Our Wines

We cultivate long-standing relationships with growers who believe, as we do, that high quality is vastly more important than high yields. Our top two fruit sources are our own Appassionata Vineyard and the nearby Medici Vineyard, both of which we farm according to Salmon Safe guidelines for sustainable viticulture. For the balance of our fruit, we work directly with some of the best growers and vineyards in Oregon’s Northern Willamette Valley.

In the cellar, as in the vineyards, our approach is a patient, Old-World style that allows wines the time they need to develop naturally. We let our wines evolve at their own pace, with a minimum of intervention, to give them a chance to develop balance, texture and length rather than merely massive fruit. Wines made in this unhurried style develop the structure for great ageability. But most importantly, they really let you taste the differences in their terroir – and that’s what makes different wines so fun and interesting to drink.

With our Appassionata wines, we take our commitment to unhurried winemaking even further. Appassionata – the label we reserve for our very top-of-the-line wines – was Erni Loosen’s first foray into making Oregon Pinot Noir, and he remains directly involved in making these special wines. We don’t release the Appassionata Pinot Noirs until Erni feels that they’re properly matured, which is generally 8 to 10 years or more. The Appassionata Riesling GG matures in the barrel on full lees for a year before it’s bottled, and matures in our cellar for another year before it’s released.

Chardonnay is the natural companion to Pinot Noir. Like Pinot, it beautifully reveals the soil and climate of the place in which it is grown. Our pure, unadorned Cuvee Lunatique Chardonnay is produced in a combination of stainless steel and neutral oak barrels with no malolactic fermentation, which results in a classic cool-climate expression of the variety.

We produced our first vintage of the Appassionata Riesling GG in 2017. GG, or Grosses Gewächs, means “great growth” in German; it’s a term reserved for top-of-the-line dry Rieslings. The Appassionata GG is a dry, single-vineyard Riesling from the Medici Vineyard in the Chehalem Mountains, just a few miles from the winery. We farm this vineyard ourselves, using organic methods, to coax the very best from the special 40-year-old, ungrafted vines. Then we use the same gentle winemaking approach that Erni uses with his Dr. Loosen GGs, fermenting the wine in a 3,000-liter oak cask that we shipped from Germany and letting it sit on the full lees for at least a year before bottling. The wine continues to mature for another year in bottle before we release it. This extended maturation allows the wine to clarify naturally and find its own perfect balance.