The least efficient winery in Oregon.
At Silas, we use old-world methods to make modern wines. Each bottling offers a unique combination of vintage, vineyard, winemaking, and philosophy to create harmony and bring out what makes each wine distinct.
We follow nature’s guidance throughout the process.
It starts in the vineyard the weeks before harvest. We walk the vineyards, taste the fruit (and the stems!), and make decisions about cropping, leaf pulling, and pick dates that result in us receiving the highest quality fruit into the winery on harvest day. Then we give daily attention to our small batch, open top fermenters, both smelling and tasting the must, as well as performing a soft but firm maceration with hands and feet instead of tools. Finally, we age our wines in new or neutral French oak for anywhere from 10 to 22 months. We only bottle a wine when it tells us it is ready and many of our best wines have been the product of embracing the challenges a vintage gives us, not working against them.
The key to this process is patience. We often wait years to release a fully evolved wine. And we never rush.
For example, when we sit down to decide which barrels we will blend to produce our three unique Pinot Noirs, we know we won’t finish the job in a day. Or a week. Or even a month. We spend an extraordinary amount of time evaluating barrels, experimenting with blending, and blind tasting. Through a mix of trial, error, and a bit of intuition, we eventually discover the unique character of each wine we bottle.
For some winemakers, such an inefficient process would be unthinkable.
Certainly, it isn’t the most ‘business forward approach,’ but for us, the process is where much of the enjoyment comes from. There is soul—a specific, unique energy—in great wine. Part of our job is to always be exploring what we love about our work and sharing that sense of wonder with our friends and fellow oenophiles.
