40 Years of Oregon Wine, Pinot Noir & the Science of Winemaking

Season 2 - Episode 9 - Steve Anderson - Winkemaker Eola Hills Wine Cellars

What does it take to spend more than 30 years crafting wine in Oregon’s Willamette Valley… and why is winemaking truly a never-ending science experiment?

In this episode of The Realtor Who Wines, Rashelle Newmyer sits down with Steve Anderson, longtime winemaker at Eola Hills Wine Cellars, for an incredible deep dive into Oregon wine, Pinot Noir, sparkling wine, vineyard management, and the fascinating details most people never realize go into a single bottle of wine. 

From making homemade wine in a bucket at 13 years old to becoming one of Oregon wine country’s most experienced winemakers, Steve shares the stories, science, and experimentation that shaped his career.

🍷 From Homemade Wine to Oregon Winemaker

Steve’s journey into wine started unexpectedly—with neighborhood grapes, a 5-gallon bucket, sugar, yeast, and curiosity.

What began as a teenage science project eventually evolved into a lifelong passion after traveling to France, discovering the complexity of wine, and realizing that winemaking was far more than simply producing alcohol.

“For me, it wasn’t just appreciation for wine… it became a never-ending science project.”

🍇 Pinot Noir, Clones, Rootstocks & Barrel Science

This episode dives deep into the art and science behind Oregon Pinot Noir.

Steve explains:

•  Pinot Noir clones and rootstocks 
•  Why soil and vineyard location matter 
•  How yeast selection changes flavor profiles 
•  American oak vs. French oak barrels 
•  Why barrel forests matter 
•  Sparkling wine production 
•  Harvest timing and vineyard management 
•  How Oregon wine differs from other regions 

Listeners also get an insider look into:

•  Single-clone Pinot Noir 
•  Vineyard-designate wines 
•  Sparkling Pinot Gris and Sauvignon Blanc 
•  Cabernet-based port-style wines aged over 20 years 

🧪 Winemaking Is Constant Experimentation

One of the most fascinating themes throughout the episode is how much experimentation goes into crafting wine.

Steve shares how:

•  Small fermentation changes impact flavor 
•  Different yeasts create different textures and aromas 
•  Oak toast levels influence wine character 
•  Climate and weather affect every vintage 
•  Tiny decisions dramatically change the final product 

“The permutations are endless.”

🍾 Oregon Wine Then vs. Now

As someone who has spent decades in Oregon wine, Steve also opens up about:

•  The evolution of Oregon wine country 
•  Industry growth and scaling challenges 
•  Changes in wine consumer behavior 
•  Younger generations are drinking differently 
•  Direct-to-consumer wine sales 
•  The future of Oregon wineries 

This conversation gives listeners an honest behind-the-scenes perspective on both the beauty and business realities of modern winemaking.

🥂 Why “Cheers” Matters

One of the most memorable moments of the episode?

Steve shares the story behind why we say “cheers” before drinking wine.

“Don’t forget the ears.”

It’s a beautiful reminder that wine is truly a full sensory experience.

🔥 Why You Should Listen

If you love:

•  Oregon wine 
•  Pinot Noir 
•  Willamette Valley wineries 
•  Winemaking science 
•  Food and wine culture 
•  Entrepreneurship and craftsmanship 
•  Behind-the-scenes stories 

This episode is packed with insight, humor, education, and appreciation for the people behind every bottle.

Grab a glass, settle in, and join us for a conversation about Oregon wine, storytelling, science, and the passion behind creating world-class Pinot Noir.

Thank you for listening! Connect and collaborate with Realtor Rashelle on any of her social media platform pages > https://linktr.ee/RealtorRashelle 

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Realtor Who Wines podcast. I'm Rashelle Newmeyer. Your hostest with mostest, a student of life, a connector, a passionate wine enthusiast, and your local favorite guide. Join me as we explore the vibrant Pacific Northwest. Savor the finest wines and champion the spirit of entrepreneurship. Each episode, I'll sit down with inspiring guests, supporting business ownership and uncovering the stories that make this community unique. So grab a glass of wine, settle in, and let's embark on a journey of discovery and connection together. Cheers. Well, Steve, I am really excited to talk to you today because you have been in the wine industry for such a tenured time making wine. I also like your back story, by the way. Thank you for your service to our country. I know that you served in the Army. Correct? Yeah, so thank you for that. I would like to start by. Cheers to you. Should we cheers with the spark? Good idea. Cheers. Cheers. So, before we move on to that. Do you know why we say cheers? No. To tell me. All right, so I don't know if this is the real reason, but. Okay. I was on a wine trip, traveling up the Rhine and the muzzle and the SA rivers and stopped in. I think it was rude and visited a winery. And of course, there was a bunch of tourists there, and so it was crowded. So we got put into a group tasting and tour of the cellar, and we're sitting down and the wines are being poured, and the person giving the tour is this barrel chested individual. I forget his name, but I guess he sung opera at the local opera house, had this big booming voice and he had a story. He said cheers. And then he asked, do you know why we say cheers? And everyone says, no. That's interesting question. So, you know, everyone looks at the wine and appreciates the color and the clarity, and there's all kinds of things that you can determine from the wine just by looking at it. And, and then you smell the wine so your nose gets to appreciate it. And you put it in your mouth and you taste it, and you appreciate the sensation and the flavor and everything, but the ears are left out. Cheers. Cheers. Don't forget the ears. Oh my gosh, I love that so much. Thank you for sharing that around the world. I love that I don't forget the ears. Cheers. I'm going to start saying that I love that so much. Please introduce yourself to everybody. Yes. So, as you call me my name, my name is Steve Anderson. I've been the winemaker here since January of 2000, but I had some tenure prior to that.

I started October 3rd, 1993 at 3: 2:34

15 p.m.. Oh my gosh. The story for such a detailed time period. I was supposed to start at three. I lived in Corvallis at the time, so it's a 30 mile drive, and I showed up originally that morning at 8 a.m. to start a completely different job. I was going to take over as the vineyard manager for the outgoing vineyard manager, and I showed up that morning at 8 a.m. to start my new duties and trained with the outgoing vineyard manager. It's October, so it was harvest, and it was decided that he was no longer going to leave. Oh, and so I didn't have a job. The vineyard manager is the younger brother of our founder, Tom Huggins. And so while I was making preparations to start my new career right out of college, that that job went away. So as I'm leaving the building one minute later, 801 the winemakers coming to work and he asked me, where are you going? And I go, well, I'm going home. What do you mean? Well, I don't have a job. What do you mean? He was unaware of the decision that was made. Says, well, if you need a job. He knew my situation. I'll get to that in a second. You can come back and work the night shift. I need more staff. You know, you can do juice analysis and help process fruit. And here's the kicker of the background. When your wife goes into labor, you can just drop whatever bucket you're holding and take a go. Yeah. So my wife was eight and a half months pregnant when I was originally hired to take over as vineyard management, so I spent two weeks getting my affairs in order, bringing the mother in law into the house. Sure. Making arrangements. And so I showed up that morning at eight and didn't have a job. So cellar rat started a cellar at. A couple weeks later I was approached and asked, hey, how would you like to be the assistant winemaker? We don't have one. And so that was in part there was a couple of incidents in my favor. I was finishing up some lab work, went out to the crush line and noticed that they were putting Riesling into the press. That was supposed to be shared in a. So I yelled out across the deck, everything was really loud. All the air compressors and all the hydraulic pumps were screaming and all that stuff. So I rub and he goes, what? I go, what are you processing? And he goes, Chardonnay. And I go, no, you're not. So everything shuts down and and I'm looking around and I offloaded the truck. So I know I put the chart in here and the reasoning over there. And now everything's in a pile way over here. Oh, no. So our crew, not knowing the difference, just put all the grapes into the press. Oh, gosh. So I grab a cluster of Chardonnay and a cluster of Riesling, and I'm showing Rob and. And he couldn't see the difference. And, you know, I'm pointing out some of the details. And anyways, we ended up putting a little less than 10% Riesling into that that press. We want a gold medal at the state fair the next year. Oh my gosh, 10% Riesling, which is allowed. Yeah, yeah. And the following year, Joe Dobbs, who was at Willamette at the time, he got a gold medal at the state fair for his Chardonnay with a 10% Riesling. Oh. So, I think, you know, Hills, we are trendsetters. Or at least we try to. Yeah, yeah. So that was incident one.

Another one was like 2: 5:55

00 in the morning. Our French was d6. December Crusher stopped pumping. And so Rob says, oh, it's broken. Let's clean up. Let's go home. And I go, wait a minute, we still have truckloads of grapes we need to process. Why don't we try to fix it? He says, I don't know how to fix it. So I looked for a wrench and started taking it apart and noticed that the flap of the flapper valve wasn't closing. It wasn't even opening. So I took it apart and realized, oh, the spring had broken on it. So I'm looking around in the tool boxes for springs. Anything I could find couldn't find anything. And then I remembered, oh, wait a minute. There's a seat from the back of Tom, our founders van. He had a Dodge Caravan, a, you know, a family man, that he had the seats out in the office and he used it as our delivery van. Oh, funny. So I flipped that over. Hey, look at those springs. So I took the spring. I stretched it out. I put it in there, put it back, and we got through the night, I love that. So about three weeks later, harvest is done. Of the 80 original springs on that seat, there was about a dozen left. So I got really fast at taking the thing. So I got us through the harvest, and that's when I was like, you know what? You're pretty handy mechanically. You know the difference on site, the different varieties of fruit. And yeah, that's when I became assistant winemaker. Oh my God, did that for five years. I actually left for a year and a half. I was hired away to make wine. A winery in Roseburg, you know, as a problem solver, a fixer of some of their issues. And year and a half later, I wasn't pleased. And the winemaker, who was my mentor, he'd left Eula Hills. And so the job opened up and Tom approached me and said, how would you like to come back and make mine? I said, I'm in there. So that was in December and I started in January after years of 2000. Oh my goodness. So then you've been here for 26 years then as the winemaker with five years ahead of that. Right. And even that 18 months I was gone. I owned like 110 shares. Oh my goodness, you know, so 0.01%. So I like to say, even though I wasn't employed, I still had a solid firm connection as, yeah, 120 110 shares of 2 million. Right. Still standing. So yeah, you still were part of the family you started in wine or like had an affection for wine really early. I was reading that you started with a bucket and a bunch of grapes. You talk about that a little bit. That's a story that I often have to tell. Yeah. So you say an affection for wine, and it wasn't so much an affection for wine. People think, oh, a young person, a teenager, and they're wanting to make wine to get drunk. And that was not it. The my introduction into wine was I was, you know, the kid of the 6070s and, you know, you go outside and keep yourself entertained. So in the summertime, you know, at breakfast and I'd just be gone all day and I would kind of feed myself by foraging, you know, with the neighbor's blueberries. And of course, blackberries are everywhere. Sure. Our neighbor had this great barber so late summer, early fall, you know, I'd always be over there helping myself to her grapes. And one day she's like, hey, Steve, what are you doing? I go, oh, I'm just eating some grapes. Oh, yeah, that's okay. That's that's fine. And somehow that morphed into a story about, you know. Yeah. You know, when I was a kid, the whole family, we'd go pick grapes and we go to Grandma and Grandpa's and, you know, and the whole family would be making wine in the basement. And I remember going down the stairs and there'd be jars and jugs of different colored things, you know, bubbling along. And I thought that was really fascinating. Yeah. So I asked my mom if and Patty was her name. She told me the recipe was, you know, take a five gallon bucket of grapes and remove the stems, squish him up at a 5 pound bag of sugar, a package of yeast, stir it all up, cover it with a plastic bag, and wait six weeks. I mean, that was the recipe. Okay, so I went home and come in through the back sliding door. My mom's at the sink washing dishes and said, mom, can I make some wine? And she goes, what? What the what the beep for? Yeah, like a science project. Yeah. I was really into, you know, science and experimenting and building things and just for fun. And so I went back over to Patty's and got a five gallon bucket of grapes and rode my bike up to the store to with my allowance to buy a 5 pound bag of sugar and a package of yeast. And I did all that. That work filled the bucket up with water, put a plastic bag over it, covered it with a rubber band, secured it with a rubber band, and then put it in the corner behind the dining room table. Went to school the next day and came home from school, and that plastic bag had bloated up and there was purple foam all over the white linoleum floor. Fortunately, bleached cleaned it up. Oh, good. So lesson number one is don't fill the bucket all the way full. You gotta have room for the cap to take for the foam to to not escape the container. So six weeks later, I had a ferment which I thought was done because I knew nothing about wine. No one told me, you need to punch it down and no one told me, you know, when a ferment was actually finished. So put it up on the table. Had a piece of siphon hose that I got from the hardware store that I spent my allowance on and was filling empty Crown Royal bottles. My parents and their friends were really into Crown at the time, so we had all these empty bottles. Yeah. So, you know, it's got a cool capital. So I put the siphon hose in and I start my action and then of course, it gets in my mouth, spit it out, fill up the bottle. Oh, lost the siphon. Have to do it again. So by the time I had all the bottles full and the bucket was empty, when I got up from the floor, I was just dizzy and tipsy. And yeah, that was my first experience with alcohol and my mom was at the sink washing dishes again. And I go over to her and I'm holding my tummy and my head, and I was like, oh, mom, I don't feel well. I'm really sick. I'm really dizzy. And she goes, oh, what have you been doing? And I go, well, I've been filling the wine bottles. And she just looks at me and starts laughing. You're drunk. And I go, no, I'm not. I didn't drink any, I swear. And how old were you two? I was 13, yeah. Okay. So I stormed off, went to my room, went to bed I was fine, yeah, yeah. Swept it off. Gave those bottles away at Christmas to my mom and all their friends and family. And they thought, wow, this is really good. It was sweet. It was pink. It was Concord grapes. Yeah. So it was like, yeah, you know, grape juice, you know, that was sweet and sparkling and a in a crown cap, a Crown Royal bottle. It had a screw cap. So it trapped the CO2 and so it became a command performance. Oh you're going to make more of that next year. Well oh gosh. Blackberries get ripe in the summer and I August. So I made blackberry wine as well. And that was the big hit. Then I graduated high school, went to college, stopped making wine because I didn't have. Yeah, I never thought it was going to be a career or a job or I had no interest in drinking wine at the time. So that's how I got started, I love that. What? When did. So you said you kind of stopped and had no interest in, like, making wine. When did you develop the interest to make wine? So yeah, that's a little more complex. So my college roommate, sophomore year, his parents live in France. His dad is an ex-Marine who married a French woman. So my roommate went to high school in college, in France, in Paris, and then came back to Oregon to to go to college. And that's how we met. So I had just gotten out of the service, joined the Army so I could pay for college, and he was going to go for the holiday break to France. And he says, hey, Steve, how'd you like to go with me to to France for the Christmas break? I said, yeah, that sounds lovely. I had a passport and I had never used it. So yeah, we did that and spent a couple days in Paris and then went out to their country home and the Loire Valley near Moultrie and Ambrose and. I was asking, you know, so do you like wine? They go. No. Not really. And, you know, I can't tell the difference between red or white. You know, if anything, I think maybe a white wine. That's sweet. Maybe Riesling. Sure. You know, I've had a glass of wine. Yeah. College. You know, I've had some. Yeah, but. Yeah. And I didn't even really like beer a lot at the time. So, so he goes. I bet you can't tell the difference. Or I can help you build an appreciation for it. And so I'm in this, this home with all this family that's French speaking. And only some of them spoke English. So he goes down in the basement, gets a bottle of red, a bottle of white and blindfolds me, opens the bottles, pours them in the glass, hands them to me and says, tell me which ones red, which ones white. So I smell it and I taste it, and I smell the other one and I taste it. And so I hold up the glass and I think this one's red, and I think this one's white, and the whole room just breaks out laughing, you know, a gut busting laugh, Silly Americans. And I'm like, okay, what's going on? And they pull the blindfold off. And I had it absolutely wrong. So what he had done, you know, is went down in the cave, the cellar and pulled out a bowler. And that's the one I thought was white because it was soft and fruity and not very tannic. And then he brought up this Oct long aged, cellar aged Chardonnay from Marseille or something like that. And I thought that was the red because of the feel and the texture of it. Yeah. And so that right there was one of my first epiphanies that I didn't realize was one until later that, well, I don't know what they before he was, but but I was wrong. And that, you know, you could have a soft red wine or a heavy red wine or a brooding white wine or a soft white wine. And so it's not so much the generic, oh, Chardonnay is always like this, and Pinot noir is always like that. Or, you know, there's a whole range of different wines. So absolutely, that was my first introduction. So we come home and Scott and I, that was my roommate, you know, we start drinking wine in the apartment. His dad came to visit that spring before summer and bought some wine for us and brought some wine for us. And, you know, again, I wasn't really into the the drinking scene, but I started having an appreciation for wine and realized there's more to it than just Riesling. That's sweet and white and soft. Yeah, well, and there's more to it than just unlike some different alcohols. Like, there's more to wine than just, like, pounding it to get drunk or whatever. Yeah. So there's like a whole experience with it and things like that. So that's and then what transpired once you started to like kind of find a slight interest in wine where you're like, you know, I kind of want to learn more about this or become a winemaker. Like, when did that transition happen for you? So time is passing, I graduate, I have a degree in horticulture from Oregon State. My career path that I thought I wanted to be on was to be a nurseryman. So I was exploring, looking for jobs, working in retail and wholesale nursery and yeah, saw this job posting for Vineyard Manager. So I check that out and interviewed. And that's how I got got hired. So ended up not getting the job as managing vineyards and agriculture and was in the cellar. And my mentor, the winemaker here at the time, was really patient and really encouraged, you know, experimentation and let me do things and ask questions and answer. And so, yeah, you know, trialing different yeast and experimenting with different grains of, of oak barrels, you know, and just on and on and on and on. So for me, it wasn't so much the appreciation for wine as an alcoholic beverage, as it's just a never ending science project. Totally. So the appreciation for wine came with, you know, oh, look, I'm able to change the texture, the color of the complexity of Pinot noir by the yeast we choose and the temperature we fermented at. And do we crush it or not crush it? Is it in a neutral oak barrel? Is it French? Is an American is a Hungarian. Is it tight? Green? Loose green? One year old? Two year old? You know, the permutations are endless. Totally. That's actually one reason why I wanted to start the podcast, because there's just so much that goes into winemaking. And I just really wanted to share that story. And that sometimes, especially because we live in wine country here in Oregon, that people don't realize how much work or how many people had to, like, help make that one bottle of wine and instead they're like $40 or $70 or $120. And it's like, you just don't even understand, like all the time and energy that went. And why is Oregon more expensive than somewhere else, etc.. So yeah, so for me, the the winemaking side of it, like I said, it's just a never ending, you know, science project that just, you know, keeps me keeps me interested. Yeah. How much do you get to have as the winemaker impact on the crops itself? Like do they seek your expertise? Do you help with all the crops or like talking about, like we should plant this varietal, different things like that. Like, do you get to weigh in on that or. Great segue, because I was just going to say. To your previous comment a second ago that a lot of people, you know, give credit to the winemaker. Oh, such a great winemaker, make great wine. Well, I mean, there's the cliche that, you know, it's it's really easy to make great wine from great grapes. It's really hard to make great wine from inferior grapes. So you got to have quality grapes. Yeah. And I'm not out in the field pruning and thinning and spring. We have a vineyard crew, a vineyard manager to do that. So I really want to give here as well a lot of credit to our vineyard manager Antonio and his crew and my assistant winemaker and our crew for making wine. Yeah, because it's a team. Yeah, I'm the responsible party. And the something screws up. It's. Yeah, it's on me. But I think now with 30 plus years experience, I've seen a lot of the problems and very few new ones come up. But anyways, I just wanted to give a shout out to all the, the crew that, absolutely below and around and under me. So back to your question. Yes, I do have a lot of influence. Consult with our vendor manager all the time about different blocks. We're going to taste some peanuts here in a minute. That from a single vineyard, but are managed slightly different than we can talk about the differences on those in just a moment. So yes, crop load, clone rootstock. You know, when we're planting new vineyards, it's like, you know, what clones do we want and what rootstock should we put it on? And is that a vertical trellis? Is it a single wire flop? Is it a G. You know, all of that and this divine spacing and, you know, tons per acre or pounds per vine or. Right. And then do you also have any do you and Antonio talk about harvest like let's go ahead and get those grapes off there continually. Yeah. So a question I get get asked here and this is going to be a bit of a diversion. You know what's your favorite wine. So my smartass answer is the wine in my glass. That's my favorite one. And my second favorite wine is the wine I didn't have to pay for. Oh yeah, I like both those things. And so I will then turn it to, well, I don't have so much a favorite one. I have favorite varieties, red and white. But my favorite wine to make this is probably the better. Yeah. Question is Pinot gris. And the reason for that, it ties right into that communication with the vineyard manager, etc.. So we have many clones of Pinot gris on several different rootstocks, so we'll have 146, but I've got three different rootstocks. So there's three blocks there. And they all ripen or mature at slightly different times. So there's enough to make, you know, 30,000 gallons of wine from all the crop that we grow, all 100% estate grown. And it all is a different time. So I need to be in close communication to pick this one block before it gets overripe and I lose the acid, or before this one gets too much sugar, or before you know the balance is off between the the and the acid. So we're picking different crops at different times, and it may take three weeks to get all the Pinot gris in as juice. So then once I have the juice and I don't have enough tanks to keep everything separate so it gets blended together, but I will split that juice into three tanks and then I can use three different yeasts. Oh, so one yeast gives me the the perfume esters, the other one gives me the fruity tiles. And another yeast actually eat some malic acid while it's converting sugar to alcohol, which lowers the acidity and raises the four. And so when you put that all together, you get this nice perfume flowery aroma to wine that has a nice fruity flavor that's still bright without being mouse dripping acidic. If you're thinking about making a lifestyle upgrade, maybe wine country, acreage, grape views, or do you want to go downtown? Let's talk. Either way, I want to help you level up. Reach out now and we'll make your dreams come true. a lot of decision making, a lot of risk assessment going on and making sure. Because you know if you wait three days then you may have lost some acid in that fruit or it's over. Right. You got sugar and your alcohol is too high or your alcohol is too low. So got to have some experience. And you know how many different varieties of grapes do you guys grow? Not a question I have not the Solomon ever. So we got Pinot noir, Pinot gris, Chardonnay or not. Yeah, we do have a little bit of cab. So Muscat now, Sauvignon blanc, Marshall demeanor, Riesling. And then do you source grapes from anywhere else or do you? We do get Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from the Applegate Valley. Okay. Get some Tempranillo from the Umpqua Valley. Yeah, that makes sense. And then does Tom have any, like, do you guys all meet together and make decisions together, or does he kind of just let you in? Antonio, do your thing. He lets Antone and I do our thing. Yeah, yeah. He's not completely removed from the equation. Sure. Obviously we communicate, you know, this is what we're doing. This is what we've decided and things like that. But now having, you know, 30 years under my belt and Antonio being here for 25 years, that's amazing. He was the vendor manager who didn't leave. He was his assistant. So when Jim retired, Antonio took over his managing the and the crew and responsible for all the plantings and maintaining and everything. I think that's a testament to the business itself, to have two people in such substantial roles that have stayed for such a long time, that just really goes to show the business itself in the heart of the business, which I think speaks volumes. Yeah, we gelled together well as a team and, you know, can anticipate what everyone needs now. Yeah. Well, how many different varieties do you guys currently offer in the bottle? All of those that I just mentioned. Right. And then are any of them blends or any like do you have any. Well, we do have a rosé, which is an assemblage. We have a red which is an assemblage as well. So, Pinot noir, we have our classic for distribution, the stuff you find in every retail shop. We also have our barrel select the winemakers, reserve the vineyard designate. We have another vineyard designate that is a field blend of clones, the other ones a single clone. Then we have our Pinot Noir rosé. Then on Pinot gris, we just have the singular Pinot gris. There's no reserve of it as well. Then we have our Sauvignon blanc, some Riesling. Don't do like a virtue meter per se. We do grow some. I bottle it and we do private label for different entities. You know, we'll make wine, for example, Blue Heron and Timberline Lodge, when you have those branded labels, that is Hills Wine with their label that they then sell at their retail establishment. So we they can sell Gewirtz or Meter. And so we make it for them. That's cool when you. So since you've been doing this for 26 years, making the wine, do you stick with the same recipes or do you ever vary a little bit? I mean, I know sometimes it's going to change because the never ending science project, right? Yeah. You know, people ask about yeast all the time. And I just mentioned just three choices for a variety. And unfortunately, I can't just throw those three all together in a tank because there is competitive factors. So each tank needs its own individual yeast. And I know some wineries like to just do native permits, given the size that we are to meet. For me, really, that can be risky. If you're doing a 10,000 gallon tank and you do a native ferment and for some reason something goes wrong. Yeah, you're stuck with 10,000 gallons of something that needs to be fixed or sold bulk to somebody else. Yeah, rather than than bottled. So I don't take that risk, I inoculate. So the next question is where do you get your yeast from? Well, I ordered it. It's, you know, from a catalog. Yeah. So there's many manufacturers, there's many distributors and they all have descriptions. And so I'm constantly trialing yeast. So kind of my protocol will be, is I'll order a 500 gram or half kilo pack of yeast that has a great, wonderful description. So I'll try it in a ferment of red. And if it turns out great next year I'll buy two packs of that yeast, and I'll repeat it in the same lot that I had previously before, and I'll try it in something else and see if it translates. And if it does, and I really like it, then it may become part of my normal cadre of yeast. So whites, so Sauvignon blanc. Here's a classic one. So when Tom and his founding group first planted Oak Grove in 1982, they planted some Sauvignon blanc, and the vineyard was a former wheat field. And so it's longer than it is wide. And so they planted the rows for the length, making it easier to manage. But it was planted east west, so only one side of the canopy got sun, and he did it in a split trellis. So the south side got sun all day long, where the north side got very little sun. So literally half the vineyard one row would ripen and the other would still be green. So what was decided to to mitigate that was, well, we would pick the riper side and then two weeks later pick the other side. And that seemed to be helpful. As it turned out, it was better to let the one side get overripe and let the other side almost get ripe and pick it all together, and it had a better balance. So that was was one, but two. Here's where the yeast comes in. We were trialing yeast and I had discovered this one yeast. That was fantastic. It really elevated the fruit and brought out the characters that we wanted. Well, two years later, we bulldozed out that solving a blank because of phylloxera and replanted it. So it takes four years from the time he plant a grapevine till you get your first crop. So we were out of solving on Blanc for four years, but I had remembered that yeast. So when it was time to ferment the new grape juice from Starvation Blanc, I brought that yeast back. And it was even better because we had a better clone on rootstock with this yeast. So if I hadn't trialed yeast trying to find the right one to fix a problem in the vineyard, I might not have ever discovered that yeast and had such a wonderful thing. So solving a block is one of our better wines. In two, two years, three years in a row, it's gotten, you know, 90 or better and oh, wow, you know, trade magazine. So somebody else likes it too. Yeah. So many other than. Yeah, I love that you guys are getting ready to celebrate 40 years in business. What is some of the biggest changes that you've seen or growing pains. So obviously you've scaled over the years. You didn't always start at the size that you are right now. How what are some growing pains that you've learned from as you guys have scaled? Fabulous question. My mind is racing because it's an easy, simple question with a complex answer. So yes, when I started here in 93 where we're sitting, this was the winery, I mean, the tanks. And we had 40 barrels in here. The bottling line was in here. Behind the wall here was an awning where we kept our crush equipment and a couple of other tanks. So we were less than 20,000 cases. Production. Well, I don't even remember exactly how many, but at our peak, I think it was 2015, 2017. We had a bumper crop, we harvested all the fruit, and we eventually bottled 80,000 cases of wine from that vintage. So I like to say typically we're a 50,000 case production winery, most of it for FOB through distribution for retail. But it's not Covid, but it's just leading up to and through Covid and the changing shift in generation and buying habits. You know, we've scaled down not because of anything we wanted to do, just because of the demand of the demand and the economy and all that changes. We're back to a 20,000 case winery, but we have enough acres of vines to produce 45,000 cases of wine. So I don't know if this is the direction you attended the question to go. Yeah. So we're struggling. We're I'm advocating to our board of directors that I think we need to remove about 100 acres of vines to come back into correction, because, you know, even if we had a 30% growth and sustained it for four years, we would come back to where we once were. So I think we need to make a change and maybe not produce so much for distribution. Figure out how to get more direct to consumer. You know, how do we grow our wine clip? I mean, these are questions we've been asking ourselves for a decade, two decades. Totally. But we need to figure it out. Well, and you're not alone in that. That's been a common theme, especially in the last few years, that the younger generation just isn't consuming as much. Or when they do, it's just like a glass at a time, or maybe a bottle versus I'm an elderly millennial, so my generation was like, we'll take the case. Like, why wouldn't we buy the whole case? That makes sense. And so I can only imagine that that's a pain point. And just trying to figure out how to rise to that pain and like, overcome it. Some wineries, I've noticed, are starting to nonalcoholic wine. Is that anything that you guys have considered? We've thought about it. Yeah, yeah. It's just another like option to add. But yeah, it's just one of those things that as the market changes and as consumerism changes, it's like, well, what do we do? I also wanted to I love wine, obviously, I'm a huge ambassador of it, but so I part of the reason I wanted to start the podcast was to add more story behind it and get people more interested in it, and just like learning about it and maybe going out and coming to Yola Hills after watching this episode or hearing it and wanting to try it out for themselves. So that's why I wanted to share everybody's stories, because I don't want to see the wine industry start to get smaller and smaller. Yeah, there's currently a lot of consolidation and removal mines and wineries. So prior to our recording, you know, I mentioned, so yes, we are celebrating 40 years of business as a winery. And then there's four years prior to that from the vineyard. So the vineyard was planted originally. And then because of a lack of wineries to absorb that fruit, Tom started Isla Hills Wine Cellars. Yeah. To to make wine from that fruit. But yeah, the drinking age generation today the newcomers there's I like to say, you know, they're not drinking wine like Mom and dad or grandma and grandpa used to. Yeah for sure. So many more choices. Ready to drink cocktails, cocktails, spirits. Covid really helped advance that shift because now you can order things online. I know not so much spirit, not least not in Oregon. Yeah, but nationwide, you know, just it's like, wow, you know, I used to buy brand X and now that online presence is really showing that there's hundreds of choices. Yeah, absolutely. And it's not just wine and it's not just beer and cider. It's so yeah, it's everything. It's everything. Speaking of which, not all of our listeners are in Oregon. We have people that listen from all over. How would somebody, if they don't live in Oregon, get Ahold of a bottle of Yola Hills? Can they order online? You can order online. Due to shipping rules and regulations, some states we can ship to. In some states we can't. And so that's online. If you were to go to the Hills Winery. Com and look it up and click on the Buy Now button, you know it would ask, you know, what state are you in. And you're in the state that doesn't allow shipping. Then we can't then plan a trip. We would love to showcase you and host you fly Alaska Airlines. Yes. Lies free. Yeah, absolutely. Or Oregon Wine Advisory Board has worked with them and yeah. So yeah, you can check on a case of wine and not have to pay extra for it. Yeah. And they'll take good care of it and make sure it arrives. And then if you do live local, but you're not here in the Valley, can people buy wine at the grocery store? Any kind of liquor stores? Having been around for 40 years, being one of the larger wineries in Oregon, we're just about every retail location. Maybe not every single skew of our wine. Yeah, but Pinot noir, Pinot gris, Chardonnay. We're in Albertsons, Fred Meyer, Safeway, even Plaid Pantry, right? Yeah. We're everywhere. So there's no reason. There's no reason not to be able to to have our wine. And a lot of restaurants have our higher end wines, you know, by the bottle, by the glass as well. Yeah. And just to give frame of reference for anyone that doesn't know, we are just outside of Salem, not too far, about 20 minutes west of Salem, would you say? Not even that. We're ten miles west of Salem. Okay, there you go. On the corner of highway 99. Yeah, highway 22. I definitely recommend coming out to the tasting room. It's beautiful. They also host events out here. Very large space. So and we also have our vineyard venue, our legacy vineyard. We do summer concerts on the lawn out there all summer long. Great place if you're having a wedding or reception. And where is that one union. Yeah. Where's that logo. So that is in the Eola Amity Hills. So that's between Salem and Rick Real. Our vines are all in the hills. Amity Hills. Ava. Yeah, I would love to transition and talk about the different Pinos that we have today. So. Well first we started with the bubbles. Is there anything you want to say about the bubbles or share about the bubbles? So leading up to this, you were asking, you know, what kind of wines would you like. So it kind of did the the sparkling. It's always a good entry. Wine. You know reception both for us. I love bubbles, your parties are celebrating. So the one that I poured for you today, I call it blank Day blanks. My marketing team doesn't like that because they blocked a blank out of France is usually Chardonnay. Yeah, and so I call it blank to blanks because this is actually a 7525 Pinot Gris Sauvignon blanc. So we grow a lot of Pinot gris. And I mentioned earlier we don't have a reserve of it. I guess this would be my reserve. I sparkle it, it is a method traditional. It's sparkled in the bottle. It's champagne, just not made in the champagne region of France. So we pick it fermented dry, add some sugar, some yeast. I'm targeting about five atmospheres of pressure. That's 75 psi, and it's 6 to 8 months. And that's where we're letting the yeast eat that extra sugar and turn it into CO2. Then we riddle it to get the yeast on point and we discuss it, give it a little bit of a little bit of sugar, a little bit of acid to balance it out and put a champagne cork and a wire hood and, and a label and it's ready to go. So we do completely in-house. I mean, we grow the grapes, we ferment the wine, we cork and cage it. Yeah, 100% in-house. And this is one of our most popular varieties. But I do a Pinot noir rosé, the Chardonnay varietal sparkling, and we do the Splunk de Blancs. I do a chair go as a sparkling in a demi. So if you want some sweet sparkling wine, Muller chair, go. And then I do a novelty one where we take Marshall Faulk, which is one of just a handful of grapes where the flesh is actually colored. So even if you try to treat it gently, the juice comes out dark. Right? And so we call it black bubbles, or I call it black bubbles because it's a really dark black wine that is sparkling. I've noticed that there has been more Marshall folk throughout the valley in probably the last ten years. Not like everybody grows up, but it's becoming more and more. It's popping up more. You'll find the the wineries that have been around for a while have folks in their vineyards. So back in the 90s, when the rains used to start late September and October, and as a winemaker and a vineyard manager, we had to worry about picking between rainstorms and isn't going to rod, is it going to get right? And so the growers and the wineries planted a few rows or acres of folk as something that we could blend into Pinot noir to help us enhance the color. In a year where it may be week. I haven't put into Pinot Noir for over a decade. So now what do I do? I've got I've got three acres of Marshall folk and it's like streamliner for me. I find it hard to sell. People can't pronounce it so they don't know what it is and they're not willing to to buy it. So I said, well, why don't we just make it into sparkling wine? So it becomes a novelty and you just sell it as a sparkling red wine? Yeah. And so, even non wine drinkers, I'll be like, I'll take some bubbles. You're like, okay, fine. There you go. And then so now we're going to transition to the Pinot Noir. Do you want to talk about. Sure. Know someone moving to Oregon? Send them my way. I specialize in relocation, and I'll treat them like family. Plus, you know, there's a glass of wine in it for him. Cheers. Which one did we pour first. This was this one. Oh, okay. So, Sorry. Don't forget the ears. Cheers. So we're trying this in the the Riedel, Oregon Pinot noir glass. Yes. Well, you. While this looks like you know any shape or Riedel spent time and money and effort to specifically design an Oregon Pinot noir glass. Yes. And some people ask me, does the glass matter? What's your take on it? I can't roll my eyes and exasperate enough to go. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. When I we're going to digress here a little bit. Shape of the glass. So like the yeast choices like the fermentation the whole berry whole cluster crushed open top tank, closed tank, all those decisions. So the shape of the glass. So you'll notice how there's very little wine in here relative to the size. I mean this is a more than an ounce pour. But this large bowl allows for a large surface area of the wine to evaporate, allowing it to aromatase, obviously. And then it's got this little tulip lip so it doesn't all escape. So when you put your nose in it, it concentrates it towards your nose so that you can smell it, something a lot of people forget. You notice I'm feeling the lip here. If you feel this Riedel glass, it's smooth all the way up. There's not a little bump of a lip from a molded glass like a restaurant, sometimes glass or sturdier. And you notice it's got a little bead on the inside. So why? That's important. When I tilt this up and I let the wine pour onto my tongue, it's not going to lift the wine up and skip the tip of my tongue, driving the wine towards the back of the tongue first and then allowing it to come forward. Because how our tongue tastes sweet sour salt and bitter bitters in the back. So if you drive the wine to the back, your first hit is just going to be bitter. But most people you put food in your mouth and it goes from the front of the tongue to the back. So just that little lip on the edge of the glass changes. Super key to the presentation of the wine. Oh, that's when you tilt it up to taste it. But the aroma, the shape of the glass. So you'll see sparkling wine, you know, has the tall skinny glass in there. So that really wanted it helps. So you have less surface area on the bottom. So you're not going to degas the wine quicker if you put it into a big bowl. But it also really concentrates the aroma. Yeah. And then for novice wine drinkers, some people think you swirl all wines. Yeah. Do you want to thank you give direction on where I was going to say. Yeah. So yeah I mean it's a you swirl your wine, why do you swirl your wine and and does it matter if you go counter clockwise or clockwise. Looking at legs is very old school old world back. You know, before you had stainless steel refrigerated tanks and modern filtration techniques and etc.. So why would you look at the legs? So the legs are when the wine evaporates and it forms the string. So you're looking at viscosity. Well what can affect viscosity sugar content. So and or alcohol content. So you'd look at the legs. How fast do they form. How fast do they disappear. How fast do they run. So a sweet wine is going to have thick legs that last quite persistent. So you could maybe tell how sweet wine is by how long the legs last, or how alcoholic the wine is about how fast the legs form and then disappear. But I don't this nothing scientific because I could have a high alcohol wine, put a little bit of sugar in it and it totally messes up that whole discussion. So it's for me, and I know I might get some flack for this. It's really a non thing. It's just enjoying the appreciating the wine, looking at the legs. So we swirl it to put a thin film on the glass so it can evaporate quicker so we can smell it. So the size of the glass is going to have an effect on how much aroma you have. Does it matter if you go clockwise or counterclockwise? Well are you above the equator or below the equator? Yeah okay. That's why I'm just asking. These are all questions people have asked me before because I know I like wine. And I was like, oh, I'm not like. So the faux pas is swirling, sparkling wines. If you swirl it, you're gonna, you know, it's like taking your soda and shaking it and shaking the can, and the gas comes out and then you're then your soda pop is flat, right? So the faux pas don't don't swirl your sparkling wines. Just look at it and enjoy it and enjoy it. Yeah. So what we have here is a our Wolf Hill vineyard. So the very first vineyard plant in 82 was our Oak Grove. So the companion vineyard to that, if you walk out there and you didn't know the dirt path between the vineyard, so one is low and flat and the other one goes up a hill, Wolf Hill, two different soil types completely. I mean, you can in the summertime you could see the dark brown, light brown sandy as it moves up and it turns red and you know, more clay as the Wolf Hill. So this is Wolf Hill and it's a single clone. Six, six, seven. I'll talk about that in a minute. And it's also a single rootstock RG the initials for riparia Gloire. So when you hear riparia think riparian or creekside or wet wet zone. So well Hill 667 on RG, I have six, six, seven on three different rootstocks at Wolfe Hill, but I only have enough of this fruit to make six barrels of wine. So that's less than 150 cases. And remember we make 50,000 cases of wine. So this is super select. And I only use American oak barrels. And I specifically get them from Demos Cooperage American Oak from demos Group Ridge. And I specify the forest I want it from Missouri and they're all heavy toast toasted head barrels. So when I say heavy toast, everyone has a toaster at home and you've got your selector knob and you've got white and crunchy to black and smoking. So this is, you know, black and small smoking. It's not charred, but it's black inside. So this is what I describe as the most hedonistic wine I make is from one vineyard, one clone on one rootstock. And I only use this particular barrel from a specific forest, from a specific cooperage. And we only make 150 50,000 cases of this. You were the first winemaker that I've talked to that has said that about barrels like specifically like even getting to choose from a forest. I didn't even realize that was an option. Oh, it has been a huge thing from France for years, for decades. I don't know, more than decades preexisting me. But there's several Maine forests in France, so there's a trend, says Yuki. I always nevers Navarre and the center of France. So, like growing grapes. So say you have a mother vine of Pinot noir, and I take three cuttings and I root them, and I plant one in France, and I plant one in Oregon, and I plant one in Otago, New Zealand. It was the same mother vine not on rootstock. So but it's trellis the same. It's sprayed the same as, same as you could possibly have it. And then you pick that fruit and you make it in a, in a, in a clinical university setting where everything is controlled and the wines are going to be different because of what was the soil type. Right. And when did the rain happen? How much rain? It did happen. It said so. Yeah. Same is true of that oak tree. So because is it in the north of France, the center of France, the south east west, what's the soil type. And those are more clay, more sand, more morel, more limestone is those minerals are really going to affect it. And then the amount of rain and wind, winter comes or goes away affects the grain width of of it, you know, the density of that oak. And then how did you toast it? Did you air dry? That would for two years or three years or more before you construct it into a barrel. So I mentioned alley, and trance alley is a region where the forest is. But within that allergy region there's a 300 year crop circle. Oh my gosh. So they will plant tens of thousands of trees per hectare actually physically plant these seedlings. And then in 3 or 4 years as they get to about knee high, anything that's bent, twisted, cracked, damaged, they'll just pull them out. And then they go back in another eight years and send their overhead height again. Anything that's got branches too low or bent, twisted crack disease damage, they'll remove interest. What they're doing is they densely pack this wedge of this crop circle, forcing the trees to grow tall and straight. So after 300 years, you get to the oldest section of the the wedge, the pie of the crop circle. These trees are massively tall, with no branches for meters going up. So it has this long, tall, straight grain with no knots. So that is the most premium would you could get. Because if you have a knot and you have a branch or you have a crack or disease in it, you know it's not going to make a liquid tight barrel. So you make it into furniture or flooring or something other. So the highest use purpose is for making wine barrels. That's crazy. This forest was planted by one of the the, you know, first, not first old French kings. That was when ships were made out of oak. And they needed strong wood to build warships. Sure. Hey, you know, his minister said, let's plant a forest and manage it so we can do ships well. By the time 300 years came around, we're making ships out of steel, so. Right. Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. No one has ever gone into detail about that with me before. So. So now I can buy oak from Pennsylvania or Missouri or even Oregon. Okay. Right. And they they have different flavors. Yeah. They host the same species of oak. Right. That's interesting. Sorry to derail us onto oak, but I was like, you were the first one to ever mention that. And I was like, what? So part of it never ending science experiments. Yes, I see, same with the yeast. I have barrel salesmen come in every year, you know. Hey, our barrels are the best. They I. So when I'm feeling generous, I will order for barrels. I'll put two in red, two and white. I will taste them, trial them. And if I like it, then say, maybe I didn't like it in Chardonnay, but I liked it for Pinot Noir. So I'll buy four barrels again. But this time, like the yeast, I'll put it in the same vineyard lot and a different one to see if it translates. And if it's really outstanding, then maybe I'll buy 40 barrels. Yeah, and make it part of my permanent rotation. Right? Interesting. That's crazy. Thank you again for sharing that. That was so interesting. Anything else you want to say about this Pinot noir specifically? My wife calls this Pinot noir for cab drinkers, so that's funny. We'll get people into the tasting room. And, you know, some are new to wine drinking or limited in their their practice. Well, I only I only drink big dark, heavy reds. I don't like Pinot noir. It's too thin or it's too soft or whatever. And so you pour a glass behind the counter. Everything is here. Try this. Oh, what is it? Well, you tell me before I like. Oh, this is great. Is this cap? No, it's Pinot noir. And then you pull the bottle and they go. Are. You tricked me, jinx! Oh, me? A bottle of wine. So because it's 667. Yeah. So here's some some geekiness for me as the winemaker. So. And I told you, I like to speak in analogies. I give a lot of wine tours and we're talking clones. And inevitably and rightfully so. Somewhat. So what do you mean by clone? So I know everyone's been to the grocery store and everyone's been to the produce section, and there's a wall of apples. You've got green ones and red ones and yellow ones and green Fuji pink stripes. All the things, red ones with yellow dots and. Yeah. Some are crisp, some are soft summer sour, some are sweet, some are dry and pithy. Why would you want to eat that? Right? But they're all apples, right? So translate that to Pinot noir. You've got clones which typically are numbered. In Oregon we have 1131141155 28 828 0502. You've got selections which tend to have names like the Village in France, Bonneville, Mariah Feld went clone, Curry clone. Yeah. So for me, what's more important than the number? The name is Berry size. So for me it's about and I'm doing hand signals here skin to juice ratio. So another analogy and this is totally for analogy. So think of balls for sports. You've got marbles really small right. You've got ping pong balls. You've got a baseball. You've got a softball. You got a basketball. So imagine all of those balls. The skin on it is the same thickness, whether it's a marble or it's a basketball. So if you've got a basketball, that's all you got a thin skin. That's a lot of juice for a very little skin versus a marble. Right. So for me six, six, seven is the ping pong ball. Got it. Okay. Or 777 is a marble. So for me 777 is not my favorite clone. I know a lot of wineries love it. Love of winemakers love it. It makes it deep, dark, heavy, brooding wine. But that's not what I want to make sure. So six, six, seven is has to me the perfect skin to juice ratio so I can make it dark if I want, and I can do different things with it and steer it in different directions more easily than I can of. Or which at the time, in the 70s, when things were being planted, that was what was available. Yeah. And a lot of it was self rooted and has since been removed due to floxia, but maybe replanted on rootstock, which has helped us to beat the rains. And now we need to think of consider of rootstocks to help us beat the heat and the drought. Yeah, kind of a thing. So you know, those those varieties are gonna are clones and selections are going to change here in the next ten years as vines are being removed and perhaps replanted with the, the changing of the guard. Yeah. Interesting. So this is Peter Dwyer from Wolfville Vineyard, six, six, seven. And I mentioned RG is riparia Galois. So this is a root stock that typically would be used to plant in a deep wet soils to resist the uptake of water. But we planted in absolutely the wrong spot. It's at the top of the hill in volcanic rocky soil which is dry. So it forces this fruit to mature, ripen quickly before it goes dormant when it runs out of water. And since it ripens so quickly, it doesn't have time to lose a bunch of acidity, which helps balance the high sugar. And because there's a high skin to juice ratio, it's very deep and brooding, which is kind of over the top, which then matches it well with a high intensity oak barrel. And I mentioned the American oak demos. Heavy toast. Toast. Yeah, yeah. So there's only six barrels of this. Four of them are brand new, never been used before. So they get the full impact. And the other two of the six or previously used once. So it works out to be 66.66666 or 66.7% new oak, which wasn't intentional, it was just someone asked me, so how much new oak is in this? And I did the math. Oh 66.7 and it's 667 Clone Pinot noir. Yeah, so that was not intentional. It was the yeah. Serendipitous. Yeah, I love that. And then what are we wrapping up with today. And again another glass. No we're going to do another. Oh dude this one. Yep. And which Pino is this one. Here. So this is also a Wolf Hill Vineyard Pinot noir. But it's not a single clone. It's a field blend. So as we plant and replant vineyards, we're always left with a few extra vines. And so for almost two years we had a little bit of 114 and 115 and different rootstocks, some six, six, seven and some hammered, and we were having to prune it and keep watering it, and they were getting root bound. And there was just, you know, what are we going to do with these vines? We paid good money for them. We don't want to throw them away. In 2005, on the top of our Wolf Hill vineyard was what I called a grassy knoll. My wife goes grassy knoll. My beep and I qualify that because that's where I got married. At the top of will fill a beautiful view of the valley. Yeah. So, you know, I'm in my nice new suit and nice leather shoes with flat, wide souls. And she was trying to come up through the vineyard, and I shouldn't say trying. She did. She walked up through the vines and then emerged from the vines onto the grassy knoll in high heels and the dress. And she goes, it was, you know, dirt, clouds and gopher holes, right? Yeah. Not so easy. I look at it, you know, from a different perspective, the grassy knoll. So that was the summer of 2005. And leading up to that, our vendor manager Jim, prior to Antonio, you know, he he watered it for us and kept it mode and made it beautiful and everything and. Said, you know, we should plant the top of this hill. I mean, there's quite a couple of acres up here and we got all those fines in the greenhouse. So we just took all that mishmash of Pinot noir grape vines and planted the top of the Wolf Hill vineyard. So again, four years later. So this is 2009. We harvest the fruit. I picked it as a block because there wasn't a row of it was. Sensitive to that I use for Pinot Noir. And then it just happened to be not not by any specific forethought. Had some French oak and some American oak. I knew that the juice tasted good and the wine tasted good, so I just put it in some new barrels. Let's try some French. Try some America again. An experiment never ending. So after fermentation and everything is in the barrel and we're letting it finish through malolactic before I give it its first big dose of sulfur to help preserve the wine. I taste all the barrels. And as I'm tasting these barrels, I go, wow, this one's good. This one's good too. This this whole lot is good. It wasn't just the barrel. It was the lot. Right? So I took a and I realized, oh, that was from the field where I got married. So I took a sample and I took it home and let my wife tasted. And she goes, what is this? And I go, well, you taste it first. Yeah. Did you tell me this is really good? It's really fruity and I love the texture of this. I go, well, well, this is the fruit that we planted on the site where we got married. It will fill. And he goes, oh, you should call this wedding block. So I give my wife Nancy, credit for naming this one. So this is a field blend of various Pinot noir on various rootstocks planted on the top in the thin, rocky volcanic soils on top of our wool field vineyard. And it's, you know, about 25% new oak, half American toast and half French oak. So it's a marriage of clones and rootstocks and the marriage of French and American oak barrels. Yeah. That was planted on the hillside where I got married. I love it. So wedding block Pinot noir from. Well, cheers to you and cheers to Nancy. It's so good. So I'm hoping what you're noticing that this one is a lot more fruit forward. Yeah, I mean, it's not so barrel intensive. Not that that one was at all barrel. Yeah, but there was more tannin from that skin to juice ratio and then complementing it literally, you know, literally complementing by having a more intense oak, but then aging it for 18 to 20 months, where this one's only 12 months in oak, but there's some tight grain French oak that gives it some texture without having to add a lot of toast. Yeah, for sure. I do notice a difference between the two. I think they're both delicious. I like they mean these blocks are side by side, but because of the clone and the rootstock. And then this a blend of everything. Yeah, yeah. I could just smell this one all day. And I should make a Pinot Cologne and smell good. Okay, we're wrapping up. What's this one? Okay, so. You were asking what wines that we we wanted to have to show here. And so I have, you know, some selections in view here. So my favorite wines, you know, what are my passions. So if you come to my house, I have a refrigerator in the garage, literally just for wine. Yeah. And I don't drink a lot of wine. People think you're a winemaker. You must drink a lot of wine. But if I'm drinking something, it's usually sparkling. Sure. Or it's port. Okay, so I don't have access to Portuguese varietals of grapes, but I have always had access to Cabernet Sauvignon, which has a thick skin. And that's why Cav tends to be, you know, darker and heavier in body and texture, because the berries are small and the skin is really thick relative to Pinot noir. Yeah. So in 1996, I'm the assistant winemaker. The Port Institute has this traveling road show. They travel the world. Well, they came to Portland. And so at the Portland Convention Center, they had set up in one of the rooms. And they had, I don't know how many port houses, you know, reading wines. And so the industry was invited. So I went to this, this Port Institute Roadshow and was tasting all these ports. And I had never really been exposed to port before. I was like, wow, this is so good. This is so good. And I just got really hammered tasting all these ports. So the next day I showed up at work, and I went to the winemaker at the time and mentioned, I have a new love. Can I call it, can I make some port? And he's like, didn't want to tell me no. He says, well, what would you make it from? And I go, well Cabernet probably because that's we get Cabernet from the Columbia Valley Oregon side and or the Applegate Valley. And it goes, okay. Yeah. Why not? Let's let's do that. So come harvest time, took one ton and crushed it, fermented it for a few days. So to make port and why? It's sweet. The alcohol comes from fortification. You add brandy to it. So brandy is distilled wine, right? So to preserve the sugar, you only ferment for 3 or 4 days to break up the skins and get the color out of it. And then you fortify it with brandy to the level of alcohol you want, let it soak overnight, and then you press it and you age it. That alcohol, that high alcohol 18% will arrest fermentation, leaving you bunch of residual sugar. So I took Cabernet Sauvignon and crushed it, introduced yeast, tracked it every day about three to fourth day, we lugged in to that one ton, about 50 gallons of 165 proof unaged brandy or odor and let it soak overnight, pressed it, and put it in a barrel. My plan was that I wanted to make a few barrels of port every year, and start building an inventory that I could blend to, like a ten year tawny port. Okay, so two years later is when I left Isla Hills. A year and a half after that, I came back. So in January of 2000, as the new winemaker for Eel Hills. Yeah. One of the things I needed to do was taste through all these wines and see where they are and analyze them. Then I came to the port and I'm chasing the 96, 97, and 98. That's the last one that I had made while I was here. And. I was like, wow, this is fantastic. So I got a sample, went into the office, bought it for Tom, and he goes, what is this? And I go, Will you try it first? Because that's always it's inevitable, you know, you go, oh, this lovely, this, that and the other. That's what everyone sees and senses. So he tastes it and he goes, that's so sweet. And he goes, yeah, it's it's a port style wine made from Cabernet. And it's like, when did we make this 1996. And so this is 2000. He's like, we can't be selling this. We're not making any money. You know, having it sit in barrel for so long. Totally. I only had four barrels. So I compromised myself without necessarily letting Tom know that I bottled only two barrels of it as a late bottled vintage. So, following Portuguese tradition. Yeah, it's from a single vintage. It's not vintage port, but it had aged a minimum of four, no more than six. And so we bottled a late model vintage port and sold right through it in the tasting room. Full retail. So then Tom's like, oh, we need to make more of this. And I go, it takes time and luck. I made some in 1997, so we bottled the next two barrels. So I kept two barrels of the 96, the 97 and the 98. I wasn't here in 99 or 2000 during harvest. So those vintages are mixed, but I've made a batch every year since then. So this is a 2001 okay called Jetta following Portuguese. So single barrel six months before I bottle it. So when I bottle this wine, it was six months away from, I'm sorry, 20 years and six months. It was six months away from being able to drink itself. Oh my gosh. And why do we drink port in a smaller glass? Well, because it's has such high alcohol in it. You don't need a full four ounce pour of it. It's it's a little sniff taste, you know, a digestive. It's something wonderful. So this is Cabernet Sauvignon port style wine. That Asian barrel for 20 years before I bottled it. That's amazing. So it's sweet. Alcohol is approaching 20%. Yeah, I fortified it to 16.5. But after 20 years, through evaporation, it's concentrated. And you know, I am going to start describing this one. I mean, I get a little bit of molasses, I get dried fig, some almond. I mean, all the classic port stuff you're going to get from Portuguese style wine, but yeah, Cabernet from the Applegate Valley. I love that with port. So like with some of the other wines, you can only have a bottle open for so long before it starts to turn. But with port because you drink it a little bit at a time. Is that the same? Can you have well sat in a barrel for 20 years, right? Not ever topped exposed to the air so that it can oxidize. So this is a wine where if you pour a glass of wine, you put the cork in it and put it in the kitchen cabinet and you forget about it for ten years. It's still good. Yeah, I love that. How long would you say for the other wines? Would people open them when you open them? Well, the sparkling wine, if you don't finish it, you're gonna lose a bunch of the CO2. Just the headspace is going to try to equalize pressure and you're going to lose pressure and it's going to become flat. Yeah, red wines have a capacity to sit on the kitchen counter a little bit longer because they have tannin in them. And that tannins, the antioxidant portion of it. White wines have a lot less tannin. So we compensate for that as winemakers by adding more sulfites to combat oxidation. So white wines last a lot less time. Open exposed is a red wine? Sure. So. Sounds like a simple question, a complex answer because it also comes down to winemaking style and philosophy as far as SO2. So Tom always likes to tout when he's he's talking about Isla Hills and our wines and his wine. He said, you know, he's uses my name is you know, Steve is really good about, you know, the SO2 because I had measures amount based on a versus. You know, how dad or grandpa taught me. Oh, we got a 50 gallon, a 50 barrel, 50 gallon barrel of wine. And I always had a cup of sulfur, regardless of age, you know, no matter what the harvest was, you know, it's like my grandpa or great grandpa said, add this much. And so that's just the recipe. But I'm using science and technology to add an appropriate level based on the. So some years it's a little more, some years a little less, but it's it's a measured amount. So I'm not trying to keep a wine that can sit open on the counter for a month. No. By over there are some that don't give you a headache or free. So yeah. So that's I was asking because there are some wines that you can have on your counter for a week and they taste fine. And there's some that it's like two days and it turns. So that's I was just curious. So it depends and I know that is right. That's the worst answer anyone ever gives. But it's not. It is true. Yeah. That's honest. I appreciate all of your knowledge and sharing all your stories with us today and your delicious wine. Thank you so much for your time. Cheers! One more time to you and cheers to everyone listening and watching. I hope to see you next week by.