Sauvage M.

Iruai Winery ("ear-oo-eye"... the artist formerly known as The Wild Method) was launched in 2013 by Chad and Michelle Westbrook Hinds in Berkeley, California, as a gypsy natural wine project, before taking root in the mythical Shasta-Cascade. Mountains of Siskiyou County. Trading urban wine agitation for winemaker's life, we explore cutting-edge vineyard planting and rehabilitation techniques using the permaculture methods presented by Masanobu Fukuoka, while formulating our own "chaos organic" method to re-enchant the land. Truly different from nowhere else in California, Western Siskiyou County looks like a cross between Switzerland and Montana, cut off from a rain shadow of Mount Shasta that divides it sharply between high mountain meadow and dense alpine forests. Finding ourselves in a largely untested wine-growing territory, with high altitudes and a continental climate, we have made Iruai the exploration and celebration of the esoteric varieties that bloom in the Alps of Europe. While we work to develop our real estate projects in western Siskiyou County, we buy fruit and rent vineyards throughout the Shasta-Cascade, from the Trinity Alps in California to the Siskiyou Mountains in southern Oregon. We seek to make wine with a sense of belonging by not using any additives and not removing any character. Our goal at the vineyard is to let the vines flourish as they would in the wild, and in the cellar, to guide each fermentation in its natural development and evolution.