A respected veteran of California's wine industry (sixteen years as winemaker at Stag's Leap, with long stints at Far Niente and St. Andrews as well), Robert Brittan searched for years to find the ideal site on which to grow cool-climate Pinot Noir and finally found it on a 128-acre Coastal Range hillside in Oregon's Willamette Valley. He and his wife Ellen purchased the estate in December 2004, and have been loving stewards of it ever since, replanting close to 50% of the vineyard, fine tuning the viticultural practices, and improving the site's clonal and rootstock combinations. The estate's soils are a mixture of glacial deposits and volcanic material, with a predominant presence of broken basalt. They have east, south and west exposures to choose from on a cool, windy site. As a result Robert believes he has found a location where he can grow unique wines that truly speak of this place, bringing a new voice to the McMinnville AVA and helping form the style and definition of Pinot Noir from this recently designated region.