Winery Spotlight Southern Oregon Magazine Summer 2010
From Marketing Guru to Award-Winning Winemaker
By Janet Eastman
How’s this for a parable? Marketing guru Stephen Reustle moves to Roseburg in 2001 to find new fame and fortune as a self-taught winemaker. In 2005, he finds religion. In 2006, he opens Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyard. Since then, he’s bottled up to 6,000 cases of wine annually, selling out every time. And there’s the wall full of international awards, including nine silver and gold medals and the title of "Small Winery of the Year,” all won at the Riverside International Wine Competition in May.
The message of this parable: Be good. Be very good at winemaking and marketing, because for every person who isn’t comfortable with Reustle’s message of “Blessing the Lord,” someone new needs to be converted on the quality of his wine alone. So far, with the largest wine club list in Southern Oregon (around 2,000 members), Reustle’s winning.
Fortified by these good graces, the former New Yorker now plans to plant more vineyards across his 200 acres. He also hopes to install a Christian school, a seminary and a pastor’s retreat. Already, a men’s Bible study group meets here weekly to praise “God’s bounty” over Bible verses, gourmet appetizers and Reustle’s fine, estate-grown and -produced wine. And each fall, multi-congregational churchgoers gather to harvest Merlot, Malbec, Pinot Gris, Viognier and other grapes. The volunteers’ wages are donated to mission projects. “We’ve helped build two schools in Romania and other efforts in China and India,” says Reustle (pronounced as “Rus’el”).
Sharply dressed in a black shirt with what looks like a pastor’s black collar band, Reustle sits in front of his European-inspired tasting room. Nearby are two smiling 30somethings who discovered the vineyard accidentally during their daylong tour of Umpqua Valley wineries; the isolated venue is located 12 miles from I-5, up a steep, unpaved road at the end of a country highway.
The eager wine tasters are hearing that $16 and $19 bottles of 2007 and 2008 Sauvignon Blanc have sold out, as have $38 bottles of 2007 Pinot Noir and Syrah Reserves. Reustle’s gracious wife, Gloria, satisfies them with a custom case of new releases. The happy couple then heads off, bottles clanging merrily.
A new group is taken on a tour of the aboveground cellar where they view five Biblical scriptures surrounded by grapevines that are chiseled into the entry floor. Winding through the 250-foot-long, U-shaped cave are wall carvings of Archangel Michael at the Gates of Hell and Angel Gabriel with his trumpet. A miniature reproduction of Michelangelo’s “Hand of God” is airbrushed on the ceiling.
Religious references also appear on Reustle’s clementine-colored wine labels, in the winery’s bi-monthly newsletters and in the names—Noah, Maranatha, Revelation—designating blocks in his 40 acres of vineyards.
A divine endorsement from Ecclesiastes 9:7 – “Drink your wine with a happy heart… God approves of this” – pops up in print and on concrete garden benches; a shorter “Ecclesiastes 9:7” appears on each cork.
Interestingly, there’s not a hint of religion on www.reustlevineyards.com. Instead, the home page reads: “Come as Strangers, Leave as Friends.”
Getting the message out to a receptive audience is not new to Reustle. Before moving to the West Coast, he owned a successful marketing company that helped his clients—The Franklin Mint coin and doll collections, Columbia House CDs and DVDs and the Nature Conservancy—become the biggest names in direct-to-consumer sales.
Now, Reustle’s winery sells at retail prices directly to the consuming public. The no-middleman approach reaps the highest profits and builds a loyal customer base that understands the benefits of buying limited-edition wine before it’s gone forever.
This keen understanding of what the public will buy was honed during Reustle’s former career, when he regularly confabbed with CEOs, media moguls and Madison Avenue types. So was his palate—pricey dinners featuring $100 to $500 bottles of wine were weekly perks.
Reustle comments on the transformation: Once a Rutgers University economics major who subsisted on $5-a-bottle budget brands, in 2005, he became the first vintner in the U.S. to plant Austria’s most popular white wine, the food-friendly and increasingly hip Grüner Veltliner. This year, Reustle’s 2009 Grüner Veltliner earned top platinum ranking in both the San Diego International and the Monterey wine competitions.
It hasn’t always been wins, however. Reustle says he’s lost 20 wine club members because his newsletters are “too religious,” even though, he says, he respects everyone’s spiritual expression, whether or not they share his belief in God. But Reustle doesn’t let this get him down for long—he just keeps charging along.
If you go:
Reustle—Prayer Rock Vineyards
960 Cal Henry Road, Roseburg
541-459-6060
www.reustlevineyards.com