By Janet Eastman
THIS old warehouse in downtown Medford may look rough to you and me, but to winemaker Linda Donovan, it’s the bright and shiny future. Here, she will make wine for big-shot wineries and small-lot entrepreneurs. She will guide them from grape to glass, and then, if they so desire, help them to market their prized liquid.
Donovan’s Pallet Wine Company, a full-service processing, laboratory and storage facility, is installed in the two-story Cooley-Neff Building, which once housed lumber and dry goods and who knows what else over 85 years.
To understand Donovan’s keen ability to see this aged concrete-and-timber building as it could be, let’s first look at what it was when she saw it two years ago. Every inch of the 24,000-square-foot structure was in distress. “It wasn’t abandoned,” Donovan says, searching for a diplomatic way of saying, “but it looked like it was.” Windows were broken and there were bullet shells and scraps of wood littering the ground. “It was…” she’s still trying to find the words, then settles on: “not functional for a winery.”
Still, she could see that it could be modernized while also keeping its past. The building, which is listed on the National Historic Register, had several pluses: It had already proved its durability. The below-grade first floor was naturally cooler than those on street level, which is ideal for wine storage. The building had the right zoning and the city encouraged its renovation. But most important, it was located in the right place to attract visitors to an urban winery and to make it easy for the growing number of Southern Oregon grape growers to turn over their loads and go.
Donovan, a UC Davis grad with science smarts, artistic winemaking talent and more than 15 years experience with progressive California and Oregon wineries, took possession of the building in May and immediately began on Phase I. With the clock ticking, the Pallet team had until September to ready 9,000 square feet of wine storage for clients’ barrels and pallets, and to buy and install the winery equipment for the first flow of grapes to be crushed, fermented and aged on the premises.
She’d need a hole cut into the floor and other major structural overhauls to create three levels of workspace. The top level, to be finished out next year, will have offices, educational space and a Tasting Room with the best seat in the house overlooking the production area below. Eventually, visitors will be able to sip wine made at Pallet while watching fork lifts haul containers of grapes to the crushpad, then transport the juice to the stainless steel fermentation tanks and eventually to the barrel stage area.
By the time of her first crush -- one ton of Chardonnay on September 22 -- the lower level was equipped and ready. The crush was small, but it proved to any possible doubters that the Pallet Wine team was in full operation. The next day, she received grapes from Del Rio Vineyards in Gold Hill. This harvest she’ll be crushing for Montavilla Wines, Madrone Mountain of Central Point, Slagle Creek Vineyards of Grants Pass and others.
She’s prepared to produce 10,000 cases this season, in crushing increments from one barrel to 100 tons. Eventually, Pallet can accommodate five times that amount and store 1,000 barrels and 300 to 400 pallets, each holding 56 cases.
Donovan welcomes uninitiated individuals who may have only a label design in mind but are eager to learn the next steps to outfit their home cellar, restaurant, hotel, company or club.
“I want to help people who want to make wine, but who don't have a winery,” says Donovan, citing that a modest winery and tasting room can cost more than a half-million dollars. The wine press alone here was $65,000. The building: $550,000.
Other wineries offer custom crush services, but Donovan says producing wines to her clients’ specifications is Pallet’s primary focus.
The day of her first crush, Donovan took a moment to remember the months leading to this. “It was a challenge at first to bring people here to show them the vision of what it could be,” says Donovan, who credits partners Dan and Olivia Sullivan, owners of the Domaine Paradox and Daniel Joseph labels, for trusting the building’s potential and agreeing with Donovan that an investment in top-of-the-line equipment was necessary.
“This is the dream I’ve been working for,” says Donovan. “It’s the right time for this region.”
For more info: Pallet Wine Company, 340 N Fir Street, Medford, OR, (541) 779-1788