Warren Aney Oral History Interview, April 4, 2014

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: Just starting to ask how you knew Chuck Coury.

WARREN ANEY: You want the short version or the long version?

TEM: Well, I'm an archivist, so I like longer versions.

WA: I got interested in wine in the late '60s. I was at an officer training school in Ft. Bennington and lots of spare time on my hands and across the street was the base liquor store, so I started sampling wines. When I got came back here, I found out there was people making wine here in Oregon. So, I real 00:01:00quickly made acquaintances with Chuck Coury and David Lett and Dick Erath who were the real pioneers here in the Willamette Valley. So that's how I got to meet them just because of my interest in wine. Then I went ahead and joined actually they asked me to join their wine growers' association as a non-grower member, as a lay member I guess you'd call it, or citizen member and I helped run for several years their annual winery tours. So, I got to know them pretty well because I served on the committee with them and go visit him frequently and got to know his family.

TEM: Where did he, was he living in Portland at that time. Was he primarily...when did...?

WA: He was from California. Got a degree in meteorology at the University of 00:02:00California. Went into liquor sales. See the link between meteorology and liquor sales? Then got interested in wine so he went to University of California at not Berkeley, I'll think of it in a minute. What's the one that teaches agricultural courses?

TEM: Davis.

WA: Yeah, UC Davis and got a degree in viticulture and then took his family to Alsace and they spent a year or so in Alsace experiencing wine growing firsthand and wine making firsthand and then came back to the United States looking for a place that matched Alsace and California didn't. So, he looked... I think he 00:03:00looked as far away as Kansas but ended up driving into the Willamette Valley and got to the north part of the Willamette Valley and said this is it. Found a piece of property on the hillside that was for sale, bought it, and started planting his vines. That was just out of Forest Grove on David Hill. It's still there. It's known as David Hill Winery now. But that's one of the wines that he made there, that Pinot Noir. One of the last wines he made.

TEM: When did he start growing, when did he settle?

WA: In the late '60s. He was one of the first three growers, wine-makers, to try to settle in the Willamette Valley. He and David Lett and Dick Erath were the first three. There's a little bit of discussion over who was here first. That hasn't been resolved yet. Chuck claimed to be first. But he made lots of claims. 00:04:00He was that kind of person.

TEM: Then why did he make the shift to brewing? What was the--?

WA: Okay. He wanted to kind of I don't know if I necessarily... he was not only making wine and growing grapes and making his own wine, he was a viticulturist, a wine-grower, a wine-maker, he also had a nursery where he sold grape stock to a number of vineyards around. My father had property up in Bald Peak and we bought, oh gosh, I can't remember how many, thirty-six I think. We were going to try it at high elevation and see how it worked from him. I helped him plant a vineyard, or I help assess the vineyard planting in Salem hills.

He not only sold them, but he'd also go in and plant under contract. He was always looking for new things to do and new ways to do it and some people came in and joined him financially and provided him with some money and then after a very few years literally forced him out of the business. Bought him out. So, he all of a sudden had to leave his winery vineyard home and I don't think it was willingly. By that time, I had moved to Northeast Oregon and kept in touch with him. He called me up one day and said I want to look for a place where I can find some good spring water. What? He said, I'm looking at two ideas. He told me 00:06:00about being forced out of the wine business and then he was looking at two ideas to get into: one was bottled water and the other was beer. So, he came to Northeast Oregon and we spent a couple days looking at some various spring sites and none of them were really attractive to him and looked like it'd be nothing that'd work very well so he contacted me a few months later and said well, I'm going to open a brewery in Southeast Portland. So, that's kind of how it happened.

TEM: What'd you say when he said that?

WA: It was interesting. Yeah, I was interested. I was there for the dedication of the brewery after he started brewing and it was an interesting dedication 00:07:00because they were Episcopalians and they had an Episcopalian priest come in and do the blessing of the brewery for them. He initially I don't know how much about this you know, but he initially just brewed for tap beer and decided that wasn't getting a big enough reception so he started bottling then after a couple of years went out of the business, probably after, oh, it couldn't have been much more than 5 or 6 years. The Cartwright Brewery was named after his wife, Shirley. Her maiden name is Cartwright.

KOREY JACKSON: And it was Cartwright from the beginning?

WA: Yeah. I don't think there was anything bad about the beer. He might've had 00:08:00the same problem that he had with his wine, that was inconsistency. His wines were varied a lot in quality and salability I'd guess you'd say. When you went to buy a bottle of wine from him off the shelf you couldn't be sure that you were getting the last time you bought it off the shelf. One of his cohort said he was brilliant, but he couldn't tie his own shoelaces. He could really come up with some great ideas, but he had trouble carrying out the details.

TEM: Was he part of the home brewing community before he...?

WA: No, not that I know of. He might've been but I wasn't aware of it.

TEM: I hadn't heard that.

WA: No, I think he went into it pretty fresh.

TEM: Yeah.

WA: After he went out of business there, he moved to California in the Napa Valley and started a business as a bike rental. So, he was renting bicycles to tourists, which is another innovative idea. The last I saw him was, I don't know for sure what year it was, but it would've been in the maybe ten years ago. I can't remember when he died, but I saw him just 6 weeks before he died. He was okay. He was saying he had to go to the doctor to get a follow-up on an examination that the found something wrong, but his wife was bedridden at that 00:10:00time, so he was kind of caregiver for his wife.

Then I was leaving a winery tour or participating in a winery tour about 6 weeks later and one of the wine makers told me that he had just died.

TEM: How did he reflect on the time of running the brewery? Was he aware of his status as being the first post-prohibition in the role that he had?

WA: I'm not sure. I don't remember really discussing those details with him. I think his vision was, I think he'd go along with the term craft brewery now, although I don't know if he used it at the time. because Blitz-Weinhard was still in business here in town, but that was the only other brewery that I know of that existed at that time. So, he was in some ways a pioneer on the craft 00:11:00brewery side of the business. I'm pretty sure he stimulated Dick Ponzi to start Bridgewater...

KJ: Bridgeport.

WA: Bridgeport! And they could say that he did that just a few years after Chuck started his brewery. He's described a little bit in that book about Dick Erath and the Boys Up North [The Boys Up North: Dick Erath and the Early Oregon Winemakers], and they briefly mention him going from the winery business into the brewing business, where the little pink tag is.

KJ: Oh yeah.

WA: Yeah, there's a page and a half here about Charles Coury. Not no more than 00:12:00that. So, you might want to read that. But it talks about this says he came to Oregon in '65 and there's some argument over that. There's an interesting story he tells. I'll tell his version of it. It's not the version that's in the book, but he found after he had his, he thought this is an ideal wine growing site. He says he found out after he had a couple years of harvest that somebody told him that there's a fellow who had grown grapes on that property before the turn of 00:13:00the century and Frank Rooter was the guy's name. He even had a wine that was entered in the St. Louis Expedition in 1906 or '02. I can't remember when that was but that won a prize for being a good wine. This says he grew mostly Riesling. Chuck, one way I got to know him fairly well is he taught a class of viticulture at Portland Community College around 1972 or '73. It had a good turnout. Most of the early wine growers that were here in Oregon were in the class. I sat in on it. I was one of the class members. He talked a lot about what he felt his theory was on growing grapes, or any fruit for that matter, is 00:14:00that the limits of were at its northernmost or most extreme limit of adaptation you get the highest quality of fruit. He says it's like they're stressed and they want to really do good because they don't have much time to do it in. He says when it comes to a grape like pinot noir, Oregon is near its northern limit than California is so Oregon's going to produce better pinot noir than California is. It's true. If you compare California strawberries with Oregon strawberries or California apples with Hood River apples, there's quite a difference. Of course, there's climate change, who knows what's going to happen next. We might be growing oranges up here better than California. When I took the class, he knew I was an ecologist.

He says I have an idea, why don't you write a paper on the wine climates in 00:15:00Oregon? So, I did at his suggestion and it was accepted by the ecological society and published in their journal and that was in 1974. So, it was after I'd taken the class. But basically used Chuck's meteorological background and his viticulture, his paper that he wrote his thesis was wine grape adaptation in the Napa Valley. What he came out of that was they were growing grapes that were very well-suited for the Napa Valley but after going to Alsace he wanted to grow Alsatian varieties. In fact, he predicted in that class, at that time they were growing here in Oregon chardonnay and pinot noir and Gewürztraminer and pinot 00:16:00blanc and you know the standard grape varieties that were also being grown quite a bit in California. But he had an idea. He says another variety we need to try here and that's Pinot Gris. He planted the seed for getting Pinot Gris growing here in Oregon, which is one of the... we do a better job with Pinot Gris than anybody else in this country.

TEM: So, what was he like as a personality? And a person?

WA: He was friendly but outspoken, opinionated but I liked him and I knew he liked me. I think they talk about I think they even mention in the book there an altercation he got into the wine growers association where they disagreed on something and he just got irate. What was the word he used? Let me [grabs book]. 00:17:00Can I find it again? I lost my name tag, I mean my bookmark. Okay, it'll be a minute here. That's right this doesn't have an index. When he talks about his master's thesis and says [reads from book] "My professors argued with me, but I 00:18:00was right. I had an absolute climatological basis for my thesis and knew the cool, rainy conditions in Oregon would be ideal, particularly for the pinot noir, chardonnay and Riesling varieties." Here's what he says, [reads from book again] "I was the big gun in 1965. I was a leader and talker. Not only was I a voice for the wine industry I was a loud voice." Like I say, he was outspoken and had problems in the details. Maybe if he'd gotten into bottled water he'd a 00:19:00done better. I don't know. At least he's not quite so dependent on the brewer's skills.

TEM: So, what did your connection to the wine industry continue to be?

WA: Consumer. When we move back to Portland around 2000, well, early '90s Joyce 00:20:00went to work for a travel agency and I led wine tours.

So, I did that for several years, just as a, you know, almost a hobby thing more than a, I mean I got paid for it, but it was more for the fun of it than anything else. I've stayed connected. I still know people, the old-timers in the industry well enough so that if we met on the street we'd know who each other was I think if I could remember their name. I've kept in touch not so much with David Lett, of course he died a few years ago. But Dick Ponzi and once a while Richard Erath and the Vuylstekes had the Oak Knoll Winery. I kept in touch with him. I haven't been doing anything except being a consumer.

TEM: That's a fair role.

KJ: Some of us, at least.

TEM: I know, right? it's a pretty important role.

WA: Well, I made wine for a while too. I mentioned planting grapes on my father's property, and we had about oh probably the equivalent of an acre of grapes. They were experimental varieties, but there were enough so that you could make wine out of them. I made wine from those for several years but never ended up with anything that was outstanding, I thought. That was probably because it was at 1100 feet in elevation and that was kind of above the level that they felt it was good to be growing grapes in. But there was a fellow who came to visit me when I was at the winery and he wanted to plant vines at a higher elevation because he was going to make sparkling wine and he ended up planting at about 800-900 feet elevation and he's doing a pretty good job now making sparkling wine out of those grapes because you don't need quite the sugar 00:22:00and ripeness that you need to make still wine. In fact, it works better if you have a little bit higher acidity and lower sugar to make your champagne. At least, that's what I've been told.

TEM: What did you do professionally?

WA: I was a wildlife ecologist. Worked for the state for a full career in the Dalles, Portland, La Grande.

TEM: Where'd you go to school?

WA: Oregon State. Why anywhere else? Went back and got a master's degree in 1970s, in the early '70s.

TEM: It's a good place to be.

WA: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We lived in Corvallis. We got married when I was an undergraduate, so we lived there as undergraduate student. Went to work. Got an 00:23:00opportunity to come back and get a master's degree. Of course, we had a family by then, but we lived just south of the campus a little ways.

TEM: I've been there 8 years and I have a 10-year-old and it's a very nice place to have a family.

WA: Joyce worked at the bookstore when I was an undergraduate.

TEM: You would not recognize it now.

WA: Well, they're not at the Memorial Union anymore?

TEM: No.

WA: That's what I thought.

TEM: As of fall, right?

KJ: Is it that recent?

TEM: Mm-hmm.

KJ: Oh wow.

TEM: The parking lot that was outside the Memorial Union that was in between the library, well, what is now the library, it's now a building, or they're building a building on the parking lot.

WA: Okay.

TEM: So, it's really unrecognizable.

KJ: So, how did you come by... you had these just sitting around for a while?

WA: Yes. Yeah, yeah. I think the reason they weren't emptied is because I could find something better on the shelf. Or I probably, maybe it'd be more honest to say that because I appreciated the fact that they came from Chuck Coury and I hung onto them in his memory.

TEM: I think it's a very interesting and intriguing story to me that so much attention can be paid to Bridgeport and Widmer, but had he not started a few years before, that he was the first.

WA: It is interesting because Portland really didn't have any other model to go 00:25:00by as far as I knew about the history of the brewing industry. You had corporate brewers but these little craft breweries... I mean there probably were some around the country, but I never heard of anybody saying, oh yes, I modeled mine on the craft brewery in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I don't think anybody ever thought that it was something that was not invented in Portland. Because we quickly went from one craft brewery to more breweries than any other city in the country.

TEM: I have heard now that it's reported more craft breweries within the city limits of Portland than any other city in the world.

WA: Oh, I wouldn't doubt it. I've seen that too. I mean we went to, well I think 00:26:00something that might have had something to do with it is about the time Chuck came to talk to me, or visit, and look for spring water and breweries and we'd just come back from a trip to Europe and learned what good beer was and we just talked about that. Of course, he had been in Europe also and he knew what good beer was and knew that it wasn't on the shelf here. So, he may have used his experience in Europe, maybe even reinforced a little bit about my experience in Europe to decide to make beer.

TEM: It seems that that is a common thing that comes up when I read about the early craft brewers or talk to the early craft brewers is this almost all of them took this very important trip over to Europe, that this is a common thread 00:27:00that I hear over and over again. It must have been such an amazing difference between here and there to have influenced so many people that went on to be so foundational in the industry.

WA: Yeah, after we'd been back from Europe for a while some German forestry specialist came on a tour, and I was asked to help host him. And so, I invited him to my house for an afternoon beer and there were maybe a dozen of them, and I poured out Henry Weinhard beer which is the best beer you could get at that time and I think their comment was this almost tastes like beer. But they told 00:28:00me a joke that you probably can't record. You've probably heard this story. They said drinking American beer is like making love in a canoe: it's fucking near water.

KJ: I have heard that, but I think this was on a pier, that was the version I heard.

WA: Oh, okay.

TEM: Canoe, pier.

WA: They kind of liked that Henry Weinhard but that was of course a little better-quality beer than standard across-the-counter Blitz Weinhard was. I'm going to turn off my cellphone in case somebody's trying to call me. Somebody just texted me [looks down at phone].

KJ: Well, should we crack this guy open?

WA: Well, I don't know. It'd be a waste, I think. Or you could just fill it back up with water and put the... well. The other label's in better condition. I don't think there's any dates on those beer bottles.

KJ: No, there aren't.

WA: Of course, there's the date on the wine bottle.

KJ: 1976 is this one.

WA: 1976 is it. That was one of the last, so he was out of it shortly after 00:30:00that. So, he was probably making wine not much more than 12 years.

TEM: What did he report to you, or talk about what it felt like when Cartwright brewing ended?

WA: I never got to talk because I was in La Grande.

TEM: Oh, right.

WA: Let's see had we come back to Portland yet? No. I had to make a trip to La Grande to be there for the dedication. I didn't see him until quite a few years later up in California and just like I said 6 weeks before he died. As far as I know his son lives in Cottage Grove area, but I haven't been in touch with him for a long time either. The son's name I think is Charlie, Jr.

TEM: It's interesting I think people do know the story about Cartwright Brewing 00:31:00but nobody really knows what happened, so it's, they wondered whether he went back to... most people knew that he went back to California but I think they all assumed he continued on and went back to wine making.

WA: No, he didn't, he didn't do any wine making. He, like I said, opened a bicycle rental shop. That's what he was doing, so that was his source of income when I visited with him.

TEM: What year did he die?

WA: I'm not too sure. I'm going to guess somewhere around 2004.

KJ: Can I see that bottle of wine?

WA: Some other people like you might need to talk to Dick Ponzi about that. Because Ponzi went into the brewing industry. You might talk about what the 00:32:00connection he had with Chuck. He may have some more details about why Chuck didn't succeed. [Loud background noise] That's a woodpecker letting us know that he's here.

TEM: We were just at Occidental Brewing up at St. John and they had this hot water heater that kept releasing steam. Every time it did it it would just scare the bejesus out of us. Everyone would jump.

KJ: During the interview. That really is a woodpecker?

WA: It's a flicker.

KJ: Is it? Oh okay.

WA: He pounds on the metal flashing at the top of the chimney and it's his way of signaling that this is my territory and you other guys stay out of here. Just 00:33:00this time of year is when he does it. What else do you need to know or have me guess at?

TEM: I will open it up to my colleagues to ask questions since I've been asking them all.

KJ: I think that, that's... it's interesting to me. I'm pretty new to the Oregon area so it's pretty fascinating for me to learn about just the early history of the area's craft brewing.

WA: It is. Yeah. I think there's a certain logic to the fact that it started out as a winery area, a wine growing area and the transition from that to brewing makes sense.

KJ: It does seem like, so having spent a lot of time in Michigan and spent some time up in Northern Michigan, a similar kind of thing is happening where there's 00:34:00some vineyards on the peninsulas up there that are also becoming, a lot of vineyards are converting to hop growing because conditions are similar, right, for hops and grapes so they're actually going through a kind of similar transition to what it sounds like happened in the late '80s, even earlier, mid-'80s.

WA: My father's favorite beer was Greenbelt. Do you recognize the brand?

KJ: No.

WA: From the twin cities.

KJ: Oh, okay.

WA: We left Minnesota when I was 12, so I do like greenbelt beer, but it's not being made any more as far as I know. Because so many of the breweries went from even city companies to corporations that brewed beer and put different labels on it.

As I understand it, a lot of the labels you buy are not really brewed at a brewery by that name. somebody was telling me about Pabst Blue Ribbon. There's no Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery anymore.

UNIDENTIFIED: They don't actually own any property.

KJ: Oh, really?

UNIDENTIFIED: It's all just a brand.

TEM: Wow.

UNIDENTIFIED: And a recipe.

WA: Well, you know Blitz-Weinhard is kind of gone that way. I mean it's a brand. Isn't some of it even bottled at, not Full Sail, yeah Full Sail? You make beer with a different brand on it too, and I think it's the old Henry Weinhard beers.

UNIDENTIFIED: I know Full Sail does do a lot of contract brewing.

KJ: Oh really?

WA: Mm-hmm.

KJ: Having grown up in the Denver area, Coors was the huge and they started even as early as the early '90s trying to tap into the growing popularity of microbrews by grabbing some of the smaller breweries and rebranding them, just buying them out and rebranding them as Coors sponsored breweries. So, you had-

WA: Beer coming out of the Coors brewery with different labels on it that were once labels for microbrewing.

KJ: So Blue Moon was an early Coors enterprise. I'm trying to think... Killian's Red was trying to capitalize on that but now it's become I think just as big and conglomerate as the Coors brand.

WA: When did your institute start, or whatever you call it?

TEM: The archives started about 10 months ago was when we officially formally started actively collecting. We have a lot though just of university records from the research that's gone on, hops research and brewing research already just within the collections we had. But I think recognizing exactly what all of these stories that you've been telling-that people are here to tell us these stories and for us that is, as archivists, is pretty great to talk directly to people.

WA: And I think some of what I told you is true, also.

TEM: Well, that's the beauty of oral interviews. If they come from you, then they are true. Fact is vaguely defined.

WA: I've done oral history interviews too of people who were working in the 00:38:00agency I worked for and also the National Guard. So, it's kind of interesting to do oral history interviews.

TEM: I think it's just as someone who's worked with either the paper records, so there's certainly a function in that, but as someone who has also worked with oral histories, listened to oral histories, they're so much more human even though they're both produced by humans.

WA: There's not much life in paperwork. You're talking to people who experienced the experience are the ones who I think can give you some of the maybe not the factual exactness but the spirit behind it.

TEM: I think that's what's been so interesting about working on the hops and 00:39:00brewing archive, it's an interesting way for people to connect with history and think about their place in history. I have this theory that it trickles down into other parts of their lives. They start thinking about their place in history, how we actually came from somewhere, whether it's spurred by thinking about brewing history or hops history that it's almost like an outreach project for me as well as a collecting project to get people to think about what came before and what place they have.

WA: Yeah. Gosh, how many breweries are there now in Oregon?

UNIDENTIFIED: One hundred and forty-five.

TEM: 145?

WA: How many?

UNIDENTIFIED: 145 or something like that.

WA: Probably more breweries than there are wineries.

UNIDENTIFIED: It's getting close.

WA: Wineries are in the hundreds I know, but... I knew when there was only one, 00:40:00two, three, four, five. Well, it depends on where you draw the line. We had Honeywood a long time in Salem, but they were making fruit wines. I don't know if they ever got into making grape wines. If they did they probably made it out of concord grape. That was their style.

KJ: Was the sweeter stuff.

WA: Yeah.

KJ: Well, this is fascinating stuff. It's really interesting to hear the-

WA: Well, you're going to take the bottle with the cap on it. You can take the bottle of wine too, if you want. I've got extras of that.

TEM: I think that would be great.

KJ: Are we going to refrigerate this?

WA: It hasn't been refrigerated for decades.

KJ: It should be alright.

WA: Duck when you open it.

TEM: Well, that's the person who processes materials that we bring in he just loves it that we have started the hops and brewing archives. Because he says the stuff you bring.

WA: I can't remember the name of the brewery here, the brew pub here in Tigard. Tigard Brewing Company? It's right in downtown Tigard. They have a little wall display about Chuck Coury and the Cartwright Brewery.

TEM: What's their connection?

WA: Well, they're a craft brewery and they're just honoring the history of the craft brewing in Oregon. They spelled his name wrong, but that's alright. They spell it C-o-u-r-e-y.

TEM: That's why archives are important. We spell names right.

KJ: It's important.

TEM: That's right.

WA: I think the bottle they have on display is one I gave them. It could be because I had several around. I gave a bottle of that wine to the David Hill Winery too. They gave me a bottle of theirs in exchange, a couple bottles of theirs in exchange. They're making pretty good wine out of it. Because the old vines really do produce pretty good wine. As the wines mature, they I don't know if they've adapted to the site and the situation or what, but, well you've heard of old wines Zinfandel and stuff like that. His vines are what they must be fifty years old now. Close to 50 years old. Gosh, if he started in 1968 that 00:43:00means 2018 would be the 50th. It would've been how many years since he started the first brewery? That would've been like '81, '82. That's been 30 years ago.

TEM: Yeah, because Bridgeport and Widmer are both celebrating their--

WA: 25th?

TEM: 30th.

WA: Oh, their 30th. Okay.

TEM: Yeah this year.

WA: Okay. So, he started before they did.

KJ: Almost 35 years, yeah.

WA: So, they're doing their 30th, so they started in '84. That kind of makes sense because I think Chuck was doing it around '81, or maybe even before... he 00:44:00maybe even started before then, because like I say I went to the dedication and I don't know I can't be sure about that.

TEM: Solidly I've seen 1980. There have been outlier dates.

WA: Okay.

TEM: Of '79 and '81.

WA: The PBS special on Oregon breweries. That's probably pretty accurate.

TEM: Yes, I trust them in their research.

WA: I don't know what date they use, but I have to go back and look at it. Well, you drained my brain.

TEM: [Laughs]. Excellent.

KJ: This was really nice of you to...

WA: Well, I have your email address so if I come up with something different.