The very first Syrah ever produced by Cliff Creek Cellars, the 2003 vintage crafted by Joe Dobbes, made a big splash at the 2005 World of Wine—today’s Oregon Wine Experience—by winning Best of Show only two weeks after it was bottled. Ruth Garvin, Cliff Creek co-owner with brother Lee Garvin, laughs as she tells the tale. “The whole family was there. We were excited as could be and we thought: Well, this is easy.” She laughs because it was the culmination of five years of hard work that brought about that “overnight” success.

The Garvin family’s journey on the road to producing great Syrah began in 1999 when Ruth’s father Vern planted vines on a farm of nearly 250 acres in Sam’s Valley. “He flunked retirement at 70,” Ruth says, “and planted the vineyard. We got consultants from California and northern Oregon and the first thing they asked was does your family mind getting dirty. Because the wine industry is farming. It sounds glamorous, but the reality is that if you can’t farm great grapes you’ll never have great wine. But we weren’t afraid. As a family, we had a lifestyle of growing businesses so we knew what hard work was.”

Known as a pioneer of cable TV in Oregon, Vern Garvin grew up on a dairy farm. Even though the Garvin family had been in farming over a hundred years, he went into electrical engineering and communications starting with two-way radio systems for loggers and fishermen in pre-cell phone days. He applied for and got the third cable television franchise in the United States. “People said nobody will pay for television,” Ruth recalls, “but he knew in Brookings, Oregon they would, because you got only two channels and if it was foggy you got one. So he built several cable systems.”

Ruth, her father’s daughter, was in the coffee business for twenty years in Portland and eventually owned four coffee houses and an in-house bakery. She sold all of those enterprises by July of 2008 and then joined the family wine business. “I said, someone’s got to get in here and sell this wine. And the family said, hey, nobody sells anything better than the person that’s invested. So I went to work full time for the family.”

The Cliff Creek site is one of the hottest in the Rogue Valley, with growing conditions favoring Bordeaux and Rhône varieties, especially Syrah. Grown in the southeast part of France since Roman times, Syrah is a component of celebrated French red blends such as Côtes du Rhône and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It has been cultivated in Australia since the 1830’s where it is known as Shiraz.

Ruth says Syrah “just took to this site like it was meant to be here. I often say it was my dad’s favorite. And people think it’s because he loved Syrah. But it was because it sat right in front of his window and it’s very vigorous. He could sell it no matter what. Our first commercial harvest was 2003. My dad irrigated as little as possible, so our fruit came in as little tiny berries. Joe Dobbes, our winemaker at the time, said those 2003’s are so huge because they’re so concentrated.”

Cliff Creek Syrah continues as a perennial stand-out because of its inky color and robust flavors. Based on this fruit, Cliff Creek vintages are made in the European style. “Back in 2003, one of the things that happened in the Syrah world was Shiraz from Australia. Now there’s some very fine Shiraz that comes out of Australia, but the US marketplace had been flooded with mediocre Shiraz, so we started making the distinction that we grow Syrah, not Shiraz. We market our Syrah as a wine that’s more structured and has great fruit, but not necessarily a jammy fruit bomb. We wanted Cliff Creek to be a French-style wine that’s age-worthy and refined. And the grapes from our vineyard will support that. Joe Dobbes called it a French vineyard in America.”

With the 2014 vintage, Barrel 42 winemakers Herb Quady and Brian Gruber took over making Cliff Creek wines. But the Garvins are committed to continuing in the mold of that first 2003 vintage. “We worked with Joe and Herb and Brian together to keep the style that we had created from the start,” Ruth says. “It’s our identity.”

©Southern Oregon Wine Scene – from the Spring 2019 issue