Full Speed Ahead for Gus Janeway of Velocity Cellars!

Gus Janeway is a winemaker with a laptop, a phone, and a small folder of contracts - oh, and a vision for what he wants to produce (that part is pretty important). Not exactly what most people envision when they hear his job title. He doesn’t have a large estate winery covered in rolling vine-covered hills or a softly lit barrel room full of racks. Instead, Gus is much more concerned about what’s in his bottles. His bottles being Velocity Cellars, a boutique wine brand producing around 1,000 cases annually.

Gus got his start in Minnesota of all places in the mid-1990s. He was searching for a new career path after doing a short stint teaching high school photography and math. He noticed that there was, of all things, a small local winery and showed up one day to see what he could do. He started by flattening cardboard boxes, stacking wine and even helping out in the tasting room. There was also the need to pallet-jack full tanks around their tiny facility, so he got the full winemaking experience in that, as everyone knows, winemaking is 90% cleaning things up and 10% moving things around. He even did some vineyard work, which led to the realization that there must be a more comfortable place in the world to grow grapes than Minnesota.

The Rogue Valley was just that place. Gus was interested in "traditional" Bordeaux varietals but figured all the good vineyard sites had been taken in such established places as Napa and Sonoma. His wife, Julia, had contacts in Southern Oregon and was able to line up a job. Gus had set out originally to follow the standard path of pursuing a degree from Davis or some such thing, but the array of opportunities in the Rogue Valley kept him too busy to follow that course. Array of opportunities is an understatement for all the places Gus has made wine- Quail Run Vineyards, Paschal Winery, and RoxyAnn Winery.

Gus had always intended for Velocity to be his sole project, but events conspired to put him at the helm of winemaking at RoxyAnn Winery in Medford even before he had bottled his first Velocity vintage in 2002. This forced his personal winemaking project to the back burner where it simmered along for six years.

It wasn't until Gus stepped away from RoxyAnn a year ago that he was able to refocus his efforts toward marketing, albeit at a challenging time economically. He rebuilt his website, created e-commerce, pushed through the complex web of interstate shipping, and got a solid handle on his business. More importantly, it also means that he gets more time to work with his wines, and more time to work with Randy Gold who is now his sole supplier of grapes (except for a little Marsanne he picked up last fall).

Gus’ approach to winemaking is to above all pay attention to character. To him this means, “Tossing out preconceptions about which varietals make the best wine, especially in other parts of the world, and to pay attention to those grapes which come out of the vineyard, year after year with characteristics born of the place they were grown.” His goal with Velocity is to produce the Rogue Valley's definitive wine, which is to say a wine unique enough, and delicious enough, to have come only from this one winegrowing region. Gus explains, “This is why attention to the grapes' inherent character comes first, because I can't create character where there isn't enough to begin with. This approach has led to some surprises. I wouldn't have put nearly so much faith in Malbec twelve years ago as I do now, but after watching the fruit come in vintage after vintage it is the varietal which, for me, has become the most compelling to work with. I feel the same way about Viognier and Cabernet franc here, although the latter presents more of a gamble from a ripening standpoint.”

Gus describes his family as a huge amount of fun right now, with Theo (4) and Josephine (2) making for thrill-a-minute days. “We read, play games, dig for worms, and just have a pretty great time together. They, and Julia, are always very appreciative of my wines. As often as I can, I get out for a bike ride to really feel alive. Currently I'm enjoying my new (used) mid-eighties era Della Santa steel road bike, a gift from Julia for Christmas last year.”

Look for the release of 2006 Velocity late this winter or early spring. It is the first Velocity bottling to be, essentially, a Malbec, since it is 88% Malbec and 12% Cabernet franc. In early summer anticipate the fourth version of his limited production Velo rosé, which is a great summer and grilled salmon wine.

Wines are available online to those within and beyond Oregon, but they are also distributed fairly widely within the state, so try your local wine merchant. Tip: Right now Velocity wines can be found in the RoxyAnn Tasting Room, thats where I bought mine!