PORT ANGELES — Grape day in the morning!
Kathy Charlton has secured the funding to locate Clallam County micro-climates that could sustain vineyards.
Charlton, majority owner and manager of Olympic Cellars, 255410 U.S. Highway 101, started searching for $15,000 to fund the study nearly a year ago.
By last April, she was still about $8,500 short.
A fundraiser Mat 22 at the C’est Si Bon restaurant, plus donations from service clubs and the city of Port Angeles, put the effort over the top.
Charlton credited three women in particular for organizing the dinner and calling the benefactors:
* Rhonda Curry, executive director of the Peninsula College Foundation.
* Edna Petersen, owner of Necessities and Temptations in Port Angeles.
* Karen Rogers, mayor of Port Angeles and owner of Karen Rogers Consulting.
“It wouldn’t have happened without them,” Charlton said late last week.
“I’m a cheerleader, I’m tenacious, but they made it happen.”
Study to start in July
Gregory Jones, a climatologist and geologist at Southern Oregon University, Ashland, will start the study in late July, Charlton said. It will take until next spring to complete.
Much of the work will be done with computer models. Jones “visits, he works, he comes back, he holds meetings,” Charlton said.
Officially, Jones will work for the Clallam County Economic Development Council, which contributed $3,500 to the cause.
Seven boutique wineries are based in Clallam County, but only one of them — Black Diamond Winery, 2976 Black Diamond Road — grows some of its own grapes.
It harvests six varieties from its vineyard along Tumwater Creek, all of which flourish in cool climates.
In a June 2 article in USA Today, Jones said global warming may doom California’s vine-draped Napa Valley.
U.S. regions that may supplant it include upstate New York and Long Island, Michigan’s coastal zone, Virginia, British Columbia’s Okanogan Valley — and Western Washington.
The article, Charlton said, “was the icing on the cake.”
