2019 Hiyu Wine Farm Sundog, Columbia Gorge, USA
2019 Hiyu Wine Farm Sundog, Columbia Gorge, USA

2019 Hiyu Wine Farm Sundog, Columbia Gorge, USA

$159.00

This is the part of the farm we once called Arco Iris. It is the warmest part of the hillside. Pinot grown here is wonderfully lush and exotic but we preferred to transition this location to something later ripening. The idea was to try to find the most difficult varieties to ripen on our site so that we could pick as late as possible, push as hard as possible and find ripeness in the coolest, riskiest conditions.

We grafted from Pinot Noir to Nebbiolo and varieties from the Valley dā€™Aosta in two different periods. The material we used was roughly 70% Nebbiolo 20% Petite Arvine and smaller amounts of Cornalin, Fumin, Mayolet and Petite Rouge. We first grafted .5 acres here in 2018 and again in 2021. There was a terrible heat wave just after grafting in 2021 and most of the grafts did not survive. We are still recovering from this and we only get a small amount of Nebbiolo mixed in amongst the Pinot Noir that is growing back from its roots in the eastern half of the blockā€¦ we were actually able to make almost 300L of Arco Iris again from it this year for the first time since 2020.

The first vintage was in the very cold 2019 vintage that we barely ripened due to an early frost. We made a single 600 cask that year, which we bottled last year after a little over 5 years in barrel. Since then the vintages have oscillated in character with 2021 and 2024 providing the ripest wines and the other vintages somewhere in between. That said, the wine is always far more delicate than a wine from Barolo or Barbaresco. Itā€™s almost as if you took those flavors and laid them over the structural characteristics of a Volnay or particularly fine Jura Poulsard. Some of this is coming from the inclusion of so much Petite Arvine, but mostly from the very cool, Alpine location of the farm. The fermentation and aging of the wine borrows from different traditions. We employ a very delicate whole cluster infusion, but so far have aimed to age the wine for at least 5 years in old barrels.

ā€“
+

Specs