Carlton Cellars

Wine is about friends. Why else would it come in a bottle too big to finish alone — and in glasses made as much for clinking as for drinking? How right it is, then, that the Carlton Cellars story begins with a lifelong friendship. In 1979 Dave Grooters made the trek from his native Pennsylvania out to the wild west to see his old army buddy Nick. No ordinary Nick, though. This was Nick Peirano, the man behind one of Oregon’s most respected restaurants, Nick’s Italian Cafe in McMinnville. Nick introduced Dave to a few of his good friends — like David Adelsheim, Dick Erath, Myron Redford, Dick Ponzi, and David Lett (aka “Papa Pinot”) — some of the great Oregon wine pioneers. During the ’80s, Dave visited Nick and his new friends every chance he got, and it was always an occasion for a party: “Every time I’d visit Nick, there’d be these great winemakers, there’d be dancing on the counters, there’d be food and wine and frolicking, and I thought this is how Oregon was all the time.“ Soon, Dave began to daydream about getting involved in the Willamette Valley wine world himself. In 1995 he got his chance. Having sold his software company, Fastech, Dave came out to Carlton to volunteer with wine legend Ken Wright during crush. The following year, Ken asked Dave to be his vineyard manager for Canary Hill. (If you’re lucky enough to have a bottle of Ken Wright Cellars’ Canary Hill ’96 or ’97, look for Dave’s name on the back label.) So began a couple of years of flying back and forth between Pennsylvania and the vineyards of Oregon — a crazy commute which would have its own fateful influence.