FOSSIL & FAWN, Eola-Amity Hills, OR

Fossil & Fawn started out as a completely reasonable idea in the late summer of 2011, and quickly spiraled into a much more complex, frustrating, terrifying, and unbelievably rewarding venture. We began with the notion of making a small amount of wine from our family vineyard as a single-site bottling, simply because no one else had done so before. The plan was to have a nice example to show to potential buyers of the Pinot noir and Pinot gris grown there. Somewhere along the line we figured that for all the effort, we might as well make it an official wine label. After a series of fits and starts (mostly fits), Fossil & Fawn was born proper as a wine label, nearly two years after we had that very reasonable idea.

We aren't too interested in bold manifestos or style declarations - our goal is to make wines that we like. We've found that the kind of wines we like, and thus the wines we make, are executed with a natural approach that allows the vineyard to do the talking. That means instead of buying yeast, we culture it from the vineyard itself, with no other additives or enzymes. It also means as-little-as-necessary sulfur additions and aging all of our wines in barrels, with very little new oak. The minimalist, natural approach is a nice way of saying we do things the hard way, by-hand.  The upside is that we end up with wines that we like. Wines that have acidity, structure, and balance that will brilliantly compliment dinner tonight, or be a worthy reward for patience after a few years in the cellar. (Fossil & Fawn)