Dominio IV Wines

Open: Year-round

In our mid-twenties we drove past a farm on the banks of the McKenzie River.  There was a faded white farm house, a front porch, and a woman who stepped outside in the morning light.  We drove past, but the image stayed with us.  There it was: the slow drip of life, the old horse that no one rode but everyone fed.

 After living in Tokyo and Seattle, we moved to the smaller side of places: Chilean bodegas, New Zealand open skies, and the rocked walls of French vineyards. U.C. Davis set our clocks to the exact time, the international tick of the grape vine. But like anything else, you know something better after you have done it for your self. So we moved back to Oregon, looked at the ground, looked at each other, and said, "How about here?"

 Then came the maps, the soil surveys, and wild-eyed glee of hopping a fence with shovel in hand to see and smell the soil.  After a few barbed-wire rips in the pant leg inseam, we found an east-facing slope in Mosier, Oregon and set out to plant what it wanted:  Tempranillo, Syrah, and Viognier. We stayed where the wine jobs were in the Willamette Valley, moved Leigh's parents into the vintage 1977 double-wide on the property and gave it a go.