Respect for the Land
Our vision comes from the desire to create a legacy that expresses our family’s enduring respect for the land in a way that can be shared by others. There’s a rugged determination in our heritage. Our love for the land, in our family for generations, kindled our interest in winegrowing but we wanted to cast our net widely to assure the right fit with our Rhone Valley winemaking aspirations. We commissioned geological research to determine all viable options within the AVA, which happily pointed to our family homestead as a prime candidate for the style of wine we feel called to create.
What we discovered is that the soils on our property share the same characteristics as the highly sought after terroir in the most distinctive sections of the Red Mountain AVA to our north and The Rocks District of Milton-Freewater within the Walla Walla Valley AVA further east, flush with cobbles rather than the silt and sandy soil commonly found in these AVAs. As a result of that good news, we designated a very special five-acre area within our vineyards, land that has never been farmed, for pioneering a wine vision that takes full advantage of what the deeply layered cobbles and gravels bring to the finished product.
Vineyard-Forward Thinking
We consider ourselves very fortunate to have such exceptional geological deposits available for winegrowing within the Horse Heaven Hills AVA.
We’ve chosen our grape varieties carefully based on these unique soil and climate conditions, developed exacting standards for vineyard management and collaborated with the best consulting winegrowers in the region to produce ultra-premium wine that comes unmistakably from this place. We are grateful for the expertise and guidance of our consulting winemaker, Charlie Hoppes.
Not a lot of people have come at this industry from the point of view of the vineyard as the ignition point of the business proposition. We take pride in our role among the small but growing segment of the Northwest wine business focused on creating a vineyard-based (estate) operation. We did extensive research of the area in and around Horse Heaven Hills and, after collaborating with famed geologist in the region and Whitman College professor, Kevin Pogue, then chose the family homestead as the ideal venue for winegrowing.
Given our backgrounds in chemistry, microbiology, biology, enology and viticulture, we relied heavily on our skills and perspectives as scientists in choosing the location of our vineyards. With the planting of our first vines, we began a new chapter in the farming lineage of this acreage along the Columbia River.
Old Word Sensibility. New World Pioneering.
