Moose's Conservation Journal

Jim Kakacek with Van Duzer wines, a neighbor to Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge, presents Doug Spencer, Project Leader and Willamette Valley Coordinator U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Willamette Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex, with a bottle of wine.

Tonight, a little story about how I got into wine and how my love of wine has been intertwined with my conservation photography.

April 2000, I spent the best week of my life at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. There was photographing seabirds at close range, time with like minded individuals, and eating at a really sweet restaurant, The Clipper House. Our last dinner at the Clipper House, I decided to do what was at the time a rare thing for me and have a glass of wine. We were having tuna steaks that night and I decided to have the chardonnay to go with this. Whoa, the best glass of wine I had experienced to that time. I was completely, blew away and instantly decided that I wanted to learn more about wine.

Shortly thereafter I moved to Oregon. Now as many of you may know, Oregon is known for Pinot Noir. Thus, it wasn’t a surprise when my aunt and uncle had a bottle of pinot at dinner at their house given to them by a business contact. I found this particular bottle rather unpleasant and a few subsequent bottles furthered this opinion of pinot. Thus, I preceeded to fall in love with syrah for how well it goes with Creole cooking – nothing quite like a glass of syrah with a plate of jambalaya.

In the meantime my photography was diversifying from just wildlife into conservation topics and I got involved with the Friends of the Willamette Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex. Then a huge event for our fledgling group suddenly came up on the calendar. One of the trails on our refuges was to be designated as the 1000th National Recreation Trail and renamed in honor of Rich Guadagno, a former manager of Baskett Slough NWR and one of the victims of the 9/11 attacks on United Flight 93. My mother took the responsibility of organizing this event and investigated the idea of having local wineries serve wine there. This led to her contacting Jim Kakacek of Van Duzer. Turns out Jim knew Rich personally and was very excited about participating in the event. Eventually, it was decided that we shouldn’t serve wine at the event but Jim still attended and spoke and gave wine to the VIPs of the event. To our surprise, he gave my mother a bottle as  coordinator. A few weeks later, my parents popped the bottle and I tried some too. Here was a pinot that did not have the overpowering, unbalanced acid that I had tasted in my earlier experiences with pinot. I was ecstatic, this was awesome. We then arranged some more events with Van Duzer and our family has joined their wine club and I attend most of the events. Between Jim’s influence and drinking wine with NANPA friends (I remember a really late night in Albuquerque that is one of the best socializing nights in my adult life) I am totally a pinot convert. Pinot Noir is now my favorite all around wine, although I still really like syrah with creole. In fact Van Duzer’s ‘07 estate pinot is my all-time favorite so far.

Anyhow, how the wine continues to intertwine with my nature photography is that Van Duzer is currently restoring oak savanna on their land. I have been working with them in my documentary and article about savanna restoration. This effort is being coordinated by Rebecca Sweet, the wineries new vineyard manager, a young woman whose intellectual mastery of her vocation has me in awe.

Take a look at the critters these efforts can help here.