Brick House Vineyard
by Cole Danehower
Brick House Vineyards: Oregon native Goes natural With Organic Winegrowing
Visitors to Oregon's wine country are often amazed at how different its character is from California's wine country. Rare are the vast faux chateau and bus diesel besmogged parking lots. No, in Oregon what you find are wineries like Brick House - a tree shrouded older home and barn converted to winery, complete with running dogs organic vineyard, and personable owner/vintner.
Yes, Brick House is a quintessentially Oregon winery, and proprietor Doug Tunnell the quintessential Oregon winemaker.
Doug gladly left the glamour of reporting from the world's capitols as a foreign correspondent with CBS News, for the far different life of a farmer in his native Oregon. He couldn't be happier!
"I really feel fortunate," says Doug as he strolls among the Chardonnay vines growing just a few steps away from his rustically charming winery building. "Over time I've come to appreciate what a great place this is."
Doug's home and business - an antique brick house and vineyard atop a uniform geologic 440-ft. rise of WillaKenzie soil in Yamhill County called Ribbon Ridge - is a classic example of passion meeting craft to produce distinctive wines.
"It's getting to where I want it to be," he says gazing across the sloping vine rows, "and that is small - 1500, maybe 1600 cases a year; that's about right."
Doug is the classic example of Oregon winegrowing and winemaking: a heartfelt commitment to terroir expression through organic viticulture and a purely hands-on approach to wine crafting.
Minimalism Produces Authentic Terroir
Doug is a leading proponent of organic winegrowing, both for its value to the environment and as the best way of getting site expression into his wines. "In terms of getting out of the way to let the site express itself," he says, "that is the whole notion behind organics."
"I can't accept," he goes on, displaying some of the quiet passion that has become a hallmark of Brick House, "that we can discuss terroir and all that entails, and then go out with our tractors and take an herbicide and turn a field into a baseball diamond, and then grow grapes on it, and say Ônow were expressing terroir' . . . you've changed everything!"
So, Brick House Vineyards is managed to a concept of minimal off-farm input, minimal intervention, minimal handling - what Doug calls "just trying to let things be."
"Any kind of farming activity, of course, is manipulating the environment to some degree, he admits. "But organic practices change tings minimally, and in closer sympathy with nature. We're not changing the subsoil, we're not changing the microflora in the soil." And, this style of winegrowing, believes Doug, ends up delivering the best crops - which for him are Pinot noir, Chardonnay, and Gamay noir grapes.
Doug's adherence to a non-interventionist philosophy extends into the cellar as well. Brick House's lack of herbicide usage has meant the flowering of natural yeasts that Doug allows to freely act on his fermentations. "Native yeasts help the wine fully express the site," he explains, "I don't want the wines to express me!"
Quality Vines Produce Quality Wine
Of the three varietals grown at Brick House, Pinot noir - as might be expected from a Willamette Valley producer - accounts for the lion's share of production, with a total off 19 acres.
The first Pommard Clone Pinot noir (one of the two earliest Pinot noit clones used in Oregon, and sometimes considered as a foundation grape for the Oregon wine industry) was planted in the spring of 1990 to a then unusually dense 1600 vines per acre. The first Brick House wines were released in 1993.
Today, Brick House's Cuve du Tonnelier release (named in honor of Doug's father, and the original spelling of the Tunnell name) is composed primarily of Pommard Pinot noir from Brick House's 10.5 acres of the clone.
In 1995, Doug planted Dijon Clone 113, 114, and 115 Pinot noir in order to add a different dimension to his offering. The Les Dijonnais label is Doug's wine produced from this 8.5 acre set of vines - though it is often com[posed primarily of 114 Clone grapes.
"I find spicy sweet notes in the Pommard," says Doug, "and a kind of deep forest, brushy character with a little bit of pine - almost wintergreen - and balsam notes along with dark fruit."
The Dijonnais bottling, he says, possesses more brightness with red fruit an "a lot of really lovely" floral notes and aromas, says Doug. "I like to think of the two wines together as coming out of a forest and into a meadow."
A third Pinot noir release began in 1999. The Cinquante label is made from 50% whole cluster grapes off of older Pommard vines, and depending on the vintage, may continue to be produced as Doug feels the quality of the vintage merits.
Brick House also has a loyal following for its Chardonnay wines. Doug's three acres of Chardonnay contain some of the first Dijon Clone vines in Oregon. With careful attention to small yields and primarily neutral barrel influence, Brick House's production of Chardonnay has been favorably compared to great white burgundy by no less a reviewr than Robert M. Parker, Jr.
Doug is also one of the few Oregon vintners o make a serious wine from the Gamay noir varietal. It is, he admits, a labor of love. It costs Doug at least as much to produce the Gamay wine as it does his Pinot noir, yet the market for Gamay yields bottle prices significantly below those of Pinot noir.
Still, Brick House's commitment to the grape is serious - and widely popular. "I love Gamay," says Doug, "it's a great and fun wine and wonderful to make!"
Doug's Love of Wine Comes Naturally
Doug's love of wine began when he was living in "a little wine own in the Rhine Valley" and working as a correspondent for CBS News. When he moved to France "that really kind of sealed the deal," he recalls.
"In 1987 and 1988, I was knocking around French vineyards and came to find out that this French family in Beaune had just bought 120 acres in the Dundee Hills of Oregon - I was just stunned," remembers the Oregon native.
Referring rather ironically to the Drouhin family's endorsement of Oregon's wine future by beginning Domaine Drouhin in the 1980s, Doug was amazed that his home state was so well endowed viticulturally. "There I was, enthralled with wine, living in France, and these really well-known French people were buying land for a vineyard in my home town!"
Restless in his then career, Doug decided to start looking for land to farm in his home town region. He settled on 40 acres on top of Ribbon Ridge, a uniform geological formation that rises up from the floor of the Chehalem Valley.
"The U.S. Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service listed WillaKenzie soils as a recommended tyope for growing grapes in the Willamette valley," recalls Doug, "and there were already a few vineyards planted on the ridge that were producing great wines." The site he chose had good elevation and a geerally southeastern exposure. "It felt good; it felt right," says Doug.
And so it was. Since the first plants went into the ground in 1990, Brick House has proven a leading example of what organic vinyard farming can do for the quality of wine.
"At this point," he says, "I kinbd of scratch my head and wonder why everybody isn't doing it. I just think it's the only way to go; I see no reason not to."
The results would seem to support Doug's enthusiasm. Brick House wines have been consistently sought after by knowledgeable consumers, and highly rated by nearly all the major wine publications.
All of that is good news for Doug, but the real reason he is a happy man is because he is living where he wants to live, doing what he loves. And isn't that what Oregon's wine culture is all about?
