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At Home in the Vineyard: Cultivating a Winery, an Industry, and a Life | 
 enlarge | Author: Susan Sokol Blosser
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $10.39
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 335506
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.8 x 0.8
ISBN: 0520256298
Dewey Decimal Number: 641
EAN: 9780520256293
ASIN: 0520256298
Publication Date: May 7, 2008
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Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
This moving, evocative memoir, woven with lyrical descriptions of the sights and smells of vineyard life, tells the inspirational story of one woman's journey to success in an industry run mostly by men. At Home in the Vineyard, filled with colorful characters and unexpected experiences, brings a local rural community vividly alive as Oregon wine pioneer and industry icon Susan Sokol Blosser recounts how she fell in love with a vineyard, learned how to run it, and ultimately achieved her vision of producing Pinot Noirs to rival those of Burgundy. An intimate family story, At Home in the Vineyard also gives a candid insider's view of Oregon's flourishing wine industry.
Sokol Blosser begins her narrative in the 1970s, when, as a young, idealistic wife, she helped her husband make his wild idea of planting a vineyard in the Dundee Hills become a reality. By the book's final pages, she has become president of Sokol Blosser Winery, widely respected for gaining national visibility and for producing world-class wines, especially the elusive Pinot Noir. Along the way, Sokol Blosser tells how she learned to do everything from driving a tractor and managing a picking crew to selling Oregon wine in Manhattan. She also shares some special accomplishments: how she instituted values of environmental sustainability and social responsibility at the vineyard, integrated family and business life, and successfully brought the second generation on board.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Lives up to its title and more September 10, 2008
At Home in the Vineyard: Cultivating a Winery, an Industry, and a Life by Susan Sokol Blosser is one book that seems to offer an exception to the adage, "you can't judge a book by its cover".
Just as the subtitle suggests, At Home in the Vineyard effectively describes the slow, steady transformation of an estate winery, a wine industry, and a human being over a period of more than 30 years. It is an intimate study of all three components delivered in a narrative style that keeps you engaged from start to finish.
This book is first and foremost a memoir describing the author's experiences planting a vineyard, starting a winery, and managing both through several decades of trials and tribulations. In addition, Susan provides the reader a first-hand historical account of the Oregon wine industry from its beginnings in the early 1970's. Along the way, she offers candid insights into her personal and professional growth as a wife, mother, business owner, daughter, sister, community leader, friend, and neighbor.
Until reading this book, I never realized the integral role Susan Sokol Blosser played in developing Oregon's wine industry. Nor did I know about the lead role Sokol Blosser Winery took toward adopting sustainable practices, becoming one of the first vineyards to be certified by LIVE and the first winery to be certified by LEED. This is impressive considering the impact these efforts have had on the rest of the state's wine industry.
Having read a variety of wine memoirs, Susan's story stands out as one of the more insightful and intriguing books of its genre. At Home in the Vineyard should appeal to the wine enthusiast, aspiring winemaker, and Oregon pinot fan alike. Anyone reading this book will come away more connected to the people and places behind Oregon wine in general, and Sokol Blosser Winery in particular.
If you are seeking to understand Oregon wine in a deeper, more connected way, then you owe it to yourself to read At Home in the Vineyard.
 Sour grapes? No way! July 2, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Well, except when the weather deals them an unwelcome clout....
I live smack dab in the middle of wine country (California) myself, but am no vintner. And it happens I took a scouting trip to the McMinnville vicinity in Oregon last year, thinking it a prospective new home. So, when I spied the lush, green-vined cover of AT HOME IN THE VINEYARD, I was hooked and had to investigate one woman's (and her family's) experiences establishing and nurturing grapes from plant to bottle.
Susan Sokol Blosser writes a chatty, wide-ranging history beginning in late 1970, when she gave birth to her first son and her then-husband Bill "closed the deal on our first piece of vineyard land." She traces the stages of the vineyard and the winery that was built later with an easy, honest style that disarms and charms. It is soon apparent that this woman is an engine of energy. During the years her three children are small, she mainly toils in the vineyard, tilling, planting, picking, spraying, fertilizing, etc. But she also finds time to join the school board and various associations. She also teaches briefly at a McMinnville college. Later, she is twice a candidate for state public office, once losing by a questionable "whisker." As the family wine business expands, so does the wine industry in Oregon. Susan and Bill do their part to uphold and promote the burgeoning reputation Oregon wine slowly acquires -- particularly its Pinot Noir which grows full-bodied in the cooler Northwest climate. In 1990, Susan takes over from Bill as president of their winery and slowly refinances and then gains full ownership of the enterprise. She changes winemakers to improve quality. She travels widely and often to see distributors and explore new markets. She modernizes the labels on their bottles and gains national attention with a blended white wine. She deals with lawsuits and legislative hurdles. She also decides to shift to organic operations and embraces sustainable agriculture. Then, in the early years of the new millennium, she decides she will focus on gradually handing over the reins of power to the son and daughter who have decided to follow their parents into the family business.
While the author relates the chronology of the vineyard and winery she owns and manages, she doesn't ignore the personal side. AT HOME IN THE VINEYARD includes some cute anecdotes about farm pets, and it mentions family concerns such as her father's Alzheimer's without dwelling on them. At one point, I wondered how in the world anyone could juggle so many balls in the air -- family, business, many friendships, and political activism. Something seemed bound to tumble. Well, something did, and the author unflinchingly, and without wallowing, tackles the changes in her life after the children grew up and left the nest.
For anyone who has ever considered starting up a winery, AT HOME IN THE VINEYARD illustrates the kind of commitment and fortitude such an undertaking requires. But even if you aren't planning on being the entrepreneur that all the members of the Sokol Blosser family are; if you seek stories about rural life, want to know more about the Willamette Valley, or are interested in one outspoken and undaunted woman's adventures as a corporate executive, then snag a copy of AT HOME IN THE VINEYARD and -- maybe with a glass of wine in hand -- imbibe it cover to cover.
Cheers! April 26, 2007
Pour a glass of Evolution Wine and kick back with this entertaining memoir. If the technical aspects of starting and maintaining a business is not a favorite reading topic there is still plenty of life drama going on that is highly readable and easy to relate to. Having lived in Oregon for 22 years and seen (and tasted) the state's wine industry mature I was fascinated with finding out the inside story. If you live in Oregon you might enjoy a few "I was there" moments when the author describes the wonderful concert series in her vineyard. Ah yes...Johnny Mathis under the full moon. Wonderful memory, wonderful book.
Speaks to the heart . . . April 1, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I found Hargrave's autobiography pompous and dull, but Susan Sokol Blosser's account of building a life in the Dundee Hills of Oregon speaks to me on many levels--as a woman working in the wine industry, a woman working with her husband, a woman running her own business, and a mother. Susan turns her trials into triumphs and exercises a sense of humor along the way. From the Great Goose Experiment to the day her tearful son rides his bike all the way to school by himself, this is a story that will transport you into "The Life" of owning a vineyard and winery, with a judicial salting of reality and romance.
 This bears a lot of similarity to The Vineyard March 21, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book, down to the "pioneer" theme,and dustjacket synopsis, seems to owe a significant debt to Louisa Thomas Hargrave's The Vineyard, which covered similar territory at a similar time on Long Island's North Fork.
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