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Collector's Edition WINES&VINES 19 rie-Eve Gilla will be Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, as well as Grenache. Chardonnay, given Gilla's experience in France, is a top candidate for a white vari- etal. The project excites Ashley Mahan, chief operating officer of the Walla Walla Valley Wine Al- liance, who toured the emerging facility a month ago. "I'm still blown away," she said. "The fam- ily is extremely nice and come with a great deal of knowledge, passion, and camaraderie. We're very happy to welcome them into Walla Walla!" Meanwhile Oregon continues to draw significant investment with the latest new player being The Family Coppola company, which announced its acquisition of Vista Hills Vineyard, a 42-acre property in the Dundee Hills AVA, in late October. The Family Cop- pola includes Francis Ford Cop- pola Winery in Geyserville, Calif., and other wine companies. The deal makes the Coppola family the latest to venture into Oregon and adds 42 acres of Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir to its vineyard portfolio. While the acreage in Oregon is small, the real estate is important as Cop- pola looks to the future. "These vineyards produce some of the finest fruit in Dundee Hills and make a perfect fit within our pre- mium wine offerings," CEO and winemaker Corey Beck said in a statement announcing the deal. "We're proud of this opportunity to own prime real estate embed- ded in such a respected region." Others are also on the hunt for properties, including Foley Family Wines. "Over the past six months we have been investigating several potential vineyard acquisitions in both the Willamette Valley and Southern Oregon," Foley Family Wines president Hugh Reimers told Wines & Vines. "As you can imagine not every vineyard is cre- ated equal, and finding the best properties is challenging in a hot grape and real estate market." The heat sparked the advisory firm Metis LLC to open a Port- land, Ore., office early this year. Santa Rosa's Zepponi & Co. is also active in the market, advising Vista Hills owners the McDaniel family on its sale to Coppola and also participating in Foley's pur- chase of Acrobat. It advised on Duckpond Cellars' sale in Sep- tember to the Great Oregon Wine Co., a division of Integrated Bev- erage Group, and Huneeus Vint- ners' purchase of Benton-Lane Winery in January. "There's a lot of activity," said Mario Zepponi, founder and prin- cipal of Zepponi & Co., noting that Willamette Valley properties are known as premium plays. "It's quite high, because of the interest that's being driven domestically, primarily by California wineries … And then on top of that you have this compound effect of a number of foreign wineries and spirit companies looking at Ore- gon for some of those niche lux- ury plays as well." —Peter Mitham WINE INDUSTRY NEWS atpgroup Small package. Big results. • Ideal solution where space is limited. • Small size / Large filtering surface. • Compact, integrated automatic CIP system. • Fully automatic. • Micro-filtration membrane for preparation prior to bottling. • Intelligent backwash system that starts only when a pre-set quantity of solids is reached. • A unique membrane design provides superior results. • Only available through ATPGroup. TMCI Padovan Nitor SMART Cross ˜ Flow Filter ATP NiTor SMArT FilTer Ad_118-11-6_WANdV For More iNForMATioN, coNTAcT ATPGrouP AT 707-836-6840 or oNliNe AT WWW.ATPGrouP.coM ANd See uS AT booTh J1, uNiFied SyMPoSiuM, JANuAry 30-31. "Washington has a lot of opportunities for, basically, all the varietals. The prices here are still reasonable in terms of the grapes, and the prices of the wines are quite high." —Jesús Martínez Bujanda, CEO of Valdemar Estates