You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's. Hi, my name is Bill. I'm one of the wine buyers. My name is Lexi. I'm on socials. Hey, I'm Chris. I do wine-related things at Binny's, and we have a special guest today, winemaker and vineyard manager. And vineyard manager. For Cristom Wines in the Eola-Amity Hills in the broader Willamette Valley of Oregon. Welcome. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. Once again, you're happy to be here. You sound so natural. Still here. How are you? I'm doing very well. It's not every day that I get to come out into the market and see people enjoying our wines. I'm usually just toiling in the fields and in the cellar. Have you been to Chicago much? This is the first time I've been to Chicago as an adult. Oh, get out. It's way better as an adult because there's a lot of good food and a lot of good things to drink. Have you been eating anything right? Well, I went to Mr. Beef, a hot Italian. On Orleans. Yeah. I went to Lilac Tiger. Oh, that's supposed to be hot. Yeah. It was pretty hot. It was bumping. It was really loud. When I first walked in, I was like, oh, I'm too old for this. I'm like, oh, wait, come on. Yeah. The sign of a hallmark dining experience. These days, it might be. Economists tell you to avoid restaurants with pretty ladies in the window. They seat them to draw in other pretty people. Where are you eating? The Rue Lait district of Amsterdam? No, it's a surcharge for beautiful people in the windows of restaurants. Indeed. Cristom is one of Binny's favorite wineries from Oregon, and we are excited today to be able to try some wines. Awesome. Could you give maybe just a little bit of an overview of the vineyards? Certainly. Yeah. So the Cristom Estate is a total of 240 acres. Of that 240 acres, only 83 are planted to vines. The rest is open to pasture, which we use for our compost piles, for hay and straw, excuse me, that we use for compost piles, erosion control and animal feed. We also have a good amount of forested area. We have recovered oak savanna down around Louise as well. But the acreage, the 83 acres is planted to five estate vineyards. Can you imagine somebody in Napa Valley not putting grapes, but instead just having, that's our hay field. We've locally sourced hay for erosion control. Absolutely, man. Really cool. We are very fortunate. We have a beautiful property, and each one of our five estate vineyards really have a different presentation. Right? Down low, around the winery, we have Louise. It is the first vineyard that was planted out in 1993 by the Gary family. Going up above the forest, in the middle of the hillside, we have Marjorie. It was originally planted in 1982, fell victim to Phylloxera around 2000 or so, and then has since then been replanted vine by vine. Up top at elevation, we have Eileen. See the mnemonic device, how I remember things. Eileen is right in the throat of the Van Duzer corridor, so it gets blasted by the wind. We've got the largest array of clonal materials there of Pinot Noir. We have a little bit of Chardonnay there as well. Just south of there, we have Jessie, which is our steepest site at over 33 percent grade in places. So it's truly a labor of love to farm that site. What are you, in the Mosel? I mean, sometimes we need to rope up. I really feel like we should. Very, very steep, but a really elegant, beautiful wine, and it's just tons of fun to make that wine, but a pain in the ass to grow it. And then our guiding light, our north star, our founder, Paul Gehry, is the namesake for our last vineyard, the Paul Gehry Vineyard, which is just north of the other estate vineyards. It's not completely contiguous. It's about a quarter of a mile north there, and it is 109 acres is the property, and only 28 of which are planted. Is this mapped out on the back of the bottle? Yes. People should get a bottle and then play along. Yeah. How cool. Yeah. It's fun. It gives you a sense of where everything is, and also if you're looking at it, like you're looking up the hillside, so you can get the sense of elevation, how it plays to each one of the vineyards. It's a pretty special place. Yeah. The map on the back is oriented with west on the top and north to the right. So the importance of winds blowing in through the Van Duser wind gap into the Eola-Amity Hills, particularly some of your property is pretty important. Yeah. And I think that really contributes to what helps make all five of these distinct and different is their exposure to that wind. Up in Eileen, like it gets blasted with it, like the the grapes are are frequently shutting down early in the day because the wind is getting so high that they want to preserve water. So they close their stomata and peace out for the rest of the day until things cool off. When you come further down the hill to Louise, it can be almost 10 degrees warmer down there because it's protected from the winds. And so as you might imagine, those two wines present very distinctly different. Louise is much more flush across the palate, more textural, has a darker fruit profile. And I like to think of born from the sun, Eileen being born from the wind, sometimes blue fruited, more purple aromatics, lilac, lavender and born from the wind. So, why don't I throw it to you, and you can tell us what we're going to be trying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So first up, we have the Mount Jefferson Cuvée. Do we have 22 or 23? 2022. 2022. Man, oh man. The Eola-Amity Hills really hit the jackpot in 2022. I could even say like, it's just been an embarrassment of riches for the last four years for the Lamott Valley. The Eola-Amity Hills was really lucky in 2022. So, much of the valley fell victim to a frost in the spring of 22 and really damaged a lot of the crop. But at the Cristom Estate, I had one block, a little bit of pomade and Louise that got frosted, but I had secondary buds push and we had a magical vintage. It was pretty cool throughout the growing season. Obviously, we had the frost and come the end of August and we still had not fully colored up. And so, we were starting to butter nails, right? I was going to say, that's pretty late. Yeah, yeah. Once we start getting into September, that's when we start to see the rains rolling in. And, you know, I'd rather be lucky than smart. And that was certainly the case in 2022 because September was gorgeous. Rolling into October, we continued to have dry weather and we got to pick at our leisure and produce some really special wines. I knew there was going to be a happy ending there, but I was still kind of getting anxious. That's great to be on the winning end of an uneven, vintage drink. Yes, absolutely. So the Mount Jefferson Cuvée is usually people's introduction to the Cristom Red Wine Portfolio. It's a wine that's been around for a while. It used to be a Willamette Valley Wine. Starting in 2018, it converted to an Eola-Amity Hills designate. And we can continue that to this day. In years of late, we've been ratcheting up the estate proportions of juice going into it. And so this particular bottling is about 75% estate. So it gets a whole lot of wonderfully farmed grapes going into it. This is the starting point? This is the baseline. That's what I was going to say. This is very good. This is the baseline. I'm going to be gushing by the end of this. It really retains the hallmarks of our wine making style as well. Our founding wine maker, Steve Dorner, was a real pioneer of using whole cluster and fermentations in the Lamott Valley. And it was a godfather to many of those other producers who are looking to add whole cluster to their repertoire. And this wine is about 50% whole cluster. That's kind of like the average of where our wines generally land. This spends 11 months in oak. About 20% of that is new. Goes to bottle in August. But I really cannot convey how much good wine goes into this. It's really a special wine. Yeah. I mean, if we want to talk about Steve a little bit, he was kind of really important in California too. He came straight from Calero, one of the great foundational Pinot and Chardonnay producers in California. And yeah, he came there and then you followed him up and you've got a resume of your own that's blown my mind. Because I love the Litteri wines. You worked for Litteri in Sonoma. That's correct. Fantastic Chardon Pinot Noir there. You know what's funny? The proprietor of Litteri, the gentleman whom I call my mentor, Ted Lemon, he was actually an intern for Steve at Calera for a brief period of time. And famously had some burgundy chops too. Yeah, you know, a little bit of Merceau. It's cool. That's interesting you say that because I don't want to be a spoiler, but jumping ahead to the end, I noticed some Merceau-like qualities here. Yeah, yeah. The Chardonnay is a darling of mine and gets an unfair amount of attention. Yeah. I mean, it's really good and it reminded me straight up of Merceau. Very cool. As seen through the Oregon lens, of course. Awesome. The Mount Jefferson Cuvée, to give you an idea of how we get to what the blend is, right? I have some partners around the Eola-Amity Hills that I choose to work with, and those are people that I firmly believe in the farming that they're doing, their sustainability processes, and just being like-minded in what we're trying to pursue. Then the 75 percent that is a state comes from blind blending, right? And so, the way that we do our blending at Cristom is completely blind, with the exception of knowing what vineyard it's coming from. So, let's say Paul, for example. Paul, you know, last several years, I've gotten approximately 150 barrels of Paul Gary Pinot Noir each year, and we taste each one of those barrels individually, blind, removed from the cellar in the lab. As we're tasting it, we're giving it a numerical rating. Once we've tasted through everything, then we put some potential blends together, as what we might think the Vineyard Designate would blend end up being. We go through several rounds of that until we settle on what we think is the purest expression of that site and that vintage, right? And that blend, despite we have 150 barrels to work with, only ends up being 30 barrels. So, the remaining 120 or so barrels, we go through, we do some more QC, maybe weed out a couple of dogs, and then all that wine goes into Mount Jefferson. Yeah, that's a pretty severe selection for the vineyard, and I assume you're sorting grapes pretty severely, too, on the front end. Oh, absolutely. I mean, first and foremost is the farming. I wish we could talk about farming more than the wine making because it's all farmed organically and biodynamically non-certified, right? And so, that's not something you see on the bottle because we choose to be non-certified. I spend so much money on farming. The amount of money that we're charging for the Mount Jeff doesn't really make too much sense. You've got to start charging more for this. Yeah. Well, it's $39.99, an everyday price. It goes on sale pretty often at Binny's. Yeah. And just so everybody knows, so this is the wine, if you want to become familiar with Cristom, this is the place to start. Absolutely. This wine is at almost all of our stores, almost all the time, occasionally runs out. But for the most part, you can find this wine without too much trouble. Really solid representation of the house style and the Eola-Amity Hills for sure. A rich and elegant Pinot Noir. Indeed. Really stunning framing and the fruit is there, but it's not in any way overblown. It's secondary to the structure of the thing and the grace notes, and it's pretty good. That's him going. You know what I really like about your description there is you didn't point out the stems and the whole cluster. That's the real trick, that's the craft of being able to weave the whole cluster into the wine without it being like an obnoxious standout, right? And I really attribute that to our estate and to our growing conditions. And we have wonderful acidity, an abundance of fruit to work with. And so once we add that savory nature and the carbonic nature of the whole cluster, it really knits everything together. Yeah, Chris talks about this all the time. It becomes quite seamless. Yes, there is that savory side and the carbonic side, as you mentioned, that lifted red fruit, you know. It's, yeah, I do obsess on this a little bit. What is the condition of your stems when they go in? Are you looking for full lignification? Who wants to know about lignification? Oh, my gosh, here we go. Or not. So complete stem lignification is a myth. It's a myth. It's a myth. In Oregon, in some years, in 22, we got partial lignification. And you can watch the transition of these stems go from electric green to lighter green to yellow and then start to get woody. But full lignification, that's a pipe dream, right? Well, at least on the vine. On the vine, yeah. When it comes to, I think what your question is leading at is, how do we come to deciding how much hold cluster? Yeah. And so I think the most important part of that is empirical knowledge base, right? Knowing what these vineyards can hold, knowing what the resulting wine will present like, that's a good place to start, right? Second to that, I'm looking at the fruit condition, right? Looking at was there bird damage in that block? Was there any mildew there? Was there any botrytis? What's the rigidity of these clusters? Are they tight like little grenades? Are they loose and flaccid? How tightly are these berries going to hold on to the stem? That's a consideration. I'm also thinking about the chemistry, right? Leading up to harvest, we're obviously running a lot of chemistry on those samples. And so not only are we running Bricks, pH and TA, but we're running Malic acid. We're also running Potassiums. And when you add whole cluster to a fermentation, you're adding those stems, which have a lot of Potassium. And so that Potassium will bond with acids in the wine and precipitate out the acid and it'll buffer up your pH. And so I want to add as little Tartaric acid to balance out those stems as possible. And so I will adjust my whole cluster amount based on what the pH and the TA is looking like, as well as the Malic and the... So you do acidify sometimes? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There is acidification, but my Tartaric ads, I think of them as like sacrificial ads, right? When we dig out our fermenters, you can see some Tartaric acids on the side and stuff, but we're not doing large ads. We're like... It's very rare to do over a gram ad. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. And then I'm also thinking about the growing season. What we've seen leading up to harvest, what that has been like and how quickly the grapes have ripened, I find that the longer hang time that we have, we tend to get riper flavors in our stems. So I can lean in on that whole cluster a little bit more, whereas if it's a really hot vintage and things ripened up really quickly, then we're going to have to dial things back. Yeah, that's really interesting because when we were tasting earlier, I noted some of the herbaceous rotunda notes from stems, and particularly I think in the marjorie, there was a lot of strangely, it might be word association, but marjoram immediately popped into my mind. But I thought that was really interesting complexity to that wine. Absolutely. So, speaking of tasting, Greg is looking very thirsty. Yeah, I'm waiting for the next bottle. You already had them out, Jeff. Let's roll into Jessie next. So, Jessie is right here. So, you've got a bunch of different clones planted on the property, right? Oh, yeah. I would say the lion's share of the clonal material are Dijon clones, but we have a little bit of some esoteric Dijon clones as well. I've got some 113, which is something that you don't see planted all that often. I've got some 103 and Jessie as well as Paul. It's a really elegant clone, and I love how beautiful it can be, and it's a wonderful blending component when we're looking at stuff. Another one of my favorites is 667. We have small amounts of that in Jessie and Paul as well, and that is where I turn to what I'm looking for, that fruit concentration, that bombastic fruit note in it. You've got some heritage clones too, like Pomard, Maudensville. Absolutely. So to wrap up the Dijon's, we've got 114, 115, some 777 as well. And then I've got heritage clones such as a bit of Vainesville, some Pomard. Do you have any cholera? I have cholera. Yeah, I also have some Mount Eden, which I really love. The most expensive grapes that I farm on the vineyard are some Swann, because it's set so poorly. It's just these scraggly little clusters and they're really ugly, but we get them into a fermenter and we get them in the barrel and it is magical. Yeah, good old Joseph Swann. Some pretty great wines. Pioneer in Russian River Valley. Absolutely. Yeah, it was funny working at Litteri and then driving past Swann and thinking about the lineage of these clones that now have proliferated across the United States. So Jessie, as I mentioned, is a very steep site, right? We harvest half as much in Jessie in the same amount of time as we would in Louise, Marjorie, or Paul, right? It is just so hard to work there. I pay the crew more for weight coming in, and it still takes longer. That extra work really pays off, I feel, because the wine is such a crowd pleaser. Like it has this generosity of fruit to it. It also has this red floral character. It's dusty. The tannin profile is very silky and almost talc-y at some points. I really love how the wine knits together to be like this velvet sledgehammer of a wine. Yeah, because it is elegant, but there's power. Yeah. A lot of power. Absolutely. And definitely the red fruits, picking that up. So I'm assuming now, now that we're in the single vineyard sites, the production goes way down compared to with Jefferson. Yeah. I mean, we're talking like right around 700 cases or so, and Jefferson Cuvée is like 10,000 cases or so. It fluctuates obviously vintage to vintage, but much smaller quantity is made of this. All the vineyard designates are going to be 18 months in Barrel, right? And I see a little bit more new oak. Usually right around a third new oak, 33% is a good generalization to go with. There's all these tech sheets to break it down exactly. Also about 50% whole cluster. The vinification of these wines is very similar. So it's really the site that's coming through and really speaking for the wine. This is a delightful wine. Thank you. I mean, it's not hedonistic so much, but like the fruit is more present and bright and fresh. And it has this like orange brandy note on the back end, which I really like. Yeah. So it's like just a little bit of a little bit of something extra. Yeah. I always feel like Jessie is the first one to open up, right? She's first to show her cards. And so that's always why I like to start with Jessie, because it's a nice way to ease into things. The addition of all the whole cluster in our wines does add tannin to the wines as well. Steve has handed off the baton of a wine program that can not only be tasty in its youth, but also you can lay it down and have them age. How long you lay it down is solely up to the player, right? How age do you like your wines? What tertiary flavors do you enjoy? So people always ask me like, how long could I lay this down? I'm like, well, what kind of wines do you like? So I find that these are fun and great to drink in their youth, but you leave them down for five years, they really start to open up and come into their own. You leave it down for 10 years, then you're really getting into a serious depth. Wine, very layered. But I've had the good fortune of being able to taste like 30 year old Cristom wines, and that is really special. Obviously, the wine changes a lot and it becomes much more ephemeral and delicate. But I really enjoy that. One of the magic things about wine for me is how alive it is, right? And it's living. And so being able to witness a wine that has had 30 years in the bottle is really the witnessing of the alchemy and beauty of winemaking. I love it. Well said. Yeah. All right, what's next? Let's go to Louise. So Louise is the site right around the winery. It's the Pinot Noir planting start at right about 300 feet elevation, go up to about 400 feet elevation. This was the first vineyard that the Gary family planted out in 1993. So these vines are now, what are that, 32 years old now, 33 years old. They've got their roots deep down in the soil, right? We can't talk about Eola-Amity Hills and more importantly, Cristom without talking about basalt and the soils in which they're grown in. All across the Cristom estate, we've got these beautiful soils that range in depth to 60 inches, like Jori, to very shallow rocky soils like Ritner, Nakaiya and Whittle, which can be just several inches of soil before you get to broken down parent material. And so in the Louise Vineyard, we actually dip down all the way to 200 feet elevation is where the property starts. And that's also the border for the Eola-Amity Hills AVA. And down there, we actually dip our toes into some of the Mozilla flood silts. Yeah, but it's the Mozilla flood silts that we have are overlaid on top of the Columbia River basalt. So even at about 300 feet elevation, we have, you know, maybe a foot of those Mozilla flood silts, but then we go into the Columbia River basalt soils. And I really feel like our vines are old enough now that they're really in the basalt and conveying what those soils do really well. And that's like acid retention. It's fusive fruit. And, yeah, with the Louise Vineyard, it's going to present a bit darker, a bit more umami. I get a lot of Asian spice. I'm able to crank the whole cluster on this a little bit more. This, I think, is 58% whole cluster, and it holds it well because of the darkness of the fruit and the richness of the umami flavor. I agree. I get like Chinese five spice powder out of this. And even distinct within that blend, black pepper is in the nose to me. Just to put a finer point on it, basalts are, of course, volcanic soils. For non-geologists out there in the Jory series and all of these things, very important in the area. Greg, what kind of soil besides marine sedimentary and volcanic, do you think is prominent in the Willamette Valley? Is it less? It is. Okay. Great, Chris. Cool. It's a long-running joke. I'll have to do, listen to some back episodes again. I'll explain it to you later. Listeners are sick of it. This sure is bright and pointed, and it has a structure that lingers forever. Yeah, this one feels like an ager for sure. These wines, I have to say, are tasting really well today. Yeah, they're pretty open. But you can feel that the structure is there for long-term aging for sure. On the Christmas date, we have our own flock of sheep. We have a flock of 75 sheep that we run year-round on the property. We have grown that flock of sheep from a mere 16 ewes with the help of a few rams in several years. It really adds some color to the workplace, being able to do animal husbandry, viticulture, biodynamics, and winemaking in a single day. That's a lot of fun. And most recently, we added four Cooney Cooney pigs to our grazing program, as that not only are they fun size, they max out at about 150 pounds, but they are grazers and are not rooters like most pigs. So we are actually running them with our sheep right now. So speaking of sheep, what are some of the best foods for you that would go with these wines? Good transition. Good job. I like that one. Well, yes, absolutely lamb goes very well. But I feel that the the Cristom Wines tend to pair with a wider range of foods than a lot of some more delicate wines can be paired with. Like I have no problem throwing this on a menu with like steak with chimichurri. Right. It totally goes, totally plays. But I also the classical duck salmon, like we can carry that as well. I love mushroom dishes. I had that farro dish that we had yesterday at lunch. I thought it was delicious with all those. I think it was maitake and shiitake mushrooms in it. That was really good. I like eating Asian food with our wines as well. Doesn't have to be limited to like the Mediterranean stuff. Yeah, you'd definitely have the structure in some of these single vineyards to go with beef without a problem. Yeah, no problem. Well, and it did yesterday. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, really well. Totally agree with that mushroom call, and Oregon is a mushroom wonderland. Oh, yeah. This year, man, I'm a big cyclist. And this year, I could not stop finding chanterelles. Like all over. It started really early in the fall. And even as I was like doing my last rides before we got into harvest, like I was still finding chanterelles all over the place. Love chanterelles, that sweet apricot-aroma when you pick them. Yeah. Their inside joke with mushrooms over here, I mean. Well, I was just imagining a mushroom wonderland with like someone prancing through it. Chris, Chris, yeah, Chris prancing through it. Getting excited and tenting. Well, there are tons of great mushrooms there. Have you been to the Joel Palmer house? I have not, but I've heard great things. He's an all-star forager. The mushrooms are incredible. Awesome. All right, mushroom talk. All right. So we're moving forward, and we're going to go to Eileen next. I mean, I did say it was a wonderland. So Eileen, Eileen is the elevation, right? It's at the top of the hill for us. So it sits at a max of 750 feet elevation. It gets blasted by those Van Duzer corridor winds. So the reason we have those winds is because during the summer months, the Lammet Valley itself warms up and all that hot rising air creates a vacuum. And that vacuum wants to pull in cool air wherever it can. And so on the north end of the valley, it's pulling it in from the Columbia River Basin. But where we're at in Van Duzer AVA, as well as the Eola-Amity Hills AVA, we get blasted with the Van Duzer corridor winds. And so there's a path of least resistance running from Salem all the way out to Lincoln City on the coast, where it's this trough that allows wind, rain and weather in to our vineyards. And so Eileen sitting right up there on top gets the brunt of that. It's unfettered by anything in between us and the ocean. And we get all this turbulence going through the canopy. And if you can imagine that turbulence rattling the grapes against one another, it builds these thicker skins. It also shuts down those vines because they want to preserve water. And in doing so, it also preserves acidity. And so we have this acid tan and synergy in this wine that I really love. Yes. That is delightful. I keep saying the word delightful. What is it that I like about this? It's like this groove, this like big scoop of fruit and acidity at the same time. Like mouthwatering. Yeah. Very bright. Very fresh. I didn't even mean to do that. I mean, it brings a little bit of the salinity to it. We also have, you know, these purple floral characteristics, lavender and lilac. Yeah. It's a really lovely wine. At times, it can be a bit savage. I really like the carnal nature of our wines. Like they are just unbridled is how I like to think of them. I know that this is an audio medium, but Bill is making this face like... Yeah. Eileen is usually my favorite of the... And I don't know why, but this one's really, really good. I know why. It's because of the wind. I mean... It's like it's in the texture, in the interplay of the texture of the fruit. It's that, but also on the nose, there's almost like this minerality sort of... I don't know. It's just really, really good. Oh, thank you very much. These are all the same price too, right? Yes. $79.99. Sometimes they're on sale. They're very much in and out, though. I mean, there's not a lot of them, so... So, grab them when you can. If you see one, grab one. I guess that's the way to put it. Yeah. We have six minutes left. Oh. No, ten minutes left. And two more wines? Two more wines. Awesome. These are really good. The problem is I can talk forever, so you just got to cut me off whenever you need to. So... You're like a spreadsheet, man. You're so full. That's an info dope. That's really cool. Yeah. Our next wine is the Paul Gary Vineyard, named for the founder, the male patriarch, founder of Cristom. When Tom took over ownership in 2012, we had just purchased this property that's 109 acres, only 28 of which are planted to vines. The majority of that is Pinot Noir. We get a good amount of wonderful, high-quality wine from there. I love the Paul Gary Vineyard because of its likeness towards another one of my favorite grapes, and that's Nebbiolo, right? I find this wine has such concentration and such a linear form to it. When we're doing blendings, I can't help but think about Barolo and Barresco. How long has this been bottled? It's only been a few years, right? This was first bottled, I believe, in 2017. Yeah. Yeah. I also like to think that Steve got to figure out who the four matriarchs were, the other vineyard residents, but I get to figure out who Paul is. And now that it's really coming into its own, it's starting to define itself by having that acidity, the power, the grace, the floral, the fruit. Yeah. This is where it's at. This one gets my vote. It's like the last one except it's amped up more in the fruit and body. It's just like a souped up version of that. Elaine. Eileen. So close. Yeah. It's a good one. I really enjoy it. This one gets my vote. It's not a popularity contest. You keep saying that after every one. I purposely pour these wines in this order because Paul tends to be the most powerful and I don't want it to overshadow any of the others. But I think that's also part of the magic of the Cristama state that all of these wines are so different, right? Like I already mentioned that we vinify these very similarly. The oak that we choose to go into them, we choose blind. So it changes from a year to year basis. It's all about the expression of the year and the place. How do you choose oak blind? Just tasting. Oh, you mean the wine coming off of the oak? Yes. The blend of it. Okay. But also we make our oak purchasing blind as well. Well, not purchasing, but we rate the barrels blind based on their oak profile and based on those ratings, we'll make purchases the next year. Interesting. Yeah. We're trying to take as much of our ego out of it as possible. It's the worst part of a winemaker, it's his ego. Yeah, most of us. Yeah. The white. Yeah. Well, Steve Dorner certainly defined the Cristom winemaking style with red wines and definitely Pinot Noir. I feel as if it's my turn to define the white wine making and especially the Chardonnay. So I love Chardonnay. I love it when people tell me that they don't like Chardonnay. I love it when people tell me that they only drink Merceau because the Eola-Amity Hills can change those people's minds. I farm these grapes very purposely for high acid. I want to leave leaves in the fruit zone for as long as I can until I really got to start plucking them. If the mildew conditions dictate that I got to clear it out to get more spray penetration. And then I pick based on acid. Like sugar is a very, very far afterthought for me when I'm looking at timing picks. You know, there's a multiverse version of you that is in logistics and you made so much money. So where was that? Acidity, right? And so I'm looking at PHTA and malic and tartaric acids. And so I'm looking at those things. So we time our pick so we can go full malolactic fermentation on all of our chardonnay and be able to still have that vibrant acidity in the wine. This is full malolactic? This is full malolactic. It's so racy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's also creamy and broad. It's both. Yeah, yeah. So that's the goal in chardonnay wine making at Cristom is to have both generosity and tension. I feel like a broken record because I say that all the damn time, but it is like the best chardonnays I've ever had in my life are a dichotomy of these two things, the Venn diagram right in the middle, these two things. I want to capture these wines and showcase the fruit and the salinity of the Eola-Amity Hills. I make the wine pretty reductively, but I don't want the reduction to be an overbearing note in the wine. I want it to be a tertiary note, not a primary note. It's not upfront. Yeah, it's reduction is subtle here. Yeah. As opposed to a lot of wine. I mean, there's like a little bit of a woody, smoky whiff on the nose. But then in the body of the wine is just like defined by this racy acidity and balanced against the fruit. Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm going for. You know, the last couple of times I've gone out there, I've tried a ton of Chardonnays. And the winemakers and the people out there, they're very excited. And I get why. I mean, this is like so much better than it was 15 years ago, the Chardonnays. I mean, it's an amazing turnaround. This is fantastic. I hit it blind yesterday and I loved it, which says a lot. It's pretty exciting what's happening in Oregon with Chardonnay. I say that as much as the Willamette Valley is known for Pinot Noir, it will be known equally for Chardonnay. It is like the wave hasn't even peaked yet. Yeah. Yeah. The winemaking, the viticulture, all of it's feeding together. This is under $40. $38.99. It's wild. Yeah, that's a quality Chardonnay for that price. It's like impeccable. Thank you very much. And honestly, it's closer to Burgundy than California. I mean, I think. Yeah, I could see that. I could see that. As often as Oregon is compared to Burgundy, I want to shout from the rooftops that we are making Oregonian wine. Of course. Yeah, Bill, how dare you? It's cool. I'm flattered that people compare us to the birthplace of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. But I was born and raised in Oregon. I am making Oregon wines, and I want Oregon to have its fair shake at the stage for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay on the global stage. Well, you're making your mark. Thank you very much. At least she sure is missing out. Yeah. She tasted all these though early. Oh, she already got in there. It's like all the pleasure with half the work. No, this has been great. This was my first time tasting any of these wines, anyone's from there. I don't think it gets more magical than that. Well, thank you very much. Quite pleased. Pleasure to share these for your first time. Do you do the preparations with Barrel Mix? Despite not being certified, we make all of our preparations on site with either things that we forge locally or grow on the estate itself. I mean, like for 505, the oak bark preparation, I use skulls from sheep that we've had on the property. The cow manure, I go to a friend's house who has lactating cows in the farm. Farm? Yes. Just house? Yes. Farm house, one in the same. I forage the Valerian in the Cascade Mountains to make the prep. This is something that I don't need to understand how they work. I love the process of doing it. And I've witnessed how they've worked on the farm at Litteri and I'm witnessing how it is working with the farm at Cristom. And it's enriching our soil, it's enriching our lives in the practices and I really enjoy it. Why no certification? You're like, we do all the things that the cult does, but we're not in the cult. You're recording me right now. It's a little bit divisive, but I guess I'll try to be PC about it. The Demeter Certification, which is the number one certification board for biodynamics, has a relatively low bar, right? And I can understand why they want to be inclusive. They want to get biodynamics out there. They want people to recognize it as a progressive style of farming. And I appreciate that. Unfortunately, like we make all of our preps, we make our own compost, we have animals on the property and you can not do those things. You can buy your preps, buy your compost and still get certifications. So for me, it's like, well, the certification isn't worth the label that it's printed on, right? So I choose not to get the Demeter Certification. The Organic Certification is more of a hassle than anything else. And I'm also a person that believes that the cornerstone to any sustainability program is financial sustainability. And so I like to have a big tool chest, right? And by having certification, by having certification, like you lock a few of those drawers and you get burned if you use those. So I don't use them, but I like to know that they're there. Additionally, it's a lot of record-keeping and it's kind of a pain in the butt. So, yeah, that's kind of like the reasoning for why I choose not to. I didn't think it was kind of funny. You could go down to the tractor supply company and get a cowhorn. Oh, yeah, I got it at the Quickie Mart. That's the totally legit preparation market. Farm fleet and biodynamic property. You know, more than anything, two more reasons why we farm this way is like we feel like it makes wines more compelling because the biology that lives in the soil and in the vineyard comes in on the grapes and ends up in the fermenter. That's one. But another one, and I think the most important one is like, we are just here for a short time, right? And we're going to be leaving this land for another generation and a generation after that and after that. So I have two beautiful daughters and I would be doing them a disservice if I viewed our farm as an ATM. You know, I want to leave it better for them. Do you till? Yes, we do some tilling. The bane of farming there in the Eola-Amity Hills is voles. And so one of the best cultural practices you can do to knock them back is disturb the habitat. So I actually have one of my guys setting in excess of 30 mousetraps a day. It's just really hard to put a dent in their populations. We also, you know, the running of the sheep and pigs deter them as well. And then also we are currently in the process of putting up more raptor posts. There's a lot of great raptors. Raptors would be good. Maybe some feral cats. It's on the list. So on that note, I think we're about ready to wrap up. Yeah, yeah. Well, your passion is clear from talking to you and your passion for farming and also winemaking. And it is also clear from the wine. Oh, thank you very much. Yeah. It's my pleasure to share it. Thank you for giving us your time. This was a... Yeah, thanks very much. Excellent. Very grateful to share it with you. Line up on these wines. If you're as enthusiastic about this podcast as I am about the wines of Cristom, leave us a review. Thank you for listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Bill. I'm Lexi. I'm Chris. And I'm Daniel. Keep tasting.