Reflecting a Sense of Place

The Oregon harvest typically starts at the end of September. The grapes are hand-picked in the early morning hours before the autumn sun has a chance to warm the vineyard. Using small, sharp bypass pruners, the vineyard crew clips and places clusters into 5-gallon picking buckets, which are then loaded into bins and transported to the winery. The picked fruit enters the winery during the cool morning hours; if needed, it is stored in our cooling room to reach the desired temperature before it is processed.

Our Pinot Noir grapes get the royal treatment. Each cluster goes through our sorting line, where several people remove any unwanted material and grape clusters. Next, the grapes pass through our destemmer, which sits on a trolley directly above the fermentation tanks. The whole grape berries then go into these tanks, where they remain at cool temperatures for up to 10 days. This cold soak process is a style choice that facilitates color and flavor extraction before the production of alcohol. The fermentation usually takes five to seven days, at which point we press the wine.

Our Chardonnay grapes go directly into our press. The pressed juice is then collected and settled in steel tanks for 12-24 hours. From there, Chardonnay fruit for our Reserve and Legacy wines go into French oak barrels in our cellars, where the wine ferments and ages for approximately 10 months to build richness and complexity. Our Dundee Hills Chardonnay is fermented entirely in stainless steel tanks, providing a more crisp, fruit-driven wine.

The wine settles in tanks for two to three days before it moves to our barrel cellar.

Every section is fermented and aged separately, which gives us a more comprehensive range of choices when blending while also better understanding our site.

We use French oak barrels from a handful of coopers depending on the vine age, clone, and vintage. We think of oak as a complementary spice that enhances the fruit without providing a dominant flavor.

Our Pinot Noir spends approximately 10½ months in oak barrels before the wine is blended and bottled. Wine blending takes place in the late spring and early summer. Once we have achieved the perfect blend, it's time to bottle. With our Pinot Noir, we like to continue aging the wine in bottle for about a year before it is released.