She’s now worked her way up from cellar rat to winemaker for Airlie Winery in Oregon’s Coast Range. And in a state where pinot noir is the dominant variety…and in a business where red wines are often given preferential treatment over their pale cousins…Elizabeth isn’t afraid to unabashedly pledge her allegiance to white varietals, in whose subtlety and variety she finds more intrigue and challenge.

Elizabeth knows blending…and her biggest challenge is Airlie’s Seven, which combines seven different Willamette Valley whites. The goal is a balanced wine where no single variety dominates, and all of the flavors play nice together in an ideal combination of food friendliness and drinkability.

We had a chance to talk about the science of blending for Vino Veritas. Wine is blended for any number of reasons, not just to produce new creations like Airlie’s Seven. On the day that we spoke, Elizabeth was combining different lots of pinot gris. Blending is a painstaking process where science meets instincts, and an Excel spreadsheet is only there to augment the winemaker’s judgement.

Elizabeth’s blog is an approachable and interesting conversation about winemaking where she teaches customers and others in the industry about her craft. Blending is only one of the winemaking processes we hope to cover in the finished film.

A fourth-generation chef, Chris took over the helm upon his father’s retirement in 2008, and since he’s been balancing maintaining the restaurant’s famous standbys with the invention of new dishes that allow him to pursue his creative impulses. He devotes two morning a week to kitchen experiments where he carries on his father’s “Freestyle Cooking,” a term Jack Czarnecki coined long before “fusion” was mainstream.

Chris draws plenty of inspiration from the impressive wine cellar beneath the historic home that is stocked with more than five hundred different pinots, most of them from Oregon’s Willamette Valley. He’s even created his own label through a partnership with Stag Hollow Vineyards in Yamhill County.

Because you can’t make a film about wine without talking about food, I interviewed Chris about his experiences as a chef in the midst of one of the most noted wine regions in the world. He provided a chef’s perspective on food, cooking and pinot noir.

I asked him if he ever thinks about his role in founding a new and celebrated wine region.

“Nope,” he says without hesitation.

And I believe he answers this way partly due to his confidence and humility, and partly because he doesn’t take the time to reflect. He’s too busy following his curiosity.

Now that he’s stepped aside from heading the wine label that he built from the ground up, he’s no less enthused about the pursuit to which he dedicated his life. Only he’s returned to his roots. He’s making wine in his garage, one barrel at a time. “You can experiment more when you’re working with small lots.”

And he’s not really retired from his other life pursuit either: he’s still working on building new wine regions from scratch. He partners with the Bostocks in Arizona, where they’re searching for just the right varieties to bring that rising wine region into wider acclaim. A few days after we met, Erath planned to travel to the Puglia region of Italy to investigate different, rare varietals that might fare well under Arizona’s harsh conditions.

Dick Erath’s pioneer days are far from over.

Here’s a wrap-up of the trip with some vignettes of the folks at Charron and Dos Cabezas, who graciously opened their wineries to me and shared their stories.

You can vote here:

http://www.winespectator.com/videovoting

Everything in AZ winemaking is exactly the opposite of what you expect. In the Sonoita AVA, the problem isn’t too little water, it’s too much at the wrong time. The problem isn’t the baking heat and desiccating winds, but winter cold and spring frost. Of course, you’ll find a few expected challenges when making wine in the extremes of Arizona: snakes in the barrel room, for one.

And here you’ll also find winemakers working without a net. They’re defining a region, building it from scratch, trying to find what varietals will work the best in some of the country’s highest, driest and southernmost vinifera vineyards. You’ll find folks like Susan and Milton Craig of Charron Vineyards, who purchased a merlot vineyard between Tucson and Sonoita, where vines are tended next to prickly pear cacti. They’re refugees from the world of IT where they faced a constant struggle against “outsourcing” and “offshoring.” Making Arizona merlot is a job that can never be shipped overseas.

And in Sonoita, you’ll find Dos Cabezas Wine Works where Todd Bostock and his wife Kelly run a family operation with big ambitions, not only to create a legacy in wine for future generations of the Bostock clan, but also to prove that world class wines that evoke the unique character of the landscape where they were crafted are possible in Arizona. They want to prove the value of an entire wine region. And if releases like their Pronghorn Vineyard “El Campo” blend are any indication, they’re well on their way.

We’ve captured some great stories in Arizona and discovered that it’s a region with even more stories to tell. I’ll look forward to another opportunity to talk to folks in this region down the road.

We had a chance to talk with Jack about why the Willamette Valley is a gourmet chef’s dream, and why mushrooms and Pinot Noir are a match with perfect aesthetic and maybe even spiritual qualities. We’ll be spending more time in Dayton in the coming months as we plan to chat with Jack’s son, Chris, who is a fourth-generation restauranteur and now helms the kitchen. We’ll also head to the hills with Jack to learn how Oregon’s wild truffles and mushrooms eventually make their way to the table–next to a glass of Pinot, of course.

Lisa began her career as a food writer for the Oregonian, but she soon grew fascinated with the intellectual challenge of writing about wine. “After all, how many ways can you write about chicken?” Now she’s traveled the world exploring wine regions and brings a writer’s perspective to our project.

Lisa made the great suggestion of meeting at Boedecker Cellars, in northwest Portland, where Stuart Boedecker and his wife Athena Pappas crush Willamette Valley fruit in a gritty manufacturing district. Their urban winery is at the same time a stark contrast to the pastoral settings of many of the places we’ve visited, but once inside the lofty space it has the same magic of any winery, with stacked barrels, the hint of must in the air.

The husband and wife duo run the business from top to bottom and both are hands-on winemakers, developing two distinct styles that they bottle separately. We were able to chat with them on camera about the benefits of making wine in an urban location, and how they took the leap from their former careers.

I’ve written before about how we seem to be in the midst of a golden age for documentary films, and part of the reason for that is how the technical and cost hurdles have steadily dropped. (This year’s edition of the daVinci Days Film Festival, coming up next weekend, offers additional evidence, with a menu of provocative documentaries.)

But, even though the equipment has changed, some essentials remain: You still need to be able to sniff out good stories — and then figure out the best way to tell them. “Vino Veritas” looks to be on the right track, but — like some vintages — we won’t know for sure until it’s time to uncork it.

We’ve been hitting Twitter and our other social networks harder lately because of our fundraising campaign, and as a result, Matt Compton, who co-owns Spindrift with his wife Tabitha, noticed the chatter and invited us to an industry tasting to try their lineup.

I’m a filmmaker, not a wine writer, so I’m not used writing tasting notes. But I have to say the ’08 reserve Pinot is a steal. The ’10 Pinot Gris stood out. I liked the Gewurtz from 30 year old vines, and they offered an interesting Rose made from Pinot Noir that had a twist on a blush wine…it had bright acidity like a typical WV white. I guess I’ve been learning a few things about vino since starting this project. Or at least I know what I like, and Spindrift offers enough range at great prices to make this corner of the Valley worth a visit.

Matt got his start managing vineyards and worked throughout this section of the WV before striking out on his own, and they now produce around 4,000 cases. Sometimes you don’t have to look far for wine stories, and I’m sure we’ll be touring some of Matt’s vineyards down the road.

l should also note that I ran into Claire Cady of the Oregon Wine Blog, which is in the midst of being rebranded as “WestToast,” to cover an expanded range of topics in food and wine in the Northwest.