Hood River, Oregon
Nate and China started Hiyu Wine Farm after buying a property, Pheasant Valley Winery near Hood River east of Portland and south of the Columbia river. There was a small vineyard surface in the estate and they expanded it later, replanting parcels on the slope. They now
manage a whole and living farm complete with,
in addition to vineyards, all kind of vegetables, hens, pigs, ducks and cows (I probably forget a few of them). Here is another living farm making real wines.
The name of this small estate comes from the indigenous Chinook tribe and means big party or abundance. And abundance there is, in this wine farm, beginning with the number of varieties Nate works with, about 80 of them according to Nate, often complanted and grafted on other varieties (most unrooted), Nate Ready is speaking with excitement about all those different varieties, some of them we French hardly recognize the name of, especially when he lists them quickly one after the other... Speaking of the cuvées made from all these grapes Nate and China are making about 30 of them right now and quietly head in the future to 50, from a total surface of 40 acres (16 hectares) including the 14 acres (6 hectares) of the estate vineyard, that's lots of different wines, most being complex blends, as Nate Ready is one of the rare growers and winemakers to reinvent the grape diversity of viticulture (and winemaking) like it was commonly found in Europe a few centuries ago, before wine became trendy.
Nate and China built recently a tasting room at the winery but when we first arrived there we didn't see it and parked near this white building instead which is a former dairy farm and is
part of the property, there was this beautiful Smoke Bush tree (impressive, never seen anything like that) and a tractor with a vineyard behind the fence and I knew this was the place I was looking for. We were driving from Hood River after a night in a campground along the Columbia River, Hood River is a small historic town, wealthy with the visitors from Portland who come here for the outdoor activities. We didn't see any vineyards in the area on the way but there are indeed a few in this area of Oregon 60 miles east of Portland. Shortly after passing this strangely-shaped pile of burning wood (pic on right) we found the small road going to the wine farm, winding through a gentle landscape of prairies and woods.
China Tresemer toured us around the vegetable garden first, a wonderful, if messy looking like all living gardens, collection of small fields planted in a permaculture way with all kind of vegetables. China grew up in Vermont in a biodynamic farm and her parents were Steiner followers (like I am), so all the vegetables here express the health and vigor of her farming. Since they settled here China has
developped the garden, especially that they use the products for the dinners they have every week here in the tasting house with guests, and she has been focusing on it, Nate himself being focused on the vineyard and its dozens of varieties. They also get vegetables from other people around and here she tries to grow unusual things with interesting flavors which they can use in many different ways, like for example she points skirret which is a perennial and which they have all year without having to do anything, plus the bees like it vey much. There's salsify, artichoke, asparagus also, she shows them next.
There's a grassy square on the side where China says they'll plant other things, like Korean bush cherries, jujube and other perennial things. We pass a few tomato, zucchini rows
I love these real vegetable gardens, they look so messy but that's about the same for a real vineyard where the health and balance of vines count more than the general appearance; a conventional garderner will lament about the unordered parcels like our herbicide-loving growers but the fruit and vegetable grown here say it all by themselves. Here China explains that she uses cardboard on the ground to limit the growth of weeds, here she points to two vegetables
she grows, lovage and something else
I didn't understand the name of. The climate is mild in this region of Hood River, they can grow things year around, it's probably very similar to the south of France, they just have to cover some of the vegetables like salads in a greenhouse They don't sell vegetables yet, like salads.
Deeper in the vegetable garden, China points something named sea buckthorn or sea berries, then beans that are climbing or sticks, there are also leeks that they let go to the flower, both for the seeds and because the bees love them. Further there are cardoons of which they use the stalks in the fall and early spring. They also like to eat artichokes when they are very small. Also corn, half being black pop corn with nice flavors. Chick peas also which taste good. Using the greenhouse they can farm all winter, there's another layer of protection they can add to do that even on cold winters, Eliot Coleman the well-known organic farmer in Maine opened the way for winter gardening. They usually get two snows over here and it can be cold.
They have 5 pigs in the farm, we go watch them happily resting or bathing in the mud, and at times they have as many as 10, they are from the American Guinea Hog breed and in the winter time they stay in the vineyard, under the vines, they're very gentle, eating the grass and clover there, this breed can almost live on grass, looking for bugs in the ground, possibly rodents. In summer they really need the shade because they're black and get hot easily with the sun. They have lots of piglets too (which they eat sometimes if I understand), as a mother pig can make 16 piglets a year.
They eat them of course also, it's the pork they produce here. This breed matures slowly compared to commercial types of pigs, it takes longer to reach the fully matured stage but then they really taste better. They feed them with different things, like now with sprouted barley, also milk (cow milk), later they eat for example D'Anjou pears from the orchard. I remember Oregon laws are more favorable for small farmers who raise animals and want to sell the meat directly to consumers, China says they still have to go through an USDA certified facility for the slaughtering (for chicken they can do it themselves).
For the last two years they have a Jersey cow (now with two calves) and also here you can see China's skills, she is milking it, that's a real farm and I'm amazed China can handle all of this...They use the milk (5 gallons a day !), making cream and butter, all used in their kitchen; they also make a farmer's cheese with the milk, a simple cheese, and also ice cream !. The place here was a dairy farm in the past by the way. They sometimes kill a cow (or a calf, I don't remember) but they haven't done it for a long time. They experimented with long aging of the meat at a cool temperature like 50 F (10 C) in a deshumidifier type of fridge, coated in kidney fat, and it is amazing, the meat becomes very flavorful, you can keep it 10 months that way, at the end it is really very flavorful.
They have 6 goats as well, right now they don't use the milk because the main provider just had a baby and the others are not worth milking . Thanks to Deborah my friend from Portland who joined us for this visit and sent me this picture she shot the following day, when had already left.
Nate and China chose this region of Hood River which they liked better than the Willamete Valley, when they were looking for a place to settle. It all started in 2010 when they found this property which had a 3-acre vineyard surface then, to which they added surface along it a few years later in 2015 with more vineyard surface and some surface to make a vegetable garden. The initial vineyard which was 10 years old and organic was planted with Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and a little bit of Syrah. They began to make wine right away with this vineyard, releasing it later and since then they overgrafted many varieties over the existing vines, some of them being unrooted.
Listening to Nate tell about his choice of varieties is something unique, this man literally juggles with varieties, planting so many of them side by side, either by wine region (Spain, Portrugal for example) or by ripening capability, he's really experimenting with very complex blends and if I took note somewhere below the names of a few of the varieties he works with, i missed many of them, beginning with the reason I was not familiar with the varieties and didn't find how to spell them correctly, and i found others on an article related to their winery. Nate knows the organoleptic properties of all these different grapes and what they can bring combined to a few others, that's pretty weird, i don't know if there are many growers/winemakers working on so many grape types in this country.
Nate planted here many varieties, many different clones also sometimes, you find on these slopes Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay, Riesling , Furmint, Hárslevelű, Chenin, Peloursin, Mondeuse, Marzemino, Teroldego, Lagrein, Roussanne, Charbono, Viognier, Arvine, Limberger, Schiopettino, Vugava, Corvina, Kadarka, Gamay, Babić, Zweigelt, Valdiguié, Pignolo, St. Laurent, Zinfandel, Malbec, Merlot, Tannat, Abouriou, Nebbiolo, Cornalin, Mayolet, Tempranillo, Turiga Nacional, Prieto Picudo, Trousseau, Albariño, Tinta Barroca, Graciano, Grenache Gris, Grenache Blanc, Grenache Noir, Juan García...
These varieties are all interplanted (complanted, in the old way) and they pick them together (by ripening or regional groups I suppose). And even more crazy, on the same vine you may have a couple of varieties because they overgrafted varieties on existing vines (which were ungrafted in the first place, on their own roots), which means that by accident or purpose the lower grapes may be from a different variety than the upper ones, I find this awesome, it's really freewheeling viticulture like what you certainly could find in the Old World a couple centuries ago, when vignerons weren't as obssessed with knowing which-was-which when they were making wine. For example here the rootstock is Pinot Noir and it was subsequently overgrafted with Nebbiolo or another variety. Deborah who joined us for this visit tips us about a 4th-generation grower with similar prowess regarding varieties, this is Darek Trowbridge of Old World Winery in the Russian River valley.
Nate farms organic and he uses a type of sprayer that reduces the amounts by 85 % compared to a regular spraying machine, it just throws a thin cloud on the leaves, meaning that it needs much less sulfur to be sprayed on the vines and on the ground for example. And he also favors herb tea sprays, which he does also with this light quad because it's so light, it doesn't compact the soil. There's a name of a plant for the tea concoction which I didn't understand, the one I understood was giant knotweed, this is an invasive weed, easy to find and when sprayed as tea it increases the immune response of the plant; they use also horsetail.
When you walk along the vineyard with Nate you travel through the world's wine regions, there's the Douro, Eastern Europe, or some crossopver region between Austria,
Hungary and Croatia, I'm amazed at the easiness he handles these varieties, playing with them like a painter with colors. I guess in Europe we're often kind of prisonners of our own geographical boundaries and historical varieties while here in America, helped also by the particular climate near Hood River, he can explore and have all these varieties together. I ask where he finds all these varieties, he says mostly from UC Davis, you can just buy the wood, they send it to you and all you have is overgraft it somewhere [I wished that were as easy in France...]
Speaking of the vineyard management, they don't till and they don't mow the grass and weeds, they have a tractor but they don't use it very much, the quad is enough for the spray. The quad also brings less compaction because it weighs only 2000 pounds (around one metric ton), the tractor being much heavier, just a normal sprayer typically attached at the back of a tractor, with the 100-Gallon water tank, weighs around 10 000 pounds.
They have a small pond along trees on the property, Nate explains the mode used by farms to irrigate, they often divert spring water (there's one on the property) to fill a pond and use the water to irrigate if they want to (Nate and Chine dryfarm the vineyards). The small ponds here lies on a different soil than the vineyards, there's more clay and they don't need a liner in the bottom. They use the water I guess for the vegetable garden and there are ducks and gooses if i remember enjoying the pond.
This is the first room inside the facility, quite a big room with the fermenters and a few barrels (that's where the hydraulic presses were stored also if i remember). They ferment the reds at ambient temperature, no temperature control in this first room in open-top wooden fermenters like the ones you see here, the whites being fermented in barrels of different sizes, all fermentations are done with wild yeast of course, no additives used. It unfolds smoothly for the reds in gerneral, and for the whites it may take longer sometimes, with slower fermentation in the winter time. The wooden fermenters are made in Austria by Pauscha.
Here we are in the chai, or rather crush pad as it's called here, a roomy vatroom with fermenters and barrels, there's an hydraulic press with which they work most of the whites, this is a press they can pull the bottom of, they'd tread the grapes by foot and then load them in the press, and the juice would flow to the lower cellar by gravity. They'd press the red grapes with another, smaller ratchet [basket] press, because it's small volumes each time and it's very rare they have enough pomace to fill the bigger one. They got the hydraulic presses from Mondavi in California and Southern Oregon, they decided they didn't need them and sold them, a friend bought two and they bought two themselves.
We walk in another room after a sliding door, the cellar proper, this is really cooler indeed, even cold. Lots of aged vessels of different sizes. They don't have a bottling line with pump and they don't use a mobile truck unit, they do it all by gravity, they don't want a pump to be involved in this stage. They use a 6-spout bottle filler, meaning it's much slower than a mobile unit. I love when winemakers choose this low-tech bottling mode, i think that coupled with a no-filtration and low-or-no-sulfites vinification, it makes a big difference in the wine, I'm pretty convinced many otherwise-respectful vinifications get spoiled by this violent ending.
Nate offers us to taste a couple of wines from the barrel, first.
__ Cider, made from crab apple, they partner with a farm on the base of the mountain nearby and make cider from their apples. This is not a trial, they make cider on a yearly basis, they age it in barrel for a year, then they add fermenting juice from the next vintage, after which they bottle it. They make something like 3000 bottles yearly. The cider is still turbid, like fermenting, not really bubbly but that'll come I guess when they add the fermenting juice and bottle it.
__ White Pinot Noir, a direct press for Pinot noir intended for a 1500-liter volume of sparkling wine (all Pinot), making the bubbles using the juice of another year, will be a pet-nat (no addes sugar, no added yeast), then. Here the sample comes from a a 600-liter barrel, the grapes come from the Atavus vineyard. This was pressed in the basket press. Very rich and fruity feel in the mouth, Nate thinks it's dry but they don't test, there might be a little but the wine is clear and obviously settled on. Nice wine already at this stage.
__ White blend called Colomba, a 2017, this is a field blend, all the white varieties from Spain and Portugal here are planted together, Zarello, Arinto, Albariño, Verdelho. Very nice, very aromatic wine (pictured here), with a wild color even though you don't see too much here, it's the reflections, green and gold at the same time and the light turbidness, adds beautifully to the flavors when you experience it. Nate says that the ripeness of the grapes is diverse, from green to gold. Also long length in the mouth, very nice, onctuous wine. There's Trousseau Gris in there also, Nate says. Still fermenting a bit, Nate says. No sulfites added at this stage, there will be 5 ppm at bottling, that's all. Great job.
__ Atavus, from a barrel. This is another, weird-color wine : co-fermented Gewürztraminer and Pinot Noir, picked together (5 % or 10 % of Pinot Noir) with skin contact, and in here you have several vintages together of this blend, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, this is a Solera wine, they bottle now and then (once a year) a few bottles and keep the rest for the Solera, adding wine from the next vintage. They just bottled 500 liters, replacing the volume with some of the 2017. The turbidity comes from the fact they just added the 2017, which was still fermenting a little bit, and they racked the 2017 lees into it also, which I guess feeds the Solera with new energy and yeast. The wine stays there, no stirring, no move apart from the adding of another vintage every year. Very vivid wine, very different from the previous wine, really terrific, delicious.
__ First red, a 2017, from a barrel : Pinot Noir (70 %) & Pinot Gris (30 %), from the top of the vineyard, whole clustered grapes vinified in open-top wooden fermenter, tread by foot for about 20 days, then pressed and put into barrels. Very delicate nose. Young but nice tannins, very enjoyable drink and chew already. 12,5 % alcohol, probably, Nate says.
__ Other red blend, from a barrel too, this one is made from 30 different clones of Pinot Noir (mostly from California UC Davis and Eyrie, Beaux-Frères material), blended with Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Aligoté and Pinot Meunier (10 % for the whites, the rest red). Picked later, spent 30 days for the maceration. Feels more sweet, Nate says this wine is probably more like a little over 13 % alcohol.
__ Other red, a 2016, with such a lovely color, this is roughly 80 % Pinot Gris & 20 % Pinot Noir 2016, barrel sample. Love the color, hints at something beautiful. Elevage for the wines can be one year, two or threee, it depends. He made just 240 liters (one single barrel) of this, could be bottled separately or be blended with other wines. Very nice wine indeed, very delicate, awesome ! I'd say he should bottle this as such, and people will ask for this cuvée to be repeated in the following vintages...
__ Other red from the barrel (rather a barrel-shaped foudre, Austrian made by Pauscha, 1300 liters, plus a 600-liter Stockinger), a 2015, a much darker wine, called Carina (not sure of the spelling), it's 30 % Pinot Gris (the rest Pinot Noir I guess), it spent 90 days on the skins, whole-clustered and will stay in barrel for another year. The Pauscha vessel is lighter in terms of wood imprint because of a lighter toasting. The wine has a fruity character here, with more powerful tannins through the long maceration. I feel more extraction here. 2015 was a hot vintage in the region. They picked later first, and also through the long maceration and later pressing it helped lower the roughness of the tannins, but they need then a longer time in the barrel to finish the smoothening process. For the picking dates he likes to taste the grapes but also the juice afterthen, they don't do a big extraction in the sen,se that they don't do punchdowns, they don't extract from the seeds (moderate pressing), they always combine the press and the free run, the press still being very important because that's where the essential oils of the skins reside, but the basket press is gentle. My judgement through the 2dd sip is more positive (had to adapt from the previous wine which was so different), I don't focus on extraction now, very good balance with acidity and this lovely tannic grip on the sides of the mouth.
__ Another red from the barrel, a 2017 field blend (meaning picked together from a complanted parcel), Syrah, Peloursin, Mondeuse, Marzemino, Teroldego, Lagrein, Charbono, Roussanne and Viognier, amazing ! He got all the woods from Davis again, UC Davis is doing a great job here for the demanding growers...Mmmmm, smells nice, these wide blends make for complex wines indeed.. .The color is still pretty dark (see above) with these whites in the blend. Nate says that the fact that the vines are interplanted and the grapes cofermented is important too for the flavors, and the number of white grapes. They made this blend for the first time and will do it again, Nate says. Superb tannins indeed, he says that Teroldego has a very interesting tannin and bitterness but more than it, it's the fact that so many varieties are there together.
What is interesting is that they make this wine out of a 2,5-acre section that was 100 % Pinot Noir until they overgrafted part of the vines with other, some of them white, varieties. Also, before the overgrafting they were making 110 cases of wine with it, and from the 0,5 acre that was overgrafted they subsequently made almost 100 cases just because these varieties were more generous and the balance with the canopy is actually better now (they don't do green harvest). All these vines in this section including the original Pinot Noir are unrooted (they're all Pinot Noir roots).
Not on the market but will come soon, watch for it? I don't know about the name of this future cuvée.
We then moved to the tasting room for another line of wines, this time from bottles (here on the sides you can see how the labels look like).
__ Falcon Box 2016, another wide ranging blend of whites and reds, there are here Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, 25 different clones of Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Melon de Bourgogne, Aligoté, all foot tread in the basket (of the basket press I guess) for half of the juice, then pressed from
between 8 to 12 hours, the juice falling
directly into two 600-liter Stockinger demi-muids where it all stays for a year, no moving, no racking, no battonnage, and at the end bottled by gravity with 5 ppm of SO2. That's what I'd call simple, ancestral vinification, nothing added, a sheer simplicity. Fermentation went smoothly, Nate says, not super stretched, and this was the 1st vintage for this blend. Now on every year they make a wine from that block, this could be a white, a red or a rosé, because the way they make it, although it's intended to be a white wine, it can easily turn ouit like a rosé, or even a red 'there are quite a bot of red grapes in the blend). I love this potential surprise every vintage, the multi-faceted wine and blend of which the color can't be known in advance...
The serving temperature is not cold but the wine is delicious, with a marked acidity, brought maybe by the Aligoté.13 % on the label but 12,8 in real and feels lower.
__ Albarino “Spring Ephemeral” 2017, a single varietal, Columbia Gorge, it's the Smockshop Band series of Hiyu Wine Farm, some sort of n from the négoce wine made with partnered growers of the Columbia Gorge region to express its different terroirs, but some of these vineyards are leased and they work them like it was theirs. The grapes are always organic or biodynamic grown. This Albarino they don't farm it themselves, it comes from the Washington side of the Gorge, from the coldes site of the river gorge. The Spring Ephemeral serie is for wines that stay 6 to 8 months in barrels only and are bottled early.
Very fresh feel on the nose. Fresh in the mouth too with a good level of energy.
__ Grenache 2017, Spring Ephemeral, Smockshop Band (bottled early), 100 % Grenache, grown right on the banks of the Columbia river where the area turns to a desert of sand dunes. Unrooted vines which they farm themselves, they do dry farming, it's a 20-year lease. The block was originally planted with Grenache, Syrah and Zinfandel and they since have overgrafted over part of it some varieties from Central Italy and other places. Some of the Grenache from this plot will be released later with a lonbger élevage. Vinified whole clustered, with the stems.
Super nice wine, delicious, with a nice bitterness. Goes very well with food also I guess, Deborah says black olives for example.
__ Arco Iris 2016, blend of Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris (30 %), all whole-custered grapes, one month maceration on the skins, gentle foot tread once a day, just sitting on the edge to push the cap down and keep it wet (and once the fermentation starts fully, they stop), 16 months in barrel. Deborah says these two wines were included in a trade tasting she took part to, the Slow Wine Tasting which was for the upcoming Oregon edition of Slow Wine Guide. Very intense wine, delicious, good balance with the power, the tannin and the acidity, love it !
__ Fionn 2016, Smockshop Band, Columbia Valley red wine. 100 % Zinfandel, not printed on the label, Nate says he doesn't like to print the variety, plus it's pretty hard to guess it's a Zin and he likes to leave the mystery. The son of the growers here for this vineyard (which is named Scorched Earth) works with them in the vineyard and in the cellar, he loves to learn, he's now going to the law school but he's also a brewer and some day he may decide to invest himself in wine. The wood there are cuttings from a vineyard originally planted by early settlers along the Oregon trail on a major stopping point in the 1800s' (almost the capital back then). Very nice wine with a very long length. Nate says he personnally loves Zinfandel and always has, particularly from cooler sites like the Russian River
China is the artist behind all these labels, her atelier is upstairs in the former dairy farm, a beautiful place with view on the slope and the vineyards. It's amazing how she can do all these trhings...
Another thing where Hiyu stands out is the fact that they hold dinners every week (and lunch too) using all the great ingredients grown on the farm or sourced from similar-minded farms of the region, and this of course served with the Hiyu wines. A chef from Portland does the kitchen work and China and Nate take part too, and this is no amateur work as they're experienced restaurateurs (The French Laundry, La Cuisine Sans Peur). More info and pictures in this article by Portland-based writer Michael Alberty.
Hiyu Wines can be found in California, New York, Texas, Colorado, Minnesota. In Paris : Le Garde Vins 75016
Lovely account of our visit, with all the rich detail you do so well! Nate & Chins are creating such a beautiful wine-farm organism.
--Deborah
Posted by: Deborah Heath | August 20, 2018 at 05:27 AM