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orous performance standards for "green" buildings. It was a natural next step for the Sokol Blossers, whose barrel facility in 2002 was the first LEED-certified winery building in the United States. Certified organic, the vineyard and winery have followed sustainable practices in every aspect of their operation. After a year the tasting room will be evaluated for LBC certification by achieving up to six of the seven requirements. The only one of the "petals," as the LBC calls its requirements, Sokol Blosser decided not to pursue was the one that requires all materials to originate from within 100 miles. "Getting the materials 'petal' would have doubled the cost," explained Nik Blosser, the eldest sibling and chairman of the family enterprise. The winery declined to reveal the cost for its new tasting room. Just the fact that it was able to invest in such an impressive new and Kriselle Cellars – and Domaine Drouhin is building a new tank facility. Also, Kendall-Jackson recently broke ground for a winery facility and tasting room in Oregon's EolaAmity Hills AVA. "Sokol Blosser, as one of the pioneers, is setting the pace for the kind of investment that the industry's experiencing right now," Humble said. "Tasting rooms represent an increased interest in wine and especially in wine tourism. But if you look around the industry, you're seeing capital investment all over the place. And that's the sign of a healthy industry and a growing industry." HIDDEN EFFICIENCIES Cloepfil is known for his design of the Weiden + Kennedy advertising agency headquarters in Portland, the Museum of Arts & Design and the East River Walk in New York City, the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, and other projects. Specially designed wine glass caddies make it easy and efficient for servers to present wine flights. tasting room is good news to the Oregon wine industry, said the Oregon Wine Board's Humble. Other Oregon wineries have recently built new tasting rooms – Ponzi Vineyards, Stoller Family Estate 110 V I N EYA R D & WINE RY M ANAGEM ENT | But on all those research trips and in design team meetings, Brown came up with a few ideas of his own. One of them was the logoed stainless steel wine glass caddy that allows servers to deliv- Nov - Dec 2013 er a flight of six wine glasses to a customer in mere minutes. Servers can carry four caddies at a time. "The consumer has the opportunity to have the flight all laid out in front of him and taste through it at his own pace," Brown said. "That was one of the issues that we troubleshot: How do you deliver all this glassware and how do you serve one person six tastes of wine? And if you only have one glass, how do you keep track if you've got a patio full of 30 people? After a few conversations, that's what I came up with." Brown said the question he kept asking during the design process was: "How can all of these rooms be beautiful but also facilitate sales and create a great guest experience?" The result was built-in efficiencies that the casual guest likely won't notice. For example, guests never see the pass-through that allows servers to move glassware from room to room. They never see the room where glassware is washed and polished before it's sent back to the main bar. And they never see the temperature-controlled wine storage or the secret door through which wine is delivered to fill orders from each room. "It's really efficient for us," Brown said. "Same with the glass washing, the way it works and how seamless it is. Every room has temp-control wine storage and it has POS in it and every place has a sink in it that allows us to dump wine and rinse glasses, and it's all just tucked away." Because of that, visitors to Sokol Blosser are free to focus on the big picture: the beauty of the landscape, the pleasing aesthetics of the new building, and of course, the taste of the wines. Susan G. Hauser is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore., whose lifestyle and business writing appears in a range of publications, from Workforce Management to O, the Oprah Magazine. Comments? Please e-mail us at feedback@vwmmedia.com. w w w. v wm m e d i a . c o m