Twin Brothers and Their Families Live Immersed in the Vineyard Lifestyle
By Nichole Betts

The Casteel family plants and prunes vines while grapes ferment in barrels in the crowded Bethel Heights Vineyard winemaking room. Last year's vintage must be bottled before the wine ferments too much. Winters in Oregon's wine haven of Willamette Valley means the family is hard at work.

Terry, '64, and Ted, '64, Casteel's families own and operate Bethel Heights Vineyard. And this is a true family business: Terry Casteel is winemaker and his wife Marilyn Webb is business manager; Ted Casteel is vineyard manager and his wife Pat Dudley is marketing director; Terry and Marilyn's son Benjamin Casteel is assistant winemaker and their son Jon Casteel is cellar master at Rex Hill Winery, in Newberg, Ore.; Ted and Pat's daughter Mimi Casteel and her husband own an operate Wandering Angus cidery next door to Bethel Heights and their daughter Jessica Casteel does national marketing for Bethel Heights from Chicago.

In short, the entire family is involved in the winemaking process. Terry Casteel's son, Benjamin, will become senior winemaker when Terry retires in about three years.

"I would love it if my son ends up having his son take over the business," Terry Casteel said.

Bethel Heights was one of the first vineyards planted in the Eola Hills outside of Salem, Ore., in 1977. The brothers wanted a change from urban life when they decided to start a vineyard. Terry Casteel and his wife wanted a simpler life in a rural setting away from the hustle and bustle of Seattle's University district and Terry's private psychology practice. Ted Casteel and his wife taught history at the University of Michigan at Dearborn.

Why throw it all away? "We fell in love with pinot noir," Terry Casteel said.

To learn more about the wine business, Terry Casteel took wine chemistry and microbiology short courses at the University of California at Davis, adding to his chemistry minor from Whitworth. Ted Casteel and his wife Pat took viticulture (grape growing) short courses at Davis after moving back to Oregon in 1972.

Each high-energy family member struggled to find a niche at the vineyard that fit their personalities, having already been in successful careers, Terry Casteel said.

"It was probably a crazy risk to take," Terry Casteel said. But turning the raw grape product to wine, and bottling it themselves was something the two families could do together.

Success is dependant on nature and making a good pinot noir is a challenge in Oregon. Currently, the winery produces about 10,000 cases of wine each year—that's 120,000 bottles and 90,000 liters of wine made annually at Bethel Heights.

The whole family gets down and dirty to turn grapes into wine during fall crush –production time – from the end of September through October. To make room to spread out the fermenting vats, the entire winery is reorganized. The already-bottled wine from the previous vintage is shipped out to storage warehouses to create more free space.

Terry and Ted Casteel test and taste their grapes to decide when each section of vineyard should be harvested everyday during crush. Ted Casteel calls in a picking-crew to harvest the ripe sections until all of the fruit is collected. Processed fruit soaks in a cold-room water solution for five days and sometimes, heat and yeast are added to the solution to encourage fermentation.

Most of a grape's flavor and aroma is in its skin, Terry Casteel said, and the solution needs to be fairly warm to extract all of the goodies. The family continually checks the temperature of the solution to ensure a slow fermentation process, which extracts the most flavors, aromas and colors possible from the grapes.

A cap of skins form on the fermenting vats as the sugar in the grapes converts to alcohol, heat and carbon dioxide. The family pushes the skins back down into the solution two to three times daily. After the sugar is dry, the solution is pressed into a tank and left to sit for about 24 hours for the chunks of fruit to settle out. The wine is pumped into barrels and left there until the next bottling season where a second fermentation transforms acids in the wine, making the liquid creamier.

The brothers decide which barrels to combine, creating blends before bottling. Some of the most fun the brothers have happens then, Terry Casteel said, as they decide how to blend the wines for the most appealing and tasty results. If barrels need more ripening time, they are shoved into a corner and sit waiting for the next bottling. There's no other way to make wine and it's never an easy process for the family, Terry Casteel said.

"As a family, we're really committed to it," Terry Casteel said. "It takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice to make a business work. The wine business is more than a job; it's a lifestyle."

For more information, visit:
Bethel Heights Vineyard
www.bethelheights.com

Low Input Viticulture and Enology, Inc.: Certified Sustainable Wines and Vines
www.liveinc.org