Troon Vineyard

The first vines went in at Troon in 1972. Jinx Troon had bought the 80 acres in 1963 and moved the family up from Pomona; Dick Troon, an engineer with the county road department, gave up the road department for the land. They looked at olives first and settled on grapes because the conditions suited them. For several years they sold the fruit to other wineries, until Dick converted the barn and started making his own.

Half a century later the estate is one of the most heavily certified farms in American wine, and the only one in Oregon that holds both Demeter Biodynamic and Regenerative Organic certification. That is not a marketing position so much as a farming one: the vineyard is planted to twenty different varieties native to the Rhône and to South and Southwest France, chosen because they belong in this ground.

The cellar follows the same logic. No additives, no acid or sugar adjustments, no enzymes and no sulfur at crush. Primary fermentation happens spontaneously on indigenous yeast and bacteria, in concrete eggs, amphorae, neutral oak and open-top vats, and it runs cool and slow. Troon was named American Winery of the Year, and it also runs its own podcast, which is a rarer thing among wineries than the certifications are.