Historic Wigrich Ranch and Newfangled Wigrich Terroir: Beer as like Wine

Our screeds against brettanomyces are going nowhere, so it's time for another episode of "Tilting at Windmills"!

This week? The crazy appropriation by Rogue of the Wigrich name to brand a "terroir." Rather than keeping beer labels simple, now they are complicating them on the model of wine labels! This "socialist" realism is "awe-shucks" pretentiousness! Faux, faux, faux!

We suppose they are using the word appellation instead of farm. But really, while you can grow something in an appellation, can you grow something at one? We think this is beyond the customary usage of the word and as a new-fangled neologism fails the "is this useful?" test.

But whatever. Rogue is all about going rogue.

And we are very happy that they are directly growing hops in Independence and featuring those hops in their beers.

More interesting than frothing about the use of "terroir" and "appellation" and brand is the real history. We'll probably have at least one much more expansive post on Wigrich Ranch later. For the moment here's your amuse-bouche.

Here's a sweet post about finding Wigrich Ranch and Hopville on the bottom land between Buena Vista and Independence. The serendipity and happenstance is charming.



The State Library has a bunch of photos of hop picking at the Wigrich Ranch. Here's one of them from 1930.

Anyway, this weekend and especially next weekend is a big wine-tasting occasion. Despite our froth, we like wine too, and it's a terrific time for beer drinkers to mix it up. So go wine-tasting! Salem Weekly went out and rated a bunch of tasting rooms. Evaluating the rooms in terms of "Customer Service" and "Beginner-Friendliness" was a fine idea!

And then, when you're done, have a beer. Nothing tastes better after a day of wine-tasting than a frosty cold one!

(Thanks to RC for sharing the paper copy of the Rogue Nation newsletter!)