Inside the Most Underrated Wine Region in Washington w/ AniChe Cellars (Part 1)

Ep 114

Can grapes truly thrive in a place shaped by fire, wind and water? These winemakers say yes and they have the wine to prove it!

In today’s episode, I’m chatting with Rachel Horn and Anaïs Mehra of AniChe Cellars, a mother-daughter winemaking team based in Washington’s Columbia Gorge. We dive into what it’s like to build a winery from scratch, make wine as a family, and care for the land in a way that supports future generations.

We explore what makes Columbia Gorge such a magical (and wildly diverse) place to grow grapes, why they believe in working with the elements, not against them, and how they’re navigating the real challenges wildfires smoke and unpredictability. 

You’ll also hear how Rachel and Anaïs are moving away from conventional farming in favor of more regenerative, nature-driven practices and why sustainability isn’t just a trend in their vineyard, it’s a long-term legacy plan.

AniCHe Cellars was established in 2009 championing red and white blends from Washington State. Now this second generation winemaking family in the Columbia Gorge, are producing estate white and sparkling wines, and estate reds, too! This winery is always women-made, "Renewing the tradition of women making wine" and they focus on low intervention, vintage driven wines. 

So, if you’re curious about what makes the Columbia Gorge so special and want a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges and heart behind every bottle then this episode is for you!

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Connect with AniChe Cellars

https://www.instagram.com/anichecellars/

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Episode Highlights:

• The story behind AniChe Cellars
• Anaïs Mera’s path into winemaking
• What to know about the Columbia Gorge wine region
• What makes Columbia Gorge one of the most unique AVAs
• How smoke taint affects wine and why it’s so complex
• Transitioning away from conventional vineyard practices
• The practicality of sustainability winemaking
• The emotional and financial impact of losing a vintage 

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Transcript

0:09

Interested in learning about wine but not sure where to start. You're in the right place. Welcome to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast. I'm your host, Hayley Bowlman and I'm. So glad you're here. I'm a wine enthusiast turned wine educator and and founder of the Seattle based wine tasting business Cork and Fizz. It is my goal to build your confidence in wine by making it approachable and lots of fun. You can expect to learn everything from how to describe your favorite wine to what to pair with dinner tonight and so much more. Whether you're a casual wine sipper or a total cork dork like myself, this podcast is for you. So grab yourself a glass and let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. Today I am so excited to introduce you to Rachel Horn and Anais Mehra, the mother daughter winemaking team at Oniche Cellars in the Columbia Gorge region of Washington State. Aniche Cellars was established in 2009 championing red and white blends from Washington state. Now second generation winemaking family in the Columbia Gorge with estate white and sparkling wines and estate reds too. It's always women made. Renewing the tradition of women making wine, they focus on low intervention and vintage driven wines. I was first introduced to Aniche Sellers at Taste Washington earlier this year. Last year. Gosh, it's been a long year, but. I just remember one being blown away. By the wines I had like a. Tempranillo and a Nebbiolo which was so good. But I also remember I was talking to another winemaker there that I've actually had on the podcast here and I always like to ask other winemakers that. I'm connected with, like where would you go taste wine? Like, who do I need to talk to? Who do I need to taste from? And Aniche was at the top of her list. So very excited to have them here on the podcast. In this episode we'll talk about how Anche Sellers was started and what inspired Rachel to create it, why Anais decided to follow in her mom's footsteps in winemaking, what makes the Columbia Gorge an absolutely incredible place to grow grapes, how smoke taint affects the wine and what winemakers can do to combat it, if anything, and more. So without further ado, let's get into the interview. Okay, I gave you guys an intro, but I think it's great for you to get to introduce yourselves. So who are you two and what do you do? I am Rachel Horne and I'm a winemaker and owner of Anita Salerno. Hi, I'm Anais Mera. I'm Rachel's daughter and family owner and been working for the winery for a long time. Big family effort. My mom and I make the wines and our rest of our family does everything else for us, which is kind of cool. I love it. I love it. Okay, so I'm going to start with Rachel. How did you get into winemaking? What inspired you to create the winery? So this is kind of a long story. Are you ready for that? Yeah, we're ready. Okay. All right. So first off, when I was younger, I was trying to find a way to make more money for my work when I was going through college. So I worked in a fine dining restaurant. And the only way that I could get a position was to memorize the wine list. I was 18, so. And then try to finagle my way into a server position, which I did. So there was someone, you know, a whole bunch of people were sick, and I just managed to impress them with my wine knowledge. And so that's kind of how it started when I was 18. So I was always sort of a wine trainer, restaurant work that I did as a server, always very interested in wine. And when we, we would travel, the wines that we, we tried were the wines when we were traveling, the wines that I really enjoyed. And anyway, zoom forward to, what was it, 2006. I was again waiting tables. I was homeschooling the kids and waiting tables to supplement all of our supplemental education stuff. And I waited on this woman we were working with, this wonderful five star chef. There was a rabbit for the primary entree for this pre fee menu. And the wine pairing was not based on the rabbit. So I convinced this woman to try a bottle of Doug McRae's Roussin from Ciel de Cheval. And she wanted to try it first. And I knew. I went down to the cellar, I got a bottle, I came back up, and I knew if she didn't like it, I was going to have to pay for it. But I just tried it anyway, and of course she loved it, and that was that. So I came back a few minutes later to check on her, and she said, you know, you're so excited about wine, you're so passionate about it, why don't you make wine? And it was, for me, kind of an epiphanous moment. And I was like, I don't know why I don't make wine. So I walked around in a daze for about a week, and then I Just decided I was going to do it, so went to my husband and said, I'm going to open a winery. And he always has been supportive of my hair brain ideas. And he said, okay. And so that was in 2008, 2009, I started the WSU enology program. And then in 2009, I also jumped in with both feet and basically sourced 12 ton of fruit. It was during that recession in 2008, so I was able to access some fruit that I would never have been able to get had not wineries been in a slump. And so I was able contracts and fruit that other people had let go of those contracts. So it really lucked out. I kind of slipped in. I mean, opening a winery during a recession isn't the greatest idea, but it worked for accessing fruit. So I jumped in and got 12 ton of fruit and that was that. Wow. I love it. I love that, like so many things with wine, lots of people in the wine world are like, yeah, this idea just like came to me in some way or someone suggested it or I saw this thing and then I was like, yeah, let's do it. Let's like, let's, let's, let's go for it. Some of our, like best wine come from just like a crazy idea. Yeah, you have to be a little kooky to be in the wine world, I feel. Yeah, no, exactly. That's so true. Just a quick reminder, if you are not on my mailing list yet, what are you waiting for? I would love for you to join. When you do, you'll get a free shopping guide that has 15 of my favorite wines under $15. Head to corkandfizz.com, scroll down to the bottom, and there'll be a little section where you can join the mailing list. I send out a weekly newsletter filled with wine tips, recommendations, special offers, and so much more. Now let's get back to the show. Okay, so one last thing. From like the start, where did the name of the winery come from? I always joke and say I'm rapidly spending my children's inheritance, so I'm going to throw them a bone and name the winery after them. And that's what it is. So Anais sitting next to me. Anais is my daughter, short Dani. So her name and my son's name is Che. He also works for the winery, does our wholesale and a lot of other things for us, all the it stuff. So I put them together and it's an iche. Oh, I love that. That's so fun. I Was wondering, it seemed like it had a similarity to Anais. And I was like, there does seem a connection there, but not, not quite. So now that makes sense. On. And say it again for me one more time. How it's pronounced. Aniche. Aniche. Okay. Aniche. Aniche. I want to make sure I say it right as much as I can while we're talking. We don't care how anybody says it. So long as they're still try our wine. I like it. I like it. As long as you're talking about it, that's what's important, right? Yeah. Okay. Well, now, Anais, I'm sure you can guess what the next question is going to be. So now I'm curious. What got you into winemaking? Did you always know you would follow your mom in her footsteps? Did you know you would want to work together? How did that work out? Yeah, it happened pretty seamlessly, I feel when I started really, really young. My first crush with my mom was when I was 18 and it was after working for a catering company. So I worked for a catering company for a long time and worked for farms sometimes. But mostly it was with this wedding catering company in the Columbia Gorge and Columbia. Gorgeous. You know, it's a destination spot for lots of reasons, one of them being weddings. And we worked our butts off in the summertime and made no money. And then right around the same time my mom was opening and starting her business and we would work our butts off and then we would come and do Crush. And Crush was so much more invigorating. We were, you know, dead tired from all of our summer gigs. But when we went on the Crush path, it was first I was working with my family, which is amazing. It's like such a great feeling. There's so much trust and just camaraderie. There's more experimentation that you can do. There's more ideas flowing because you're in a safe space. You've known these people your whole lives, right? So you're able to kind of move and I would say a little bit more transmutable with how things are done to kind of meet everyone's needs. And I love that part of it. And that kind of just made me fall in love with it. It was something that was just so exciting and enjoyable to do than catering and the dead ass heat of summertime for a bride, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's so much more fun, but like, wine was always part of her life. Like, I drink wine. I don't know if I should say that. But I drank wine in the comfort of my home. It's totally fine. It's the European way. And so it was my preferred beverage, I feel like, for a long time. Not because of actually the alcohol. Alcohol, when you're, you know, 20 years old, you're like, it's yucky. But it was the beauty and how it tasted. There's so much beauty in wine. And being able to tap into that and try to create beauty in wine was really special and important to me. Sticking around, that's so fun. I feel like that is, like, you get into winemaking because you love it. There's never, like, a sense of, like, you get into wine to make money. I mean, you hope, obviously, but, like, that's not. That's not the goal. Oh, that's. That's not the goal. Yeah, I love it. Okay, well, let's talk a little bit about where your winery is. So your winery, and of course, a lot of the grapes that you use to make your wines are located in the Columbia Gorge. And this is a fun region in Washington that I think not a lot of people have heard about. I actually got to taste so many wines from Columbia Gorge when I was at Taste, Washington. And now I'm, like, planning my trip down to see you guys because the wines are so delicious. But can you tell us a little bit more about the Columbia Gorge? Absolutely. So the Columbia Gorge is a wine region that became an AVA in 2004, and it is based on sort of a maritime climate, and that's kind of how the designation works. However, it's not. I mean, this is my opinion here, not as accurate as maybe it ought to be. And that is because we have a vast climate difference between the far west end of the Columbia Gorge, which is. It ends on Underwood Mountain on the Washington side, and in the eastern part of the Hood River Valley on the Oregon side. Another thing to know about it is that we're a shared ada, which is lovely. So it goes from basically, Underwood in the Hood River Valley all the way into some parts of the Dalles on the Oregon side and Upper Lyle on the Washington side. So it is an ABA that extends 40 miles, and it has. If you were looking at Wright's climate, Are you familiar with Wright's climate regions? I don't think so. Well, it rates them between 1 and 4, but we are between 2 and 4 on the Wright's region. So Underwood is the coolest. We have about 2,400 to 2,800 growing degree days. Well, that's what it used to be. Now it's a little bit higher. It's about 2834. But when it was started in 2004, those are the numbers that were being used. And then all the way to Lyell, it's really more like the lower Rhone. It's incredibly dry, arid, and totally different growing conditions. So we used to call it a world of wine in 40 miles because you literally could grow almost every grape in that 40 mile area along the Columbia River. So it is a river valley. And we do have similar slope conditions in a traditional European style river valley. We have a wind that comes through pretty much daily from 2pm onward. A really dry, warm wind that blows through. If you've been to the gorge, you also notice that the water sports are huge and they're all wind water sports. So there's kite boarding and sailing and all of that kind of stuff. But the same conditions are really great for growing in the gorge as well, because you get this dry wind that comes through and we don't have a lot of the mildew pressures that you would have, let's say in Willamette Valley, or we don't have the super dry conditions that you would have maybe like in horse Heaven hills. So it's kind of an amazing place to grow. Yeah, I really like making wine here too, because the region is so diverse. In Underwood Mountain alone, where we are growing our fruit, there's a specialness to the mountain itself. It kind of, in a way, if you kind of have to like release some of your, you know, your human. Your human abilities that you. That you think you might have. That's what I love about the Columbia Gorge. It feels so incredibly wild, untamed. There's not. It's edgy. Yeah. You definitely feel like you're visiting in our spot rather than a place that's being conquered, you know, by a human. That balance of. Of working with nature and kind of just letting her do what she needs to do is really the exciting part. Sometimes it works in your favor, sometimes it doesn't. I love that because there's elemental and we kind of work with elements in our winemaking. We tend to be much more natural based in what we do. And we do work with the elements. And we are in an area where wind I just talked about is huge. We have wind blown lows as our primary soils, but it is formed by the Missoula floods. So the water element is huge. The Columbia river is huge. Then you have the igneous aspect of it. So we are on Three conical volcanoes. They're extinct, but they're conical volcanoes also. We are at the apex between Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood and Mount Adams. And the pyroclastic flows are. Are huge. So you have earth, air, fire, and water in everything that we do. And we. I mean, like Ani said, being desidous of this. It is so vibrant and so alive, and we just feel like we are. I mean, daily. It's a blessing to ask for permission to be here. And that's. That's kind of what I mean in my ritual. It's a daily thing. Thank you for letting us be here. In fact, I just stopped today on the way over here. I stopped and did that. What is that Hawaiian prayer? The Ho no Hopopono, so what it's called. But I pulled over. There's this lookout point that is exquisite. If you come to Underwood, it is so amazing. But it's a lookout where you see Hood, you're way up high, you're probably. What does that look out, like, 1500ft? Thirteen. Yeah. You look out over the river, you can see all the way to the Dalles, and then you see Hood and all of the Hood River Valley. It is stunning. And I stopped there frequently on my way up to the winery, and I sat there and I just said the prayer, like, five times, breathing, like, oh, my gosh. Because it's. It's humbling and so gorgeous here. And the grapes, I think, love it. I mean, I. I think vines love water, and they. They really are seeing water, and they're. They're living in just. This doesn't feel like farming. It feels like passionate living, even for the grapes. Oh, I love that. It makes it sound even better. Like, I'm just like, already. I knew Columbia Gorge was a special place, and, you know, in that it does make so many different wines. You see so many different styles coming out of that area. And it's like, how is that possible? But as you guys are talking about, it makes sense. There's so many different things going on in different parts of the area. And for folks, like, thinking about where it is just like, in an even simpler state, it's essentially like it's on the border of Washington and Oregon, and it's essentially. It's more so on the western side of Washington. So it is most, I think, of Washington winemaking is on the east side, where we're, you know, beyond the Cascade Mountains. Is the Columbia Gorge on the west side of the Cascades, or the Cascades don't make it all the way down to the Columbia Gorge. We're on the east side. Right? On the east side. Right. As it kind of trails off into a little bit. Okay. We exist about 20 miles east of the rain shadow. Okay. All right. So different. Yes. Every mile you go from the rain shadow, you lose about 3 inches of rain a year. So it's very dramatic. Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. I love it. Now, talking about that region, I'm sure. Based on where you're at, there have. Been a lot of wildfires, at least around the area. So maybe not necessarily within the gorge, but smoke taint is a thing that can happen even with just, I know around here, like we get wildfires dropping down or the smoke from Canada here, you know, in Seattle, Washington, it's like they come down from Canada, come up from Oregon, come up from California. So I'm sure you guys experience it. Do you want to talk a little bit about how it affects the grapes and affects the wine? I'm so grateful to the sponsors who help make this podcast possible. And Today's sponsor is one I personally love, wine.com you know, I'm all about exploring new wines, but let's be real, it's not always easy to find unique bottles, especially if you're limited to what's near you. That's why I love shopping on wine.com they have a huge selection, wines at every price point, User friendly search features, and real wine experts ready to help you find your next favorite bottle. And here's a special deal just for you as a podcast listener. Get free shipping on orders over$150@wine.com corkfizz with promo code Corkfizz. My recommendation, build a mix of 6 to 12 bottles to try some, you know, some you never heard of. Not sure what to pick. Message me. I'd love to help or take advantage of the live chat wine experts@wine.com. Yeah, absolutely. We actually did see this happen in 2023. The tunnel five fires. We've seen wildfire stuff affect our region in general many times. We've worked with, you know, the U.S. forest Service to make sure that they don't burn on certain days or certain months because we're harvesting and our grapes are developing. But yeah, we, we had one recently that affected us very much. So Tunnel five fire came up and it came up the side of Underwood Mountain and burned. I think it was like 10 homes or something. There's one right now that's burned over 50 out right now. The one that almost completely destroyed our crop. But I think readers or not readers Listeners would probably want to know more about what Smoke Tank does. Yeah. And I think Rachel's going to be your gal for that. So. Yeah, that fire, we lost almost our entire vintage and we didn't lose it to flames. There wasn't. The vineyard wasn't destroyed, but the vintage was. And it started on July 3rd. And what is so fascinating is that first I have to qualify this by saying that I'm no expert on Smoke Tank, but this is the second vintage we've lost smoke taint in the 18 years we've been making wine. So big, big problem, and it's going to become a much worse problem. So we're either going to have to A, develop a palate for smoke tainted ones and normalize it on some level, or B, come up with some kind of solution because the fires aren't going to go away, sadly. So what Smoke taint is a huge question. I could sum it up by saying that there's are particulates from smoke of various sizes and various chemical compounds that through some means, typically it's through the cuticle of the grapes, will land on the skin of the grapes, they are absorbed through the cuticle and they are somehow processed through the extending development of those grapes over time. Now, you don't necessarily taste those chemicals while tasting a berry off of the vine, so you're not going to taste for it. It doesn't happen that way. They usually are expressed almost all the time. They're expressed through fermentation and then they're later expressed through vinification processes. Some chemical changes within the grapes. So now there are people who think that. And this is, this is so understudied and so undeveloped. But most of our research in Washington state is being done with Tom Collins and the Smoke Tank team, which is so cool. Yeah, Tom Collins. That we're pairing with UC Davis. Actually, in 2023, we used some Australian protocols because the Australian market is devastated by wildfires. Yeah, 2020, we did. In 2020, we had a smoke event. Didn't ruin our vintage. We were sourcing most of our fruit in 2020 and we used very different protocols. I remember being on the forklift and like calling all of my winemaking friends and all of us are like, oh my God, what do we do? Do we just make rose? So, like, I mean, do we make 10,000 gallons of rose this year? Yeah. But what, what smoke taint really is, in a nutshell, is a chemical change from some process in vinification that expresses a smokiness in the wine. Now there are all Kinds of chemicals that we can test for and we can try to mitigate that problem. You can mask it. It is at this point, no reverse osmosis. No system is available to remove it, except for what's called hydrolyzing or time that we are aware of right now. So the wine making process with smoke tainted fruit, absolutely critical. Now, having said that, we have, you know, it's all a matter of scale. It's just like Britannia or, you know, even TCA or TDN or something that could be considered a flaw if it's an excess. We have to start looking at smoke taint as maybe smoke affected and maybe change the language around it because we just simply, we just don't have the tools right now to mitigate. A great example would be in 2023, we did make some white wines. We sent everything to lab, had a couple of folks and friends who are purchasing from us, and we started to ferment this. We do a skin contact Dolcetto sparkling rose. And as it's fermenting, we taste it and we go, oh my God, this is so bad. And then I get some other opinions. We get some stuff tested and we end up testing all of our fruit. The funny thing is, during the time. When the smoke, the smoke was really. Coming in, mind you, this is not like pine smoke or sagebrush. This is. It's like a refrigerator, right? This is refrigerator smoke. So this is like a whole nother, like slew of yucky compounds that the grapes are absorbing. And so when we got everything tested, we had everything from our Chardonnays, Bruno's Riesling, showing very, very, very little of the different compounds that you would normally see in something deemed smoke affected. And then our Dolcetto was 14 times that amount. So it's really, it's really wild. It's variety related specific, it's timing specific. So we thought because the fire was July 3rd and we had lag, we hadn't even been in lag phase yet. So all the studies that I had read said that lag and then post lag were the most problematic. We weren't even at lag, so we weren't even close to verasion. So we were like, okay, we're fine, but we weren't fine. So in fact, the Dolcetto is a little bit later than everything else. So this was pre lag stage, no verasion, and we had massive smoke effect on it. So this is, I mean, it's just. And then what was burning? So there's been studies on what is burning. So what chemicals are in the air, in the smoke? This is why it's such a vast subject. If anybody wants to get a PhD, do it in this. Because it's going to be huge if we want a wine industry that's going to be able to not be massively affected by this. And it's huge. So we have so little answers. I mean, there's no legal precedence for what smoke taint actually is. It's based on threshold, sensory thresholds. It's just. It's crazy. So I guess we've had three fire events. We had one where I made wine, anyway, in 2017. And we dumped the entire vintage in 2020. Ani and I were like, what on earth are we gonna do? We had. And this was that Canadian fire. Yeah, I remember that. Cause it was during COVID too. And so, like, I remember, like, we had masks for Covid. And then I was like, okay, I guess I'm like, happy I have the mask for the fire as well. Cause, like, yeah, it was. It was so. And like, the only thing we could do is be outside. And here in Seattle, it hit pretty bad as well. And it was just like, I don't. I don't want to be outside. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. That was the dumpster fire year. We ended up with that year being able to salvage, God, I would say, like, 75% what we made because we used totally different protocols. We. Even though we had ordered all of our yeasts, we just got rid of all those yeast. We used gre, a specific yeast strain that has been tested in Australia as a. As a low producer of the glycols. Or what are they called, glycosides and. Glycols, which are these components that can later be the bound form. Yeah, bound. And it's. There's so much chemistry involved in it. I don't want to bother you with that. And then we did, like, very minimal skin concentration. We usually do long, cool fermentations. And this time we did like hot, flash, hot and fast pressed off. And we were able to save a large amount of our red wine production and sell it. And they still were smoke affected, but it was just like. It wasn't like cigarette licking an ashtray kind of smoke. It was more like a little bit of barbecue or. Right. You know, nothing. It wasn't offensive. And it didn't hydrolyze. So we also left them in barrel a lot longer just to see what age would do for it. And it really kind of finished in a lovely way. So we're still Selling some of those wines. And they're delicious. People love them. Wow. I think it's so fascinating, the idea that the smoke taint comes out during the fermentation. It's a chemical thing in that you can change how much it comes out based off the yeast strain that you use during fermentation. I just assumed it had to do with. It was on the grapes. It depended on when the grapes, you know, like I've heard before, like when. It's when the grapes are, like, coming together as bunches. If you get smoke trapped in there, it's really bad and all this. But it's so fascinating that it's like you don't really always taste it in the grape. It's actually just later in the chemical process that it comes out. Yeah, totally. Well, it has to do with respiration, too. So that idea also is this idea that there is, like, ash on the grapes and no, no rinsing of the berries is ever going to eliminate it because it's absorbed through the respiratory process. Through the vascular system. Wow. It's in the chemistry of the grape itself, bound mostly in the skins, but it also can go deeper into the pulp. Some people even argue that it's through the respiratory system of the leaves themselves, so that there can be some. Something. This is fringe. But some people say that it can be, you know, a year or two even later, it could be held. Bound in the buds, the vascular system of the grapes. So it's totally fascinating. We don't know, you know. Yeah. The crazy thing is, is that, like wine itself, if you just put just a normal parameter of variables around it, that's why wine tastes so different. I mean, there are so many different ways. And to vinify something, all of your options are different. It so much depends on how the vineyard is being. You know, I guess it's nutrient program. It's sprays that it's being used. It's sight, it's soil. I mean, you have all these other just, like normal variations of things that are happening, and then you throw smoke taint in there, and it's a whole nother bucket of. I mean, it's. It's crazy. It's a master class in winemaking, which I. I failed once, miserably, in 2017 on ice. And I did really good in 20, 20, 20. And then 2023, we were like, yep. I made some white wines and then we took a little early vacation and cried a lot. But, yeah, there's a lot of. Call them barrel room breakdowns. We just kind of Cry in a puddle. And that's what part of winemaking that is. There's a lot of crying in winemaking when you're girls, I guess. Girl winemakers, we cry a lot. You feel strongly. I love it. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the farming so, you know, away from when there's smoky years. But I saw on Instagram you mentioned something about moving away from conventional farming in the vineyard. What does that mean? And. Yeah. What's been the result of that? Well, the cool thing about the vineyard, the vineyard's name is Hecate's Key. We're located Underwood Mountain in the Columbia Gorge. This vineyard has been conventionally farmed. We have grapes were planted in 2011 and 2012. So we're looking at somewhat mature vines at this point for our region because it's our neighboring vineyard. And we were getting fruit from it before we. Before we took it over. We saw the different techniques that they were using. We were pretty aware of their spray programs, their nutrient program, things like that. And. Which was not great. And we. And so when we came into this, we knew kind of like from the get go what we were going to do. A lot of the times when you're purchasing a vineyard and you don't really have a lot of interaction with it, it takes like four or five years to really understand the cycles of a vineyard. But we watch it every day. Right. And so for us, we just, like, we went headfirst. We knew exactly what we needed to do. My house in the vineyard. Yeah. Watching it every day. Okay, that's nice. And the first thing we did is we lopped the vines in half. We're dry farmed. We're high elevation. We're slightly poor on that. First, I'd say probably two or three feet of space. Once you get down below, you have, like, gorgeous soil. I see a map of vine and the dirt and my head and. Yeah. And so we noticed that these vines are really struggling to get to their full potential phenolic wise, ripening time wise. So we lapped them in half before they were trained to a Scott Henry. So it's like two cordons, essentially. It's. It's two shoulders. Okay. Kind of like, like, like the full T would be like the idea, right? Yeah. But it's two of them, so. Oh, interesting. And because of that, these felons weren't really going to be sustained for much longer in that type of pruning method. So we. We lopped them in half. We did that because we weren't getting well, for so many reasons, we just couldn't get ripening. Yeah, the ripening was the main issue. And not in a dry. And so we started implementing. We're still in the process of turning these vines over to a Simonet search method. These guys are out of Italy and they've went to their class recently in January, and it was really, really informative. It was actually really helpful to know that we were actually on the right path. That, that feels good when you're like, oh, I'm validated. We are doing something that is working. Okay, good. But we started with that first, I mean, and then right away stopped using any kind of roundup or glyphates. Of course, that's a huge part. We were in Underwood. I mean, if you look at old maps, the vineyard goes right through a watershed. This is so important. So we immediately stopped using those. We are planting cover crops, mixed natives. We also have a lot of erosion in some of our areas. The site beforehand was. I mean, trees were probably like 50 or 60 years old, I would say. Oh, yeah, I would say they're at least 80 years. Some of them are big ones for sure, since it had been harvested and the previous owners and the people who put in the vineyard cut down all those trees and then tried to level out its incredible steepness and elevation by scooping up all the top bit of all that lovely 80 year old ground and putting it on the bottom. So the stuff on the bottom is fantastic. It's doing great. Stuff on the top is really struggling. And so we're doing things. We're implementing macrobiotics, high nutrient program, but not in just like an input that just gets added. We're trying to create a system that works for itself. Right. We're trying to bring back, like we talked about earlier, we're working with nature. You can't fight it. Yeah. Integrated pest management systems or integrated pressure systems. Yeah. And we're. We're working with all of our. Just the things around us, the nature that will just be there anyways, you know. So we're working with all of our native. Native grasses are coming back in. We're implementing different systems. For instance, I know it sounds as simple as just not mowing until everything is reseeded. I know it sounds wild and crazy and it needs to be all perfect and pristine, but if you don't flip and mow, then you have a cover crop the next year. It's just like mind blowing how sometimes that cannot really work out in favor. But we're working with mycorrhizal fungi for all of our new plantings. There's so many systems in place that we've been I think a little bit Cartesian in our way of looking at things. And we need to go big picture. This is how everything else functions in nature. And we've noticed such a huge difference in the past three years. I guess we started to 20. Yeah. Yeah. So we're now on our third season and we're noticing immense differences. We have so much more just like wildlife back. Except for the deers. Those deer's gotta go. So we have a whole. We have a deer right now trapped in the vineyard behind the deer fencing. And daily my husband and I are trying to flush them out and just like we've got big sticks and we're running around trying to chase them and it's like, dude, we're trying to help you out because the alternative isn't gonna be fun. Right. I have no idea how I got. In there, but yeah, we're just trying to create a system that works in our favor but also works for a sustainable long term plan for this vineyard. That's one of the things we're always looking for, is creating a multi generational legacy. If it's my kids or if it's someone else's kids who want to continue this, then we have something that can be. It's part of a system that is closed and renewable and sustainable. We're working with our live program right now. We're trying to get a live certification. Pretty sure we are on the track to getting that. I said this to someone earlier, but it's true. We're using these things because of honestly the marketability of them. Of having these different certifications really kind of sets you apart and shows that you really mean it. But honestly, without the certifications, we'd be doing this anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I think that like it, it is important for long term health of not just our vineyard, but also our growing region, our state and our world. Yeah. When I started the winery, part of my business plan was about sustainability and I didn't source fruit more than 100 miles away. There was how we sourced glass, how we figured out all of our inputs and outputs, how we were going to be a sustainable business in the end. You just don't want to be, you know, you don't want to be a business that relies on someone else subsidizing the externalities of doing business. And it has been built as a legacy business. It's not a quarter to quarter or year by year. Bottom line. The other thing Ani didn't mention in there, but one of the things about having a sustainable vineyard is since we are a state, it's super important. Although having a marketable wine in the end is great for us, One of the things that's super important is that we have the time and the patience because it's our wine and our program to create a robust system. So if we have a block that's producing one ton an acre, okay. I mean, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with letting those vines, you know, grow better, get longer shoots, larger leaves, ripen, fruit rehabilitate because. Yeah, because we don't have a. We don't have to do 4 ton an acre or, you know, dry farming. That's kind of hard to hit those numbers anyway. So we. We just have this ability to be kind of just let the vineyard tell us what it needs, and we're going to create our wine program around what the vineyard needs, and that's where it starts for us. So trying to rehabilitate this. We can always source fruit if we need more fruit. So our wine program is related to it, but it's not entirely dependent on it. So that. That's actually a tool in our toolbox that we don't really talk about that much. But it's. It really matters. It really does matter. Yeah. We based all of our programs off of what we're seeing and feeling and witnessing from day one, from how we prune it, you know, that's where in the vineyard making pruning decisions based off of 3 years release from now, you know, and having. Being part of every single aspect of that. It also gives. I feel like it gives us permission to be more flexible, which is so lovely. Yes, absolutely. We have a pretty standard wine program that we have to meet and follow every year because we have a really robust wine club. Right. So we need to make those wines for our wine club members. But there's also. We had a ton of Chardonnay last year, and we made a beautiful, like, oaky, mallowed, like buttery, not too buttery chard. I swear, I would never make one of those. And now I'm like, delicious. We, on a whim, made a blanc de blanc and a Blanc de noir style because we had a ton extra fruit. And I love that. I love that we were able to be. That's where the fun. That's where the creativity comes in. Yes. It's like incredibly hard work, and you have to think about a gajillion things at once. But that's also part of the fun. Yeah, yeah. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. Be sure to go check out Aniche Sellers Wine on their website onichasellers.com you can use promo code corkandfizz that is all one word and is spelled out cork and Fizz to get 30% off your purchase of Oniche Sellers Wine. And of course, if you're ever in the Columbia Gorge area in Washington, be sure to give their tasting room a visit and follow them on social media to learn more about the amazing wine that they're making at Oniche Cellars. If you loved this episode as much as I did, I'd love it if you could take a quick second to rate it and leave a review. And if you know a wine lover in your life that would enjoy it, please share it with them. In next week week's episode, you'll hear part two of my interview with Rachel and Anais where we talk about diversity in wine and not just in winemaking, but in the vineyard as well. Rachel and Anais Top three wine picks for anyone wanting to try Anice Cellars Wine, the ultimate wine and food pairing in their house. Hint it's salty and bubbly and so much more. Thanks again for listening. And if you want to learn more about wine, come follow me @corkandfizz on Instagram. And if you're interested in exploring new wines and joining an incredible community of wine lovers, be sure to sign up for my virtual tasting club, the Cork Crew. In the Cork Crew, you'll have a chance to talk to winemakers like Rachel and Anais and ask them your questions in real time. Head to thecourtcrew.com that is thecourtcrew.com to learn more and use code winespecial all one word to get your first two months for just$8 a month. Cheers.