First crush: Alexeli Vineyard celebrates first anniversary

By Jan Jackson

A year ago, Phil Kramer was working 16-hour days getting his newly purchased vineyard and winery remodeled and ready to re-open. Now, the new tasting room is done, the existing winery building is back in business after being taken down to the studs, rebuilt and re-clad in tin and concrete and visitors are enjoying glasses of wine while sitting at patio tables in a new outdoor garden-centered event area.

“I’m proud of what we’ve done so far,” Kramer said. “The locals who stop by to see what it looks like now are surprised to see that it looks like a new place. The winery is revamped and ready to go. It is by far the cleanest I’ve ever seen and I’ve visited a lot of them.”

“Artiste Winery in Healdsburg, Calif., proclaimed that our 10 tons of chardonnay were the best out of the 2,000 tons that came in to them this year and Oregon Wine Press included us in the top six value picks for this year,” he continued. “My goal is cleanliness and fruit quality and it is paying off.”

Visitors to Alexeli, a combination of the Kramer brothers’ middle names and pronounced “Alex Eli,” are locals coming from neighboring cities and towns and people from the Portland, Oregon City and West Linn areas. Kramer said visitors have included folks on their way to The Oregon Garden and Silver Falls State Park and some, like the group of five cars filled with people from Trinidad, are driving in the country to go wine tasting.

The 60-acre Alexeli property is made up of 16 acres of grapes, an 8-acre lake surrounded by 30 acres of forest, a house, a winemaking facility and a tasting room facilities. Kramer, who holds a masters degree from the University of Illinois and worked for architect firms in both Chicago and Philadelphia before coming to Oregon, has a background in mechanical engineering as well as having tested chemicals, mildew, bird, pest management with Cornell University farm study program. As owner and Alexeli’s hands-on-guy, he is calling on all of those skills and then some.

“I’ve done a lot of things on a small scale that I’m doing on a large scale now,” Kramer said. “It doesn’t mean I’m doing everything that well, but I know how to use resources – and thanks to all of the people who have given me good advice – I’m able to make it work. I’m working now on the vineyard – replacing posts, adding new wires and putting in a different trellis system. I have already taken out the first of several quarter-acre plots of grapes so I can plant a garden and thereby make space for diversity in what has been a monoculture system.”

Kramer, who says he hasn’t had any real surprises during his first year of vineyard ownership, credits his way of looking at things and his method of setting goals and objectives. “It was hard to slow down to this way of life the first eight months, but now I’m content,” Kramer said. “With a lot of time out for water breaks, I am still putting in 16-hour days but this time there is the excitement of getting ready for our first crush.”