Owen Roe Newsletter
March 27 2003

A Winemaker's Dream,
Living the Life of O'Reilly"

By Christina Kelly
Avalon Staff Writer

If there is such a thing as the luck of the Irish, winemaker David O'Reilly has found a pot of gold underneath his Willamette Valley, Oregon rainbow.

O'Reilly is a dapper man- meticulous in appearance and in his work. When he smiles, there is mischief in his eyes and smile crinkles-a sign that smiling is a frequent behavior.

Everything O'Reilly touches has to be the best. It is almost an obsession with him. From huge, gorgeous wines to hand-numbered bottles and objects of art gracing his labels, O'Reilly spends the money for a total package.

"Every thing we do is meticulous," said O'Reilly, 37, one of 12 children born in Belfast, Ireland. "What we do is totally uncompromised. It is a lifestyle that includes hard work, but the product is thoroughly rewarding."

Everything O'Reilly does is also thoroughly Irish. The wineries associated with O'Reilly-Sineann (pronounced Shen-ay-yan), Owen Roe, and O'Reilly's -all have ties to his former homeland. Sineann is Gaelic for Shannon River, considered the lifeblood of Ireland. The name stems from a mythical princess of the Leprechauns, who drowned in the river. Owen Roe was named for Owen Roe O'Neil, a great Irish patriot. And, of course, O'Reilly's, which features a drawing of a huge Irish wolfhound on the label.

"I like to tell people that I got involved in the business to follow an Irishman's dreams," said O'Reilly with a wink and an Irish brogue that comes and goes. "Imagine making a living by drinking!"

He jokes of course, because O'Reilly is dead serious about wine making. Although he enjoys the high ratings bestowed on his wines, O'Reilly says he is more satisfied with great taste.

From Harsh Life
to Lush Life

Owen Roe Label Art

The combination of his Irish heritage and obsession about being the best says a lot about the affable winemaker. His luck and his taste for the good life wasn't always granted.

As a young child in Belfast, the O'Reilly family-all 14-was of modest means. Life was harsh, and often violent as the family witnessed a depressing catalogue of death and injury due to sectarian violence.

Owen Roe Label Art

Between 1966 and 1999, a total of 3,636 people were killed and 36,000 injured as the conflict spread beyond Northern Ireland's borders onto the British mainland and elsewhere, according to reports. Many of the victims were innocent civilians.

O'Reilly said two of his uncles were murdered, a sister suffered a traumatic injury, and one never knew when and where a homemade bomb would explode.

His family scraped up enough money to move to British Columbia, Canada just before his teen years, and O'Reilly never looked back.

"I'm sure the past did have some impact on why I want the best from what I produce," O'Reilly said, thoughtfully. "I'm not like Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes-I choose not to look back and dwell on the past."

Instead, O'Reilly looked to the future, majoring in philosophy at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA, where he met his future wife, Angelica. It was there that he discovered a love of land and soil. He worked at a small winery in Southern California performing all the tasks necessary to get the wine out the door.

"If you want to study truth and reality, it's grounded in nature," O'Reilly said. "The wine business is drawn intrinsically to nature and soil. You don't get into this business to make a fortune-I was drawn to it."

For more than six years, O'Reilly worked for Elk Cove performing marketing tasks. However, he was leaning more and more about winemaking. The urge to make his own wine was singing inside his head. It was at this time that he met Peter Rosback, an amateur winemaker who helped the winery during crush.

Rosback was also bitten by the urge to produce wine. With Irish heritage and love of good wine in common, they struck a partnership and created Sineann.

"David has a great palate and is one of the best marketing people in the state," Rosback said. "We're a good team. Each of us brings talents to the table to produce the best wine we can. Of course, it starts with great fruit, and that also has to be the best we can get."

In addition to Sineann, Rosback also makes wines for Medici, where the owners allow Sineann to be produced. He also consults with O'Reilly on Owen Roe and O'Reilly's.

"Peter brings an irrepressible passion to everything he does," O'Reilly said. "I think that's why we are such good partners."

O'Reilly and Rosback left Elk Cove in 1998 to produce wines in relatively small quantities. While Sineann is produced at Medici, O'Reilly has a new winery to produce Owen Roe and O'Reilly's. He spends a great deal of time on the road, from spot to spot, overseeing vineyards. He and Rosback purchase grapes from the Willamette Valley to Hood River to Walla Walla and Columbia valleys in Washington state.

The good news comes in the form of a converted barn, his own facility for Owen Roe and O'Reilly's. Sineann will continue production at Medici for the time being.

"I will be happy to have one location to produce my wines," he added.

O'Reilly/Rosback wines
The wines produced by O'Reilly and Rosback are unusually concentrated and intense. They are the wines of a perfectionist. The two winemakers don't crush grapes-the fruit is destemmed and racked by gravity. All the designated grapes are kept separately-a daunting task considering the number of wines produced.

Besides old vine Zinfandel, the three wineries produce Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, a Zinfandel ice wine and a Zinfandel port.

"We don't do anything to interfere with the vineyard," O'Reilly said. "Just about everything we do is vineyard designate. It is over the top ripe."

"We emphasize quality and value for top shelf wine," says partner Rosback, who has a wee bit of Leprechaun himself as a fiery redhead. "We make the kind of wines we want to drink. That means the grapes we purchase have to be of the highest quality, because that is what goes into the bottle."

Both men have other productions outside of the vineyards. O'Reilly and his wife, Angelica, have five children: Dominic, 12, Brigid, 7, Moira, 5, Marie-Therese, 2, and the newest addition, Eamonn, born a few months ago.

Rosback and his wife Nancy have two daughters, Sydney (the inspiration for Sineann's Sweet Sydney ice wine) and Casey, 5, the inspiration for the Zinfandel port.

Although each winery is different, both men consult each other. And, both believe that purchasing the best fruit available, regardless of cost, is the key to great wine. O'Reilly says he has no future plans to grow larger, but his wine production will be based on the type of fruit he can secure.

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David O'Reilly with Dubrul Cab

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...Sineann
Just about everything produced under this label is excellent and a value compared to comparable Californian wine. Zinfandel grapes come from a 100-year-old vineyard in Washington. Pinot Noir grapes come from the best growers in Oregon.

Both Rosback and O'Reilly severely limit yields to produce such intense wine. It keeps quantities low, but the winemakers are not interested in expanding production.

Sineann produces single vineyard, highly crafted Zinfandel, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. White wines include Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris.

Owen Roe
Owen Roe produces some 4,500 cases of single vineyard and blended wines. The popular Abbott's Blend includes Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cab Franc and Syrah. O'Reilly said he is adding Grenache to the blend this year. The label also produces a lovely Zinfandel.

In addition, Owen Roe, named after Irish patriot Owen Roe O'Neil, produces a Cabernet Franc, a Cabernet Sauvignon from Dubrul Vineyard that is extremely rare to find, a Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Merlot and a delightful ice wine.

The Owen Roe label is a work of art that is also available for framing. Last year, O'Reilly was searching for images for winery label and met David Brunn, a photographer who is from the same area of Ireland as O'Reilly. In his collection of photographs were pictures of the castles and ruins around O'Reilly's ancestral home.

The images are exquisite and available for framing. But buy the wine first.

O'Reilly's
This is David O'Reilly's value oriented wine, made from grapes from his best wineries that don't make the cut for his Owen Roe wines, producing lovely wines at great prices. Under this label, O'Reilly produces a Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir and a Cabernet Sauvignon. About 1,000 cases leave the winery under the auspicious eye of a hand-drawn Irish wolfhound on the label.

Of all David's wines, the ones produced under his family name are probably the greatest values because of O'Reilly's high criteria for good fruit. The wines are drinkable now, and get snapped up by the public quickly after release.

Living the Life of O'Reilly
"The Life of Reilly," a burlesque song from the 1800s, came to mean living the good life-an easy, pleasant lifestyle.

The life of David O'Reilly has come to mean something similar. He is living a good life, filled with passion, family and some of the greatest wines of the Northwest. It hasn't been easy getting there, and he doesn't look back.

Instead, he adopts the philosophy that the wines will sell themselves if everything else is right with the world and the vineyards. It is a philosopher's outlook that keeps Sineann, Owen Roe and O'Reilly Cellars in demand, and keeps David O'Reilly searching for the best there is in life.

O'Reilly's label

Owen Roe Dubrul Label

Owen Roe Dessert Wine Label