He'll tell you about German topography and fog formation. He'll discuss soil saturation levels, European train travel and the rare kalmiopsis flowers that grow around here. You'll watch a distant ridge simmer in a hot sun, and he'll talk of the expanding Gobi desert. And he'll tell you about the wine, for it is what he knows best, the thing he's done for 40 years, the detail that has etched him into Oregon history. I like wine.
Wine is fine.
His staccato speech is a style and pace all his own. Sommer talks, lives and works his own way. Wine grapes first entered Oregon a century before Sommer, along the Oregon Trail. Berry wines have long flourished in the state. But Sommer saw great prospects for European-style grapes in Oregon's rich soil.