Newberg Graphic article (May 12th, 2004)

On first glance, Kerry McDaniel Boenisch doesn't look like a woman who just published a book on the beginnings of the Oregon wine industry.

The demands of motherhood had her multitasking on Thursday afternoon at her house in Dundee. In the course of a 30-minute interview she prepared a pasta dinner, kept an eye on her 3- and 6-year-olds playing in the yard and cradled her 9-week-old in one hand.

When did she find time to write?

The answer, of course, is she made time. Boenisch knew if she were to finish the book she started on napkins and scraps of paper 15 years ago she needed to write it before the birth of her third child.

Like her finding time to write the book, so too were the subjects of her book looked upon with a skeptical eye.

Boenisch's book, "Vineyard Memoirs," is an ode to the many people who helped found the wine industry in Oregon, and primarily for her dad, Jim McDaniel. During Boenisch's childhood the McDaniel family planted three vineyards, the first of which is now the Torii Mor Winery.

"Pioneering an industry - well, it's difficult," she said. "But it's ultimately very satisfying."

Vineyard Memoirs illustrates what life was like living on among the vineyards and wineries in the incipient wine industry in the early 1970s in Oregon. Hers was among the 10 families in the hills of Dundee to first plant vineyards and set up wineries, roughly 20 percent of the 25 such operations in the fledgling industry.

"That's why I wrote it. It's pretty unusual," Boenisch said of witnessing the provenance of what is now a multimillion dollar industry. At one point she nodded to a cabinet in the corner of her dinning room and said she could pull out a bottle of Dundee wine from 1972. "And I was there," she said.

 Boenisch said hers is only the second book about the 1970s Oregon wine industry, the other being "The Boys up North: Dick Erath and the Early Oregon winemakers" by Paul Pintarich. Besides telling her own family's story, she delves into the histories of 12 other wine and grape families, among them the Eraths and Sokol-Blosser.

A self-published book, now Boenisch is negotiating with multiple publishers about publishing a second edition. She has been giving readings, including one held last week at Chapters Books. She has been invited to speak at the International Pinot Noir Conference in July in McMinnville. For more information on local readings, visit her Web site at www.vineyardmemoirs.com .

Finishing her book was one of the reasons she and her husband, Christian, returned to Dundee. Both students at Dundee Elementary, both graduates of Newberg High School (she in 1984, he in 1985), they'd been away from Dundee for nearly 20 years. She quit her job in Portland as a sales representative with textile industry: "I told my boss, 'I have to go write this.'"

She bought a lap top computer, pulled out her old notes and hired a babysitter for four days per week, three hours per day. Along with the 40 pages worth of material she had collected the 15 years prior, she wrote 80 more pages during her nine months of pregnancy.

Boenisch was copy editing her final manuscript in the hospital on the day of the birth.