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Tzum wines come from small, specific fields, situated between the rainforest and the desert, throughout the Gorge. These parcels embody diverse terrains, vantage points, and climates. Whether single variety or field blend, each planting captures the essence and identity of its environment.
Grapes: In 2016, the vines were grafted from Syrah to a field blend of all the grapes one would have encountered in Southwestern France in the late Middle Ages: many clones of heirloom Cabernet and Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec, Tannat, Abouriou, Fer, Ste. Macaire, Negrette etc.
Vineyard: Scorched Earth Vineyard, leased a 9.83-acre site farmed by Hiyu since 2016 in the desert east of Lyle, Washington State (30 miles east of Hiyu). The site is on the banks of the Columbia River at sea level and the vines are planted in black (basalt) sand. The Feis, a one-acre parcel, is closest to the river, where the soils are a bit deeper and have more organic matter than the pure sand or basalt cobbles found in other parts of the vineyard.
Making of: hand harvest, a full month on the skins. Aged in neutral oak barrels, unfined and unfiltered.Twenty-two miles from Mount Hood’s snowy peak, in an alpine river valley teeming with birds and oscillating light, lives a wild farm. Cows, chickens, and pigs graze among vines, and fungi and flowers proliferate as gardens merge with forest. Our wines are exciting for their wild exuberance when they are young, but they will only reveal their full potential to unite disparate time, place, and experience when stored properly for many years — a minimum of five years, but ideally 8 – 15 years following vintage — in a dark place between 53 – 60 degrees Fahrenheit and at 80 – 85% humidity.
2022: “The wine expresses itself as pure perfume, more like an enveloping cloud than a liquid. It was not what we expected when planting in such a warm place with this kind of grapes. It lacks the mundane aspects of fruit, acid, and mineral that draw most wines to earth. Instead one is swirling with more aerial versions of these things. It smells like a thicket, bramble or hedge; of leaves dense with aromatic oils, ripe raspberry, blackberry, and plum, the pollen-laden legs of bees and red dust that somehow contains the essence of summer,” he says.