OWR: How would you characterize your winemaking style? How do you approach a vintage, and what are you looking for as you make your winemaking decisions?

TERRY: Our style is more delicate and less assertive than other people's. Frankly, that's because of the kind of wine we like to drink, and because I believe that with our particular vineyards, we're going to see the vine and terroir more clearly if we use a gentle approach.

I look for a kind of transparency with what we do in the winery so that the character of the site-the terroir-will show through, rather than taking what's there and punching it a little further down the road. What we want is to extract not just the character of Pinot Noir, but the character of Bethel Heights.

OWR: How does a focus on terroir affect your approach to making wine?

TERRY: Our approach to winemaking is to be as good a custodian of what nature gives us as we can be. We're focused on extracting character in the vineyard rather than the winery. We certainly know how to modulate the level of extraction in the winery using the various winemaking techniques that are available to us, but I really do believe that the best place to do that is in the vineyard. The winery, then, becomes the place where you follow through with what you've done in the vineyard.

In the cellar we are as gentle as we possibly can be. We do some whole clusters, but we are primarily destemming-not crushing-leaving as many whole berries as possible. We use small fermenters, and after fermentation we'll keep the wine on the skins for up to two weeks, and then in French oak for ten to eighteen months. We bucket rather than pump. We've tried to mechanize as much as possible to save people's backs, but when we can't use a forklift to do something we'll do it with our hands.

We've developed a protocol with Pinot Noir where we try to do as many lots as possible with spontaneous fermentation. I like those fermentations much better than in the early days when I put a bunch of purchased yeast in and it just exploded in front of me!

These spontaneous fermentations also take on the character of the vintage. They are really part of the site's total expression, and I believe they've made a big positive impact on the complexity of the wines.

OWR: What is your approach to using oak in your Pinot Noirs?

TERRY: If you are into Pinot Noir for terroir, you have to have a light hand with oak. Otherwise you risk losing the subtle differences that you get from one piece of ground to another. It might be a good wine, even a greatly appreciated wine, but you've lost the terroir.

I'm not an anti-oak person, but I do believe that once the oak is assertive out of the background-if it becomes the figure on the ground of the gestalt of the wine, then you've got something that's an overstatement.

I've ranted and raved in the history of our winery that people can sometimes confuse the nature of Pinot Noir for the character of oak. I've actually seen that happen because oak has a very appealing and seductive character-especially with those beautiful expensive French barrels all of us have fallen in love with.

I think it is a real temptation-especially in certain kinds of vintages where maybe the fruit is of a lighter character-to put a little more wood into the wine to give people a little more bang for their buck. There are some places, perhaps Domaine de la Romanée-Conti is an example, where the power of the terroir is able to stand up to 100 percent new wood-but that's very unusual.

We do use new oak. There's a whole gamut of spices and sweetness that comes from new wood for Pinot Noir. In our cellars its around 30 percent, depending on what we see in the wines.

OWR: You said earlier that you view yourself as a custodian of what nature provides you. Isn't there still a role you can play in the vineyard to maximize what the soil can produce?

TERRY: We really believe in the vineyard being the primary tool we have to work with. We've done very little to tinker with what the vineyard actually is. We know we've got to get the crop exposed to as much of what nature can feed it as possible. As we've developed our wine style and how we handle our harvest, we've seen this approach work well, though we have also learned some ways we can be a better custodian.

As the vines get older they tell us more about what they need. For instance, we've begun to fertilize our vineyard, but only very carefully. Also, we've begun with new planting to move the vines closer together, trying to find for our site what might be the optimal density of planting.

Right now we're planting 2,000 vines per acre, as opposed to 540.

OWR: That's a big difference. What's the impact on the wine?

TERRY: I guess we don't know that yet. But the impact on the plant is that we take off less fruit per plant. We work on a general philosophy of not looking at just pounds of fruit per plant, but the amount of fruit we get per square foot of exposed canopy.

When you start with a new piece of ground that hasn't been planted before, you don't know how much vigor you're going to get. It's nice to have flexibility as the vineyard develops to better match the ground and canopy together. So on the new planting that Ted has put in, he has spaced the vines fairly close together in the rows, but with enough space between the vines so that he can do some division of canopy if he finds there's a problem.

I want our wines to have the balance that this ground can give them-which won't necessarily be the balance that other places will give them. We can achieve this balance by changing the weight and expression by doing various things in the vineyard, like managing crop load. The fullest and deepest expression of these wines is something that we work at to make them in balance with where they're grown.

OWR: Speaking of "expression", since terroir is very important to you. How did you come to your view of terroir?

TERRY: When we first started to harvest grapes, we made only one wine. As the crop developed we began to see clonal differences in tastes emerging. The Wädenswil clone that we have here is very different in the fermenter and afterwards than the Pommard clone. For a long time we had equal amounts and we were blending them into one wine.

By the time we reached full production from the vineyard, we had planting sections, especially of our Pommard, that were large enough to ferment separately. I would say that for the first two or three years we didn't see big differences in these separate lots. But then around 1989, 1990, and 1991, we began to see significant taste differences that weren't just clonal differences, particularly between what we called the Flat Block and the Southeast Block.

These two blocks are 20 feet apart, they were planted at exactly the same time, with the same clone and the same spacing. It was quite shocking-exciting-to see the differences develop in the wines produced from each block.

We knew enough about Burgundy to understand that making wine to maximize these expressions of the vineyard was an entirely different way of viewing wine-and a way that is more fitting to my temperament.

I'm not a person who really wants to be in a competitive thing for making the best Pinot Noir in a given year. Oh, there's a piece of me that wants that to happen, but more than anything I prefer an environment where I am responsible for making the very best wine from my property in that particular year as my contribution to the industry.

OWR: How do you view the differences between the Flat Block and the Southeast Block wines?

TERRY: The Flat Block to me is often the strongest wine we make. It has rather powerful but somewhat monolithic character. It more just hits you between the eyes and gives you its expression, especially after it has been in the bottle fora few years.

The Southeast Block to me is a much more complex wine, more layered, more spice driven, more earth, more forest floor character. We were just bottling the '98 and we notice this cardamom seed character in the background that is just really intriguing.

Where do these differences come from? I guess I really do believe that all the various elements of terroir contribute.

OWR: You are also getting great respect for the quality of your Chardonnay. What's different in making good Chardonnay?

TERRY: I really believe that there is potential for quality Chardonnay in Oregon in the same way there is for Pinot Noir. We're more committed to Chardonnay than most producers are. Right now we're just beginning with clones that are going to ripen at pretty much the same point as Pinot Noir, or even earlier, which will give us a lot more season to work with. But we are just in the infancy here in Oregon, and we're going to have to see what those wines taste like once we get some vine age.

OWR: What got you started on Chardonnay, since your concentration has been on Pinot Noir?

TERRY: If I'm sitting down for dinner and I have a variety of white wines to choose from, Chardonnay is always my first choice.

When we started in Oregon with Pinot Noir we had great clones. We've started with not so optimum clones for Chardonnay. In the early years we had the Chardonnay 108 clone, Draper, Wente, and others. Still, we could see the hints of what was possible with Chardonnay because there are people like John Paul at Cameron and Russ Raney at Evesham Wood who have made wonderful wines out of 108 for years. Our own Chardonnays from the 108 clone have improved significantly over the years as these vines have aged, so we are adding the new clones carefully to complement what we are already producing.

With the old clones, being able to pick balanced fruit is difficult to do. In a cool year if you don't do something about the acidity, you can barely drink the wines. But now with the new Dijon clones, we're watching sugar/acid balance curves looking much more like what we see in Pinot Noir. And rootstocks will help us significantly by limiting vigor and giving us a step up in the fruit.

I think we've learned a great deal about making Chardonnay in Oregon. It requires a lot of learning to make good Chardonnay in an area like this. There are many times I think that Chardonnay is more difficult to make here than Pinot Noir. But it is now much more exciting to be making Chardonnay in Oregon than it was four or five years ago.

TERRY: I like Chardonnays that are balanced for food. I really don't have much appreciation for the big, oily, high alcohol, low acid wines that are more like aperitifs that are produced by our neighbors in California. We'll probably never be able to do those kind of wines here. And you rarely seem them from Burgundy-white Burgundy isn't balanced that way either.

I think in Oregon it takes a real commitment to Chardonnay that means crop reduction and treatment, learning about yeasts, attention to individual barrels, malolactic fermentations-a lot of things that require attention and winery resources. The main force of the industry here is not focused on Chardonnay, but more and more there are people committed to making fine Chardonnay, and I think we're going to see growth in Oregon.

TERRY: The learning curve in Oregon has been very steep, but there's still a lot to learn. As our industry gets a little older, our vines will get older and they will have more ability to adjust themselves each vintage for greater consistency and expression. Which means that our wines will have deeper expression and greater consistency.

We've sometimes had the reputation of being a bunch of rural intellectuals who are just doing our own thing regardless of what else is going on in the wine world. And there may have been some truth in that. I know that I am increasingly getting out and seeing what my colleagues are doing. You can get lost in your own myopia in the winery if you don't pay attention to what other people are doing, and to what consumers are saying-you can't insulate yourself. We can all benefit by sharing. If a winemaker visiting my cellar means their wines get better, so much the better for us all.

I think the future depends upon the deepening of our understanding and commitment to Oregon as a place, and that we not get lost in an attempt to compete with California.

To take our industry forward it will require people who have a certain level of commitment, understanding, and love for the grape. There are some very, very skilled, bright, and committed people in the Oregon wine industry, and as they get better at making wines, it will help me get better too.