Farming

This farm runs on good ecology

Idiot’s Grace was established in 2002. In the tradition of our region we farm orchard crops including cherries and pears, but it is wine grapes, and winemaking, that allows this project to endure. We understand good wine to be a product of good, thoughtful farming.

Our aim is to make original American wines. These wines should be wild-fermented, singular expressions of this place, offspring of the land and of our locally adapted know-how. Ideally, you should be able to identify in them something specific to our hillside in this river gorge: Columbian wines, wines from Mosier. This is an ongoing, experimental, and labor-intensive effort— how could it be otherwise?— which yields a small number of bottles every year. We are three decades in, and three generations of our family have given their time to Idiot’s Grace; we act knowing that this project will outlast those who first imagined it. We try to peer into the future as far and as often as we are able, preferring the hundred year view to the quarterly one.

Much ado is made of cellars, but the heart— and the bulk— of our work happens in the field, where we steer the agrarian ecosystem for biodiversity, resilience, and beauty. Our farming is organic, undogmatic, and responsive to the land and the people who work it. We are low-input as a matter of both ethics and economy. We try to be scientific in our management, but we take on faith the idea that anyone seeking to make uniquely expressive, original wines will need grapes grown in a complex and active community of living things. The farm is certified organic.

We farm wine grapes, cherries, and pears on a commercial scale, but we have planted continuously over the years, and today we grow a few hundred varieties of fruiting trees and vines. When the harvest inspires a good idea, the fruit makes it to the tasting room kitchen, and the menu.

The oldest cherry trees have been here for more than a hundred years, and though their wide spacing and low production makes farming them an anti-economical choice, they still produce good fruit, so they stay. Among and between the established blocks we interplant hedges and gardens of herbs, shrubs, and trees.

There is a huge catalog of words now in use to describe different kinds of farming, but in general the words are neither precise nor vital enough. The texture of living earth underfoot, the sound and sight of a biodiverse countryside, and certain seasonal smells are better than the explanations and certifications. We invite you to visit Idiot’s Grace, walk around, and get a sense for what we cannot describe.