Les Collines Vineyard is justly famed for its ability to produce vibrant but elegant Syrah. We hand-pick and then footstomp the Syrah, with clusters, stems and all dumped into open top bins. We squish up a layer, add a bucket or two of Viognier grapes from the rows next to ours (we have the owner's permission, we promise), then fill up the bin and continue stomping the grapes. Afterward we cover it up and wait for the native yeasts to start the process, punching down the grapes by hand twice a day. That can go on for up to two weeks as the fermentation takes longer this way and, we think, improves things. We press the grapes and drain the wine into 500 liter French oak barrels, about twice the normal barrel size. We're looking for oxygen just as much as we're looking for oak, so we like these bigger barrels, and they're traditional in the Northern Rhone where the grape originates.

In 2020, the fires along the West Coast added significantly to the normal tension of harvest. For us, the smoke only hit a small portion of our crop. I can never forget sorting our Syrah as the smoke rolled in.The skies were clear, bright and blue at 8am as we started; by noon, the sky turned orange overhead while we foot-stomped the grapes and then rolled them in the back room to let nature kick start fermentation. For the wines that slid by the smoke, 2020 was a really lovely vintage. We believe this is elegant, focused, savory and, frankly, exactly what we think Walla Walla Valley Syrah can be.