”A rich and fresh charry bouquet leads into so much goodness. Raspberries and cherries, spice box, and a satin mouthfeel make this a super value. Illahe is on a roll … ” 2008 Illahe Pinot Noir ~ Avalon Wine
Illahe is OPEN on Saturdays, 11-5pm
We are also open by appointment throughout the week.
Call 503-831-1248 to schedule a tasting.
We will be closed Saturday August 7th.
Owner, Lowell Ford, first planted grapes in 1983 at our Glen Creek Vineyard in Salem. He was one of the first in Oregon to experiment with varietals like gruner veltliner and lagrein. In 2000, Lowell bought the 80-acre Illahe Vineyard, which was a pasture at the time. Though its main production is pinot noir, his love of white wine and experimentation ensured that its future will always include a broad view of world wine grape production and not simply copy a Burgundian domaine.
In the 1990s, Lowell spearheaded the development of the Northwest Viticulture Center at Chemeketa where he worked as the Dean of Students. Lowell is still on the board of directors at the Viticulture Center and a lifetime donor.
ILLAHE is a local word that has been used to describe “land” for centuries in Oregon and the Northwest. The Chinook Jargon word appears from Canada to California, sometimes meaning “earth” or “place” or “soil.” It is comparable to the French word terroir, and, in a sense, is the Northwest’s word for terroir.
At Illahe, our goal is to make wine as naturally as possible from the soil to bottle. This requires working by hand on small lots with age-old processing techniques:
• Hand picking
• Immediate delivery to the winery in buckets, not totes
• Sorting in the vineyard and at the winery
• Gravity-feed processing
• Native fermentations
• Moving pomace to the press by hand to remove bitter seeds and lees
• Gentle pressing in a basket press
• 100% barrel storage for reds
Our winemaking style thus precludes what many other wineries use to manipulate the product, such as enzyme additions, tannin additions, concentrators, or red wine filtration. We clean thoroughly and monitor the wines closely in barrel. We work on the wine of the vintage, not a homogenized product. In the vineyard, we have the same approach, using as much full-time, experienced vineyard help as possible. We use draft horses to mitigate our use of diesel, and spray as little as possible. We use solar power to offset our energy use, and store and filter rainwater to ease our impact on the aquifer. The result is a beautiful and pure wine both on its own and with your favorite dishes.
Our tasting room and production facility, designed by Laurence Ferar and Associates of Portland, is just now being filled with the wines that will define the vineyard and the region. Be a part of wine history in the making.
Read Our Blog the “Soil Spectator”
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