28 | EDIBLE PORTLAND SPRING 2025 Documentarian Meghan Hattie Stahl, 34, grew up in the heart of Oregon wine country, but she never set foot on a vineyard until two years ago. A student at Hunter College in New York City, Stahl was finishing her Masters of Fine Arts in “integrated media arts” (basically nonfiction media-making) when she went home to visit her family in McMinnville. She was struck by the winery's augmented reality room while researching potential wineries for a bachelorette party at Stoller. "I’d been working in the new media space and doing sound walks for the past few years,” she says. “I thought: Why isn’t there an audio tour of a winery?” She’d always known the wine industry was a big part of what made the Willamette Valley special, but since her family had no involvement in it, she’d always been a bit mystified by wine. She didn’t even drink the beverage at college. “I was more interested in craft beer,” she says. It would be a way to use her skills as a documentarian and learn about wine in the process. She contacted Cory Guinee, a family friend and owner of the wine analytics company Core Enology. (She used to babysit Guinee’s kids.) She told him about her idea, and he immediately thought of his friend Patrick Reuter at Dominio IV Wines. Not only is Reuter an artist—for years, he’s been creating the “Shape Tasting” labels on his Imagination Series of wines, using shapes to convey taste—he’s also known for collaborating with other artists, breweries and even a distillery. (The farm also has hazelnuts, which the folks at Westward Whiskey came out and picked to use as a finish in their whiskeys.) The next time Stahl was visiting her family in Oregon, she drove out to Reuter’s vineyard in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA, and the two sat down for a glass of wine and a spirited conversation about art, wine, sound, color and storytelling. They began bouncing ideas off one another as two creatives. At first, Stahl wanted to do an audio tour of the farm, a picturesque 82-acre property with a refurbished 1916 farmhouse. (There are indigenous artifacts on the property, like arrowheads, among other things.) However, Reuter thought it would be more compelling to document the making of a specific wine—from harvesting grapes in the vineyard to bottling and labeling. This is the idea they agreed upon. Since making a white wine takes less time than making a red, they chose to follow a Sauvignon Blanc, a relatively new wine for Reuter. Thus was born “Sounds of Unknowing: The Making of an Oregon Sauvignon Blanc,” an almost 50-minute-long audio tour. The audio tour, which was released last August, is available on Dominio IV Wines website—bundled with two bottles of Dominio IV’s Sauvignon Blancs ($79). Last year, Sounds of Unknowing won a Signal Award for Best Experimental Branded Podcast. Stahl starts the documentary in the vineyard, harvesting grapes alongside seasonal workers. She talks to Reuter and his wife, vineyard manager Leigh Bartholomew, about why they’re picking the grapes early—to capture that acidity and “gooseberry” flavor that Sauvignon Blanc is known for. In the background, you hear the shrieks and chirps of birds, Reuter’s Poodle-Labrador mix and Smoochie Wallace chomping down on some grapes. Then SOUNDS OF UNKNOWING: An Audio Tour of Making Sauvignon Blanc at Dominio IV By Hannah Wallace | Photos courtesy of Dominio IV Wines
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