It’s not just what’s inside the bottle that makes this wine special. Hanson Vineyards has commissioned a poem
for its inaugural edition of Poets’ Lament, an orange wine made from Pinot Blanc.
Award-winning Oregon playwright E.M. Lewis was commissioned to write a poem for the 2018 vintage, and each new vintage of this wine will have a new poem written by an Oregon writer.
When winemaker Jason Hanson decided last fall to make an orange wine, “I was reminded of the old saying that ‘nothing rhymes with orange.’”
That led to him thinking about poets, and from there the idea for a poem on the label. Jason turned to the only professional writer he knew… his sister.
Lewis is a well-known Oregon playwright and opera librettist, currently working on an opera commission for American Lyric Theater, and a new political play called The Great Divide – an Oregon Shakespeare Festival American Revolutions United States History Cycle Commission that she’s working on with Artists Repertory Theater, where she is a resident artist.
Her poem for the inaugural Poets’ Lament wine is a lighthearted piece on the dilemmas poets face.
Sited on a fourth-generation family farm, Hanson Vineyards is a 100 percent estate winery near Mount Angel. Clark and Jason Hanson (father and son) established the winery in 2005. The new orange wine in concept is cousin to a rosé, starting with white grapes rather than red.
The poem (and the wine) is available at the winery, located at 34948 S. Barlow Road, Woodburn, weekends noon to
5 p.m.
