Oregon is where winemakers come to craft pinot noirs that send critics to their thesauruses in search of new superlatives, prompt enophiles to wonder whether Burgundy really is the best place in the world to grow the beguiling grape and — oh, yeah — that command high prices.
Ryan Harms wasn’t immune to such ambition, but he’s etched a prominent place in the state’s $5.6 billion industry by succeeding at the very different challenge of bringing Oregon wine to the masses. He expects his Union Wine Co. to produce around 500,000 cases this year, in the same neighborhood as A to Z Wineworks at the top of the Oregon heap.
CLOSER LOOK
- Company: Union Wine Co.
- What they do: Make and sell Underwood, Kings Road and Alchemist wines.
- Headquarters: Tualatin
- Founder and owner: Ryan Harms
- Employees: 30
- Web: unionwinecompany.com
That translates to 6 million bottles, although since this is Union, that might not the best way to put it.
The company, after all, is the maker of Underwood, a smash hit in cans, which account for around half of Union’s total output. It wasn’t the first brand to embrace metal, but Underwood’s growth has turned canned wine into a bona fide new category for the entire industry.
And as business success tends to, Union’s breakthroughs are inviting risk and opportunity.
“We know that with the base getting bigger, the percentage growth is going to have to keep coming down a little bit,” Harms said. “But we continue to be very bullish on the opportunities, especially for the Underwood brand, for us in the market.”
'Sideways' luck
His wine company doesn’t fit the classic Oregon mold, and Harms, 42, isn’t your standard-issue enology-school-certified winemaker. With no formal training, he came to Oregon from the East Coast in the late ’90s, worked a vintage and fell hard enough for wine that he returned in 2001. This time it stuck.
“I basically just started working in the cellar, and in the vineyard, and worked my way up,” he said. “I was in the right place at the right time for a winemaking job. If I was hiring someone today, I probably wouldn’t hire the young me.”
