About the Winery

After a well-traveled career in the airline industry, proprietor Rod Gilstrap with wife Jeanne retired to their childhood roots in the Grande Ronde Valley. Together, Rod and Jeanne, along with their adult children, planted grape vines on the hillside above Cove. Their estate property in a long standing cherry orchard was chosen for its scenic beauty and situated such that Rod and Jeanne could look out over the valley, as well as their vines and watch their latest hobby grow. At just over three thousand feet in elevation, the Gilstrap Vineyards started as an experimental site. Just what type of wine grapes could we grow at three thousand feet and forty-five degrees north latitude? Rod had flown around the globe enough to know that the winters of eastern Oregon were no less severe than the wine growing regions of Germany and northern France.

Rod was told that wine grapes would be a real challenge at these northern latitudes where they had built their estate home. What the nay Sayers didn’t know was that Cove has been home to some of the best fruit-growing efforts in all of the Pacific Northwest. Rod and Jeanne started their vineyard plantings with French hybrid vines- vines that would be winter tolerant as well as disease resistant. From these early plantings in 1993, first hobby wine vintages were produced in 1995. Some of these wines were actually drinkable!

From these roots, Gilstrap Vineyards have produced nearly a dozen different wines with the most recent being our Rio Grande Ronde produced primarily from the Kuhlman Foch grape that ripens early in the growing season and tolerates our hearty winters. The bulk of our current vineyard has been replanted to produce more of this wine that has been so popular in our winery. See our winemaker’s notes for further description of our Rio Grande Ronde.

Today, Gilstrap Brothers yearly production is just over fourteen hundred cases. We invite you to participate in our growth with our wine club memberships. Come on out to the winery for some tasting fun. Stroll our grounds and see where we’re going next in our winemaking and marketing opportunities.

Gilstrap Brothers Today

Brothers Warren and Ted Gilstrap head up today’s production and marketing efforts at our winery. Wine tasting and tours are available daily. Gilstrap Brothers has now become a wedding destination with our beautiful gazebo overlooking the Grande Ronde Valley. Our reception facility sits just above our vineyard. Enjoy the ambiance! Food and wine pairing classes are scheduled monthly. Gilstrap Brothers wine club offers substantial discounts and direct shipping is now available to most states.
Visit www.gilstrapbrothers.com for up to date happenings and winery news.