The geology of the Antica Terra vineyard is pretty unusual. In most of the region, vineyards are planted in the relatively deep, geologically young soils left behind by either the Missoula floods or the volcanic events that formed the Cascade and Coast Ranges. Here, the remains of a far older pre-historic seabed rise to the surface, leaving the vines to struggle, without topsoil, atop a fractured mixture of sandstone sown with 40 million-year-old marine fossils.

Above ground, the place is just as intense. Its exposed rock, steeply pitched grades and panoramic views of the surrounding land convey a feeling of dramatic scale. The west wind moves constantly through the vines, picking up velocity at night when the marine inversion draws cooler air through the Van Duzer Corridor, causing a diurnal shift of forty to fifty degrees each evening.

The first vines were planted here in 1989 in a clearing within the oak savannah, yet today, our oldest vines look like infants. By being planted in a solid sheet of rock, they have become, quite literally, bonsai-ed. Instead of the gnarled trunks and robust canes one expects from vines planted over three decades ago, ours are almost comically undersized. The fruit is diminutive as well. The tiny clusters of thick-skinned berries are less than half the usual size and fit easily in the palm of the hand. The canopy, which struggles to reach the top catch-wire, is incredibly sensitive. The smallest changes in the environment can cause the leaves to turn yellow and fall. These qualities cause us to worry. They demand that we offer our vines the most exacting attention and care. In return, they offer us the opportunity to make good on the promise we made to ourselves and to this site when we arrived: to gain on intimacy, to perfect and refine our farming over time, paying attention neither to trend nor to dogma. Every vine a puzzle, every season its own solution. This work is our privilege and this place is our home.