Simple Machine Winery and Tasting Room- Brian and Clea's Fire Story

 Simple Machine Winery and Tasting Room, owners Brian and Clea 

Interview by Diana Roome

    Clea was born and raised in Applegate and Ashland and her parents have lived in Talent for 30 years. Brian moved to Ashland from California in 2010 and started making the Simple Machine wines. They moved together to Talent in January of 2017 and opened Simple Machine Winery and Tasting Room on Pacific Highway 99 in late 2017. This was the second business that Clea started in Talent. Her cafe, Cantina Vida, was sold to Awna Zegzdryn, who created the Sweet Beet Station at the end of 2016. 

    Clea tells their story: I was trail running on the PCT on Mt Ashland when the fire started. I had finished my run and was driving home when Brian called me. He said that he was evacuating the winery and that our tenants were also leaving. At that time, Brian was working on the first fruit of the 2020 harvest: Sauvignon Blanc. He had walked across the street to get ice from Crown Market. When he was walking back he saw the wall of smoke. Almost immediately, he was certain that we would be in the path. 

    When I heard this, my first reaction was only for Brian and our tenants to get to safety. Nothing else mattered. Our second priority was to secure our pets and have a safe way to evacuate further as needed. No one knew how the fire was going to spread. We didn’t try to salvage anything. I was unable to get back to Talent. The onramp to I-5 south from Mt Ashland was closed at this time due to road construction. I drove back via the old highway, behind a rural fire truck that was heading toward the fire, too. When we got to Emigrant Lake there was a vehicle on fire with a person standing next to it. No other cars were on site. Thankfully, the fire truck was there to put out this fire before it spread toward Ashland. It was incredibly scary to see this second fire with the winds howling and potentially pushing it toward Ashland. I then got stuck in traffic in town, and I couldn’t get back to Talent. I ended up evacuating with friends down to Mt. Shasta. We were all really freaked out that the winds could shift. 

    Brian was able to get to our house in the hills south of Talent and gather up our pets. He spent a super tense day and part of the night with neighbors and family, gathered at the Stearns Cemetery on Anderson Creek Road. Late in the night a lot of people decided to get out of there because the fires seemed threatening even a mile or so outside downtown Talent. Some folks went up the backroads and over into the Applegate. Others took backroads to Medford. My step-dad invited some other evacuees to stay at his house in the hills above Talent and they waited it out. Brian was able to get to the east side of the valley on Valley View Road where he watched the fires most of the night before making his way to our friend Eric Weisinger’s home on the south end of Ashland. He spent the night in his truck with our three cats and our 90-pound rescue dog, Marvin. He drove back through Talent the next morning when it was just getting light. That is when we knew that we, along with unfathomable numbers of other people, had lost everything. We live outside the city limits and our own home was not impacted. On the same property as our commercial business, we also owned a three-bedroom house which we rented to a local family. The house burned down, and the family lost everything. 

    For us, the loss of over four vintages of wine in addition to all our library wines was catastrophic. Every drop of wine that Brian had carefully crafted was destroyed. Each year’s vintage is unique and cannot be reproduced. The heart, the soul and the back-breaking work that went into each bottle was just wiped away in a couple hours. As Brian wrote in a letter to our wine club members on September 12, four days after the fire: “Every barrel, bottle, and every piece of equipment was incinerated. The loss of the winery and all inventory is devastating, but seeing the destruction our friends’ and neighbors’ houses, businesses, and memories in our beloved hometown of Talent, Oregon was infinitely worse. The tragedy that struck Talent prompted some serious soul searching about whether or not to pull up roots and move on.” Five days after the fires the air was too hazardous to breathe and our power was still off so we were staying at a hotel outside of town. We quickly decided that we had to keep our business going and we needed to figure out a way to rebuild. We made arrangements with our growers for the remainder of the 2020 fruit and within a few days Brain was working 50+ hours a week crushing grapes at our friends’ winery down the road.

    We had lost all our inventory and we needed to figure out how to raise money to keep paying all the bills. I launched a promotion selling future wines to help keep us in business. We pre-sold packages of 6 or 12 bottles of two future wines. We didn’t even know what the wines would be yet because the fruit was still being picked. We received some powerful local, regional and even national news coverage because we were the only winery in Oregon to burn down. Our After Fire (AF) wine sale was a huge success and the two new wines were ready to ship by May of 2021. We ended up shipping AF Wines to over 20 different states. We created a custom “Thank You” on the back labels of these wines and it really allowed us to share a story of hope and collaboration. The list of folks who donated items and supported us was long.

    Then, I got to work on navigating the world of insurance. We found amazing partners with our construction team at the Ausland Group and they moved heaven and earth to get us rebuilt in time for the 2021 harvest. The new winery and tasting room were operational in under a year. We were not able to re-build the residential part (3-bedroom house) on the property due to lack of insurance funds. We had insurance, but not enough. FEMA does not have programs for businesses or rental properties. Luckily, we were able to get SBA EDIL loans. They are not forgivable, but they have very good rates. We got some grants from the Energy Trust, the Rotary Club and the State of Oregon for the materials used to rebuild. But in the end, it was necessary to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in new debt to rebuild. 

    To survive something like this you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and move forward, but it is an excruciating experience that I would not wish on anyone. You also have look for the silver linings. This community rallied behind us and we had a crazy amount of encouragement particularly from within the wine industry. We made the absolute best of a terrible, potentially business ending, event and we are incredibly grateful for everyone who helped make it possible. In particular, our friends at Barrel 42 were unbelievably generous and because of their support we were able to still produce a 2020 harvest. 

    Now, in 2022, we are operational year-round, five days a week and we have two employees. Business is good but still slower than before the fires. Once more housing is complete and more people are living in nearby neighborhoods, things will improve. We also look forward to more businesses returning to the highway.

    Rebuilding does not equal recovery. The scars that this event have left on our community are still raw and it will take years to work toward healing. There are many families still living in hotels and other temporary housing. Our communities really rose to up to meet this challenge and that continues to inspire us. We truly are stronger together.