Winemaking: Bless You, Trappist Abbey!

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Bless You, Trappist Abbey

The Trappist Abbey, secluded on the backside of the Dundee Hills, with signs pointing eternal and temporal activities.

When we have to go to the warehouse to find a case of wine for you, many people are surprised to learn we head to a sprawling Trappist Monastery hidden in the woods on the backside of the Dundee Hills. Despite a lack of religious purity, I'm allowed onto the grounds.

The Trappist Monks of Guadalupe has had its abbey on 1,500 acres just outside of Layafette southwest of Newberg for 48 years, since the Order moved from Mexico. It is home to 37 residents, including monks and penitents, and five days a week a crew of 5-10 local residents who run a profitable business called the Abbey Wine Warehouse. The Abbey manages 194,000 cases of wine for 78 wineries. The Trappist Order works hard at agriculture, forestry, bookbinding, candymaking and, in the past, furniture making. They maintain the facility as much as possible without outside funds, so when the furniture business began to fade (they made largely church furniture) they looked for other growth businesses that might fit a cavernous manufacturing building. Over 10 years ago, they concluded there was a need for storage and consolidation of shipment services for Oregon wine in the northern Willamette Valley. Since their start, they have added labeling and packaging services with high-speed lines, as well as delivery and pickup services, and have expanded with a new building to store nearly a quarter million cases of wine with complete temperature control.

All of our wines are stored there, either bottled and unlabeled or fully packaged. Once-a-week shipments leave for distribution points in California, from which national distributors pickup wine. Few distributors take wine directly from Oregon warehouses at this point. Jerry, Lana, Shari, Chuck, Bill, Julie and Robin lead a team that quickly responds to requests—not only from on-high, but from us as well.