Fiasco Winery

History blends with the future at Fiasco Winery

By Janet Eastman

When Dave Palmer finished pressing the juice out of grapes for his estate wine, he could have tossed the seeds and skins into fields to slowly decompose. Instead, he had the leftovers made into cooking products that he and his wife, Pamela, use at home and customers buy at the Palmers’ Jacksonville tasting room.

Small bottles of grape seed oil and bags of grape seed flour now share shelf space with award-winning Claret and Syrah at Fiasco Winery.

“Customers who like our wine appreciate that we also make culinary products from the grapes,” says Dave Palmer. “It’s a local byproduct, repurposed and manufactured in the greenish possible way, and completely produced in the Applegate Valley.”

The idea to make something from pomace, the post-pressing heaps of grape seeds and skins, is not new. Old World vintners have been making grappa and grape seed oil from it for centuries. Making flour from pomace, however, is an innovative idea and one that the Palmers immediately embraced.

Pam uses the flour in the biscotti and chocolate cookie batter that she bakes for their five grandchildren. Dave says it’s a healthy alternative to bleached flour and adds a grape-nutty flavor.

But more than just that, the Palmers, who are big believers in nurturing the land and the community, think this project could launch a new cottage industry. Wine and food grown and sold here helps the local economy, reduces transportation costs and fuel consumption, and adds to Oregon’s growing reputation as a source for healthy, sustainable products.

Last year, when the effort was just being introduced, Dave referred to it as a “pilot program.” Pilot. Funny he should use that word.

Meet the Palmers:

Way back in the 1960s, Dave and Pam were ninth graders growing up in Grants Pass. They met, dated and fell in love. He was the homecoming king and football captain and she was in the pep squad and an officer in student government.

The fairytale could have included that they married and lived happily ever after. Unfortunately, they broke up. Pam started dating someone else and Dave, who didn’t get the athletic scholarship he counted on, joined the Air Force and trained to became a fighter pilot.

He had always liked flying. He had jumped on the then-new unmotorized sport of hang gliding when he was still in high school. Now, in the Air Force, he was soaring with an engine.

When he was 19, Dave returned home, sporting short hair and big biceps, and as he tells it, Pam “couldn’t resist” him. They eloped. That was 36 years ago. The first of their two children was born 11 months later.

They traveled the world, first with the military and later when Dave flew cargo planes. They toured centuries-old wine caves in France, Italy and Germany, and met with wine merchants in Australia.

Dave recalls “the openness that vintners, winery owners and every level of that historic industry shared with us. They gave us their knowledge, time, experience and wine.”

In 1995, the Palmers returned to Southern Oregon and found people with the same wiliness to help. Two years later, they bought a homestead overlooking the entire eastern Applegate Valley. They planted 18 acres of vineyards and Dave started making wine with the help of local experts and UC Davis textbooks.

Their Jacksonville Vineyards wine label has a photograph of William Matney, a hay farmer and gold miner who didn’t strike it rich but who built a farmhouse in 1897. One hundred years later, Dave and Pam moved in.

“Life couldn’t be more idyllic nor more peaceful nor more tied to the land,” says Dave. “We truly love knowing that we are here as caretakers of this piece of history.”

Over the years, they have added gardens and courtyards. In 2005, Dave used reclaimed wood to build a wine lab and a small tasting room.

“We are very much do-it-yourselfers,” says Pam. “Dave has a passion for everything. He’s really active and curious. It’s hang on for the ride or get left behind.”

In 2008, they moved their tasting room operation a few miles away on Hwy 238. The land there had been a dumping ground for abandoned trailers and cars. The Palmers turned it into Fiasco Winery.

The name comes from an Italian word that means “to bottle” and a tradition: If an actor missed a line, it was said he “committed a fiasco” and the penalty was that he had to pay for a bottle of wine.

For Fiasco and the Jacksonville Vineyards, Dave makes what he calls “a killer Claret” and Oregon’s only Super Tuscan as well as small lots of Sangiovese, Zinfandel, Chardonnay and other wines that sell for $19 to $40 a bottle. Their 2,500 cases sell out each year.

“I’m a proponent that the vineyard makes the wine and the winemaker can enhance that,” Dave says. “We enjoy the blending and the collaboration between grapes and the winemaker.”

Dave also designed and built the Fiasco tasting room, surrounded by landscaping and open fields that attract hundreds of hang gliders and paragliders on Memorial Day weekend. Spectators to the Starthistle Fly-in gather at a few Jacksonville wineries and scan the skies for colorful, gliding wings.

Pam pours the wines, serves homemade appetizers and tells the story about life in the Applegate Valley.

Both are eager to return the help they have received along the way. A few years ago, they befriended Jim and Jeanne Davidian, who own Caprice Vineyards near downtown Jacksonville.

“We came up here blindly in 2005 and we were fortunate to meet Dave and Pam,” says Jim Davidian. “Dave managed our vineyard, did a custom crush and won a silver medal for us for our 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon at the World of Wine Festival. He put us on the map. He and Pam know everyone in the area. They are well known and respected.”

Fast forward to today:

The do-it-yourself duo are unstoppable. When some people in their mid-50s are thinking of cashing out and slowing down, the Palmers continue to push into the future.

The pomace project is one example. Dave Palmer met ambitious seed-oil entrepreneur Kit Doyle early last year. By March, Palmer had given Doyle piles of pomace in which to experiment with making cooking oil and flour.

Months later, after the laborious drying process, the seeds were squeezed for their nutritious cooking oil and the remaining flakey bits were sent to Butte Creek Mill to be stone ground into an organic flour substitute. Both products retain the healthy, antioxidant properties of grapes.

Doyle, who owns Southern Oregon Seed Oils company with his wife, Lisa, also uses his Murphy facility to convert sunflower, camelina and pumpkin seeds into biofuels and other products.

What once was a pilot program is now a maturing business that has captured the attention of Oregon farmers and consumers.

Says Dave Palmer: “Our regional and international customers may not all be wine drinkers, but they can still bring something back from Southern Oregon.”

The wine, flour and oil are appealing, too, to people who have traveled the world and have decided to stay right here.

Fiasco Winery

8035 Hwy 238

Jacksonville, OR

Open daily 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

(541) 846-3022

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Janet Eastman is a wine, food and travel journalist. Her work can be seen at www.janeteastman.com