Illahe

Videos

Illahe Winemaking

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Illahe Vineyards is a family vineyard and winery. It all started with Lowell Ford planting grapes back in 1983. We enjoy working together to make sustainable, handcrafted wines from our estate vineyard. We are farmers at heart, and we enjoy being close to nature through our grapes, watching every season change the landscape around us, and every vintage change the wines in the bottle. We farm with Percheron draft horses and are certified sustainable (LIVE & Salmon Safe). Illahe is dry farmed, so we do not irrigate mature plants. We make all of our wines with minimal intervention. Our Pinot's are 100% native yeast, small lot fermented, and basket pressed. We even go as far as making our 1899 Pinot Noir without any electricity or modern equipment.

Country USA - OR

Region Willamette Valley

Annual Production 20,000 cases

Website Illahe

Serendipity Markets California, Texas

Philosophy

Illahe is a LIVE-certified, Salmon Safe vineyard. We use cover crops throughout the vineyard to benefit the soil and for biodiversity. As part of Oregon's Deep Roots Coalition, which promotes responsible water management, we do not irrigate mature plants. We do extensive green pruning and conduct plant topping. All pruning, as well as the harvesting, is done by hand. Sulfur spray is only used to control for powdery mildew and botrytis.

We aim for balance and optimal ripeness. This includes leaf pulling to decrease shade and dropping green clusters after the grapes ripen (veraison).

Biography

Brad's job at Illahe is to make delicious wines that have a unique character. He hopes that by working with his grapes year after year, he will discover the little things that ensure each one is a special, hand-crafted product. He reaches back into the history of wine for hints and ideas on how to improve. So far, this has included working with horses, trying ferments in oak, acacia, and clay, and spending hours on the pedal-powered pump moving the 1899 wine from the fermenter to barrels.

After receiving a degree in classics, Brad was a carpenter, grant writer and English instructor. In 2004, he followed his dad into the vineyard and worked his first harvest. He went on to work with Russ Raney (Evesham Wood), Michael Lundeen (Lundeen Wines) and Gabriel Jagle (Scenic Valley Farms).