By JANET COOK
News staff writer
April 18, 2007

When Scott and Gail Hagee began farming in the Hood River Valley 26 years ago, they often ended long days in their pear and apple orchard with a glass of pear wine homemade by a Parkdale man named Lester Martin.

“We drank a lot of it,” Scott Hagee said. “We thought it was really good.” A few years ago, when the Hagees decided to remove some of their 40 acres of fruit trees to plant wine grapes, Hagee remembered Lester Martin and his pear wine.

“I told Gail, ‘We’re going to make a pear wine,’” Hagee recalled. He tracked down Martin, who had since moved to the south side of Mount Hood, and arranged a meeting between his winemaker and the elderly man. The winemaker returned with a recipe, which was modified and refined.

Today, the Hagees’ Pheasant Valley Vineyard and Winery produces about 500 cases annually of pear wine made from organic pears grown on the couple’s Acree Drive orchard.

“It’s become very popular,” Hagee said. Pear wine is often considered a dessert wine because of its sweetness. But Pheasant Valley’s pear wine is different.

“We make it a little on the dry side, purposely, so it pairs well with foods,” Hagee said.

After the Hagees harvest their pears (they have approximately 20 acres of Bartletts and 5 acres of Granny Smith apples, along with 16 acres planted in wine grapes), they send some of them to Columbia Gorge Organic, a local company which makes popular fruit juices and smoothies, to process into juice.

The pear juice is returned to the Hagees and from there, the wine-making process continues the way other wines are made. The pear wine is fermented in stainless steel barrels rather than oak in order to retain the pear flavor.

Each finished bottle contains seven pears, according to Hagee.

Pheasant Valley’s pear wine won a bronze medal at both the 2004 and 2005 Northwest Wine Summit. Hagee said the specialty wine pairs well with cheese and fruit appetizers, as well as fish and poultry.

Pheasant Valley produces about 5,000 cases of 11 different wines annually. Hagee said he wants to keep his winery at about that size. But because of the popularity of his pear wine, he may increase its production.

“Because we don’t process (the juice) here, and it’s all in stainless barrels, we could make more of it pretty easily,” Hagee said.

Pheasant Valley customers would no doubt like that. But no one more, perhaps, than Hagee himself.

“It’s a lot more fun,” he said, “than selling pears.”