Biodynamic Wine from Cowhorn Vineyards

I recently visited Bill Steele of Cowhorn Vineyards in Southern Oregon’s Applegate Valley (a solidly under the radar viticultural area). When one discovers how young their vines are, paired with how good their wines are, the question becomes, ‘what’s up with that’?  Answer #1: Biodynamically farmed grapes made according to Demeter standards so the wine can be labelled as Biodynamic® Wine.

I walked the vineyards for 90 minutes, with Bill and 4 other visitors.  My highlight was a golden eagle soaring overhead with what looked like a 7-ft wingspan.

Thoughts, discoveries, and observations from the visit:

• The vineyards, farm, land & surrounding area feels alive and vital. I’d imagine a strong immune system lives here.
• In addition to grapes they grow the following for resale: cherries, asparagus & artichokes
• There’s hazelnuts growing in a field which are the hosts for European Black Truffles
• In their test orchard they’re growing blueberries, chestnuts, persimmon, asian pears, various heirloom apples, plum & peach
• They’re also growing watermelon, pumpkin, squash & corn for local restaurants
• 117 acres total, 70 plantable, 11 in grapes
• Amazing amounts of birds & bees
• Bud (their dog) maintains and often turns the compost pile
• Wonderful biodiversity including many habitat borders
• They are starting to grow their own rootstocks
• Their version of working with powdery mildew (a big vineyard problem) includes experimenting with fermented worm compost
• Biodynamic farming ideas include being self-sufficient, minimizing inputs & not needing to pull from your neighbors resources

We use a Scoring System geared to empower the consumer to know if wines are a good value for their price. ‘7’ means having tasted the wine, I would purchase a bottle at it’s retail price.

Here’s quickie scores on the four Cowhorn Wines I tasted with Bill Steele.

’07 Viognier (big bright fruit)
Price $18/Rating: 8

’07 Roussanne (very nice flavor and balance; super food friendly)
Price $18/Rating 7.5

’08 Spiral 36 (Viognier, Marsanne, Roussanne blend)
Price $18/Rating 8

’06 Syrah (made from one, yes one year old vines — that’s pre–puberty)
Price $32/Rating 6

Sign up for the free ConsciousWine Newsletter for an audio with Bill Steele during my visit there! It will be in our 1st issue coming out July 4th.