Iruai 'Blood + Flowers' Oregon Syrah 2022 (750 ml)

Applegate Valley

Vineyards: Steelhead Run, Long Walk

13% ALC / 250 cases produced

When made right, Syrah is the pagan vision quest of red wines. If it were a film genre it would be an Italian Giallo. It's heady, full of smoke, flowers and incense. It's earthy and animalistic, full of musk, blood and iron. It's mysterious and exciting, ripe, bitter and black. It's a bit naughty. With "Blood + Flowers" I set out to exemplify Syrah at it's most Syrah, in all its wild bacchanalian glory. Enjoy by: drinking from a goblet with smoked meat in a wooded sweat lodge.

Salted Plum . Violets . Blackberries . Peppercorn . Smoked Meat

FOOD cheesy crusted pork chop with gigante beans + heirloom tomatoes

Iruai Winery (“ear-oo-eye" … the artist formerly known as Methode Sauvage) was started in 2013 by Chad and Michelle Westbrook Hinds in Berkeley, CA as a gypsy natural wine project, before laying down roots in Michelle’s beautiful hometown of Etna, CA in the mythical Shasta-Cascade mountains of Siskiyou County in 2019.

Trading in the urban winery hustle for the vigneron life, we are exploring avant garde vineyard planting and rehabilitation techniques using the permaculture methods laid out by Masanobu Fukuoka, while formulating our own “chaos organics” method of re-enchanting the land. Truly unlike anywhere else in California, Scott Valley in Western Siskiyou County (not to be confused with Scotts Valley) feels like a cross between Switzerland and Montana, cut with a rain shadow from Mount Shasta that divides it starkly between high mountain prairie and dense alpine forests.

Finding ourselves in largely untested grape growing territory, with high elevations and a continental climate, we have turned Iruai into an exploration and celebration of esoteric varieties that flourish in the Alps of Europe. While we work to grow our Scott Valley estate vineyard projects, we purchase fruit and lease vineyards throughout the Shasta-Cascade, from the Trinity Alps of California to the Siskiyou Mountains of Southern Oregon.

We seek to make wine with a sense of place by employing no additives, and removing no character. Our goal in the vineyard is to let the vines thrive like they would in the wild, and in the cellar, to shepherd each ferment through its own natural development and evolution.