Richard Sommer (17 August 1929 - 28 July 2009) American winemaker, considered the father of the Oregon wine industry.

Biography

Sommer was born in San Francisco to Hermann and Elizabeth Sommer, a chemist and microbiologist, respectively. He attended the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

in 1948 and later moved to

Douglas County, Oregon Douglas County is one of the 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 census, the population was 111,201. The county seat is Roseburg. The county is named after Stephen A. Douglas, an American politician who supported Orego ...

to pursue fine winemaking. First, he found employment in the county assessor's office and in 1961 established Hillcrest vineyards on 20 acres of land near the Callahan Ridge. Sommer came north to primarily produce Pinot Noir and Riesling, but in addition planted a number of other varieties including Malbec, Sauvignon Blanc, Semilliion, Chardonnay, Grenache, Barbera etc. Later Richard would be recognized as the first to plant(1961) and produce (1967) Pinot Noir in Oregon. All of these cuttings had been collected in 1959, from Louis Martini's Stanly Ranch Vineyard in Carneros, California with the exception of Zinfandel which had been sourced locally from the Doerner family who had come to the Umpqua Valley from Nap in the 1880s. Sommer sold Hillcrest Vineyards in 2003 to Dyson and Susan DeMara.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sommer, Richard University of California, Davis alumni 1929 births 2009 deaths