Loop de Loop Chardonnay 'South' Pear Ridge Vineyard 2021

This fruit comes from the old Acadia Vineyard, about a mile from our own vineyard. We are on Underwood Mountain, an ancient shield volcano, at the westernmost edge of the Columbia Gorge AVA - the wettest and coldest part. At 15 yrs-old this site has been organically farmed since inception. It sits at 1300-1500 feet within our sub alpine climate. From this vineyard we are looking across to the peak of Mt Hood and down to the massive Columbia River. This 12-acre vineyard is planted within an 80-acre pear orchard that has blocks of grape varietals interplanted alongside blocks of different pear varietals. It is dry farmed and not tilled – it feels wild and of the natural: full of life. There are unruly shoots from vines intermingling with birds’ nests, wildflowers and wild carrot while the native and honey bees alike dance around. The volcanic soil here has been well cared for and this site consistently produces lovely site-specific wines.

In 2021 we explored the expression of chardonnay from 3 separate sites up here on Underwood. One was our own vineyard on the Southeastern side of our mountain “East”. “west”, the Wannamaker vineyard faces west to Southwest. And then there’s this wine – “South” faces due south with the Pear Ridge Vineyard in the center of the south face of our little mountain.  It perhaps didn’t make good business sense to bottle these three wines from similar elevation and soil types separately but we really wanted to see the expression of the vineyards. So, the bird’s nest we find in the heads of the vines (which are depicted here on the lables) have eggs in different progressions of cracking. Sort of a nod to the similar nature of these three wines, while each possessing a subtle difference.

This wine was made my hand with a lot of love. It was aged on the lees in neutral oak for 19 months prior to bottling, unfined and unfiltered, with the addition of less than 30 ppm SO2.