Rachel Starr (winemaker)

Rachel Rebecca Starr (1944–2005) was an American winemaker. After gaining a doctorate in political science, she began a career in the wine business, owning or co-owning several wineries. Great Wine Buys, the retail wine store she opened in Portland, Oregon, is still in operation.

Life and career[]

Starr was born in 1944. After graduating with a PhD in political science from the California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, in Arcata, California, she opened a retail wine store, named Great Wine Buys, in Portland, Oregon.^[1] As of June 2022, the store was still in operation.^[2]

She wrote The Recruitment of Men and Women Into Local Politics in Oregon in 1974.^[3]

In 1984, after sending a selection of her wines to Robert Parker,^[4] she became Oregon's representative for The Wine Advocate.^[1] She then opened a small winery in the Portland neighborhood of Linnton. There, under the Linnton wine label, she produced barrel-fermented chardonnay and pinot noir.^[1]

Starr opened Starr & Brown with former lawyer Eric Brown in 1991. It was located at 10610 NW St. Helens Road in Portland.^[5] Brown left in 1998, at which point it became known as Starr Winery.^[6]

Starr later became partners with Bob Hanson to establish Starr Winery, which was based at her property Newberg.^[1][7]

Her health began to decline, and she closed the winery. A year or so before her death, she was the winemaker at August Cellars in Newberg,^[6] and selling her own wine under the label Rachel's Cellars.^[1] She trained her successor, Jim Schaad, who became the winemaker in 2004. Schaad died in the role in 2020, from complications of a recurrence of lymphoma.^[8]

Death[]

Starr died in 2005,^[1] aged 61.

References[]

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