During our professional careers, Donna and I were involved in developing and managing products, services and businesses for some of the premier financial services companies in the world. From them we learned what it takes to develop great products. We believe the fundamentals of crafting the very finest wine starts with the vineyard and the fruit it produces. We have spent the past fourteen months walking thousands of acres of vineyards and tasting hundreds of wines from those vineyards to find the sites we believe will produce the elegant, sensuous and balanced wines we want to create.

We chose Oregon and the AVA of the Dundee Hills in the Willamette Valley to create our wine. The Willamette Valley is named for the river that runs through the valley from Portland to Eugene. The Valley is protected from the rains of the Pacific Ocean by the Coast Range to the west and the Cascades to the east. This has produced an ideal climate for growing Pinot Noir—a climate similar to that of Burgundy in terms of rainfall, sunlight hours and other general climate factors. Specifically, our research led us to the Dundee Hills of Oregon, known for its red volcanic, clay loam Jory soils. Our 2006 vintage will be sourced exclusively from Dundee Hills fruit.