2020 Division Chenin Blanc “Inondé”

We bid adieu to the old-vine Chenin at Willard Farms with one of the brightest spots of the 2020 vintage with a wine ready to test time.

We source our Chenin Blanc from Willard Farms, an old vine Chenin site in the Yakima Valley. These high-elevation, own-rooted Chenin vines are over 40 years old, all of which help insulate the vines from year-to-year climate variations. The soil is formed of volcanic Miocene uplift against basalt bedrock with the primary topsoil being made up of quartz and lime silica, overlaid with the mixed glacial sedimentary runoff of Missoula floods for a dynamic and unique terroir. We adore this particular site: there isn’t much old vine Chenin Blanc left and the site is farmed by an excellent, albeit quirky, farmer named Jim Willard who has a deep understanding of the soils and region.

2021 Division-Villages “Béton”

The heart of this wine will always hale from the experiences we felt from the wines of the Loire.

We love the Touraine rouge cuvée wines from the Loire that are typically served as bistro wines in Paris, and refer to them as inspiration for our “Béton” blend. The wines we enjoyed many years ago while training in France were the inspiration for the Béton cuvée. We attribute the success of our red blend, now in it’s ninth vintage, to the desire of so many to have an intriguing and food friendly, yet never overly heavy or boozy red wine as a mainstay at the dinner table. The heart of this wine will always hale from the experiences we felt from the wines of the Loire, but we look at the Pacific Northwest more broadly as our palate to draw inspiration and the grapes that make this wine so unique each vintage.

2021 Division-Villages “Les Petits Fers”

We love drinking and sharing this crushable, juicy carbonic Gamay.

The Gamay Noir grape, which hails from the Beaujolais region and also flourishes in the Loire Valley of France, has witnessed a rapid popularization in growth in the U.S. over recent years. A fact that that makes us very happy as Gamay is now such a large part of our production (second only to Pinot noir!).

The Eola-Amity Hills AVA in the Willamette Valley has anchored most of our Gamay vines since we made our first wine in 2011. The region features a mix of soils that are mostly volcanic clay with some marine sedimentary overlay (the Methven site). The vineyards on the top and western slopes of the Eola-Amity Hills and the component from Rebecca’s Vineyard in the Umpqua AVA share some commonalities that make them excellent for growing Gamay, including the effect of coastal weather – with vineyard facing mountain corridors that pull in cool coastal air in the evenings – dropping the warm daytime ripening temperatures and helping the vines retain acidity.