for two years, and I think he worked part time at Souverain and so forth. But he got his degree in Viticulture. He thought it would be, just from his personality, but then as he was studying about wine he realized that the wine that he liked was more natural, and was made from the vineyard. The vineyard should have the focus, rather than the manipulations you might do in the winery. So he decided to major in Viticulture and minor in Enology. 8! ! "#$%$!&'((!)%('*+#',!-*$%./*#0(!1!2345!67!89:9! !"#$%&'()&#'*)+,%"-'."%/#0,1' And while he was at Davis, they had the opportunity to do a lot of wine tasting in their classes, and they had the opportunity to taste a lot of good wines. And some of those wines were Pinot noir from Burgundy, and David just fell for Pinot noir. And that was another one of those pieces of—Jason [Lett] calls it the Cosmic Brick. But just this thing, everything just clicks into place and you know this is where you want to focus. And so Pinot noir became his baby. And when he graduated from Davis January of ’64 he went over to Europe for several months and went, kind of travelled right around the Northern part of France, and Alsace and Germany, and that area. And talked about Pinot noir and kind of related cool-weather, cool climate grapes.