Our first estate bottling began with a difficult year. A cold and wet vintage, 2007 was a challenge for any wine maker, but for us it was a true test to see what this land, this soil and place could produce.

Domaine Margelle is situated at a slightly higher elevation than most other vineyards, between 800 and 900 feet on Nekia and McCully soil. The trick for our vines was to get the fruit to ripen before the winter wet set in. Our Dijon 115 and Pommard clones are over 20 years old so they are well established on our rocky site. Still, we have to coax the best out of them in a cool year.

Working together with award-winning winemakers Mark Vlossak (St. Innocent Winery) and Sean Driggers (Pudding River Winery) we began to evaluate viticulture practices to see what worked and what didn't under these cooler circumstances. The result was a wonderfully unique expression of what Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris should be. We think others must agree as we sold out of our first vintage.

Today we continue to work to tease out the fullest expression of taste from our site by following Oregon LIVE practices for sustainable farming. We experiment with different types of oak barrels and degree of toasting to create the unique expression that is Domaine Margelle’s estate wine.