Chad Hinds did not look for an easy California wine story. Starting in 2013 in Berkeley, working out of an urban winemaking cooperative, he sourced fruit from around the state under the label Methode Sauvage, chasing something he could not yet fully define: wines with the electric, mineral tension of the French Alps, made from grapes that had no business growing in California. What he found eventually was a valley in Siskiyou County, near Mount Shasta, where that vision could take root.
Backstory
Methode Sauvage, French for "the wild method," launched as a nomadic urban project with Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc sourced from across California. In 2018, Hinds discovered Scott Valley in western Siskiyou County and began planting estate vines using the permaculture methods of Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka. By December 2019, Chad and his wife Michelle Westbrook Hinds had relocated permanently to Etna, California. The project has since been rebranded Iruai Wine, though the Methode Sauvage name remains in use for much of the portfolio.
The Region
Siskiyou County occupies California's remote northern tip, bordered by Oregon to the north and shaped by the volcanic bulk of Mount Shasta. Scott Valley sits in the rain shadow of the Cascade Range, described by Hinds as resembling a cross between Switzerland and Montana: high elevation, cold winters, and continental climate conditions that force vines to struggle. It is dramatically unlike the California wine regions that most consumers picture, and that rupture with expectation is precisely the point.
Vineyards and Farming
The estate includes 1.5 acres of Trousseau planted behind the house and 5 acres of Savagnin on the Meamber Ranch property. Additional fruit is sourced from the Trinity Lakes AVA in California and the Rogue Valley in Oregon. Hinds practices what he calls "chaos organics," a permaculture approach inspired by Fukuoka, with no tilling, no fertilizers, no pesticides, and no weeding, aiming to let the vines thrive as they would in the wild. Varieties planted and sourced include Trousseau, Savagnin, Grüner Veltliner, Chardonnay, Riesling, and Cabernet Franc.
Winemaking
The winemaking philosophy is pure minimalism: no additives, no additions, no removal of character. Fermentations are spontaneous. The goal is a sense of place undistorted by cellar intervention, channeling the cool-climate, alpine-inflected personality of Siskiyou fruit into wines that have no precedent in California.
The Wines
The range includes Elphame Savagnin, Sylvan Trousseau, Tierra Extrana Cabernet Franc, Shasta-Cascade (a field blend), Cosmic Cowboy Cabernet Sauvignon, Lounge Lizard orange wine, and Bloom Phase red. Each wine reflects a specific vineyard source and vintage, unified by the high-altitude, wild-farmed identity that Hinds has spent over a decade building in one of America's most unconventional wine landscapes.
