Winemaker

Beginning in 2011, and hopefully for many vintages to come, our wines are being made at J. Christopher's fabulous new winery (which is only a few hundred yards from our vineyard) under the steady hand of Jay Somers - a very talented winemaker. Jay has been a fruit client of Lia's Vineyard for a couple vintages and has planted a vineyard at his winery as well, so he has come to know a lot about our slope on the Chehalem Mountains. We are really pleased to have begun this relationship.

The talented Aron Hess (shown in the photo) is the winemaker for Longplay wines in vintages 2007 - 2010. For Aron, making wine with fruit from Lia's Vineyard was like rediscovering an old friend.

Winemaker Aron Hess

The fifty acres that comprise Lia's Vineyard previously were part of Rex Hill's Jacob-Hart Vineyard. Aron worked at Rex Hill beginning in 1998, starting out as enologist, then moving up to assistant winemaker and then winemaker for the 2002-2004 vintages. With the 2005 vintage, Aron left to become head winemaker at 12th and Maple Wine Co., a state-of-the-art custom crush facility in Dundee, where we were really pleased to make our wines.

Aron knows our site, and has the skills to highlight the essence of the vineyard in our wines. He also has the discipline and experience to wait patiently rather than interfere during the transformation from juice into wine.

We enjoy walking the vineyard with Aron and evaluating the fruit. Aron's uncanny ability to project how a finished wine will taste from a barrel sample continues to amaze us.

Analog Wine for a Digital World

We believe wine should be made in the vineyard, so we only use grapes that we grow ourselves. We don't add colorants, gum, or flavor enhancers (e.g., "bottled oak") to our wines. We avoid using commercial yeasts in our pinot noir. We barrel ferment our Chardonnay and we sometimes use commercial yeasts to ensure a good fermentation (we've learned this lesson).

Some years it is difficult to predict the weather. Weather is very important in this business. We pick for flavor - we don't take juice to the lab for testing until we've already picked. Sometimes the wine might benefit from the addition of water, sugar or acids. We feel water, sugar and acid additions are less interventionist than adjustments that alter the flavor elements and true character of the wine. But we'll only make adjustments when necessary. This means we're prepared to accept potential alcohol between 12.5 and 15.5 percent. We try to farm so that our wines won't need additions of acid, but we don't rule that out because it really can make all the difference between a wine that is great and a wine that is unstable or "bleh." We really aren't so dogmatic that we'll go producing wines that won't sell - it's hard enough selling sound wines that taste great. We did need small additions of acid (citric and tartaric) to our 2008 Chardonnay and 2009 wines, and we added a little bit of sugar to a fwe lots in 2010 and 2011. We dryfarm our vineyard, but so far we haven't needed to add water to any of our wines.

We do add sulfites to stabilize the wines; this is especially important when taking such a hands-off approach in the cellar. When we make sulfite additions it is always sparingly.