Hiyu Wine Farm is less a winery than a living farm, a thirty-acre polyculture in Oregon's Hood River Valley where vines, animals and gardens are managed as a single wild ecosystem.
Backstory
Hiyu is the work of Nate Ready and China Tresemer. Ready, a former Master Sommelier who worked the floor at the French Laundry and Frasca before turning to farming, is fascinated by viticulture's Old World roots and field blends. Tresemer, who grew up on a biodynamic farm in Vermont, gradually developed the farm's hands-off system. After returning from Europe they bought the property and built it into the estate it is today.
The Region
The farm sits in the Hood River Valley of northern Oregon, about 22 miles from the peak of Mount Hood, whose presence shapes a cool climate the owners liken to winegrowing regions in the Alps.
Vineyards & Farming
Of the thirty-acre property, roughly fourteen acres are planted to vines, with more than 100 grape varieties arranged in complex field blocks; the rest is pasture, forest, pond and gardens. The farm pursues neither organic nor biodynamic certification but draws on both, plus regenerative agriculture, in what is best described as the wild side of permaculture. There is no tilling, vegetation is managed by the farm's pigs, cows and poultry, and inputs such as cinnamon, neem, kelp, fish meal, biochar and fermented teas replace conventional sprays.
Winemaking
The cellar work is as minimal as the farming. Grapes are foot-stomped and pressed in a wooden basket press, moved by gravity and bucket rather than pumps, fermented only with native yeasts and bottled without fining or filtration, with at most a minimal sulfur addition at bottling.
The Wines
Hiyu produces dozens of cuvees, many built from twelve complex field blends that weave together its hundred-plus varieties into some of the most distinctive and original wines in the Pacific Northwest.
