Walulla vineyard is located right at the mouth of the Walulla gap on an impressive cliff. This vineyard hosts our Biodynamic Riesling, about 140 acres in total. At an elevation of about 1,200 feet the vineyard overlooks the Columbia River which runs 800 feet below one mile South East. The cliff is quite breathtaking and can be treacherous. Bill Den Hoed told me that the day before my visit someone went over the cliff with an ATV after losing control of the speedy machine. The ATV went down 800 feet and became one with the moon like landscape by the river shore. The driver saved her life by jumping before going over the cliff. Bill told me in a funny sort of way: “The chick’s all right but the four wheeler is toast Bill and Andy have so many good stories about the cliff and the humans that interact with it; I love every single one of them.
The vineyard is at the image of the landscape, breathtaking and somewhat insane. We’ve done some pretty advanced viticulture designs there. First the density is very high (about 1,600 vines/acre), second it is Biodynamicly farmed, third the trellis is very special (sort of a raised lira with collapsible trellis for machine harvesting) and lastly we are experimenting with buried drip irrigation. We also have 4 clones from Germany in this vineyard.
2007 will be our first commercial harvest out of Walulla. We are planning on making a single vineyard wine with those grapes and it will be probably fermented entirely with native yeast that comes on the grapes’ skins. Be ready for a very, very interesting and distinctive Riesling from Walulla in Spring 2008!
