Iruai 'Moonstones' Chenin Blanc 2023 (750 ml)

100% Chenin Blanc

Applegate Valley

Vineyards: Four Diamonds Vineyard

12.5% ALC / 250 cases produced

Sourced from a single organic vineyard on the banks of the Applegate River in Southern Oregon. Our 2023 MOONSTONES Chenin Blanc was picked in mid September and sent direct to press. The Juice was fermented in tank until dry, then aged on the lees, undergoing full malolactic secondary fermentation.

Aged on the lees for nine months in a combination of nuetral oak barrels and stainless steel & cuve tanks. Bottled unfined and unfiltered with a single dose of 25 ppm SO2 one month prior to bottling for stability from 02 pressures on the bottling line.

The beauty of Chardonnay is in its transparency: often considered a blank canvas for terroir and winemaking technique. The beauty of Chenin Blanc, however, is in its distinctive character: idiosyncratic, aromatic, and vibrant. After a three year hiatus, 'Moonstones' Chenin Blanc is back, and despite working with some truly special sites in California, as far as we're concerned the Four Diamonds Vineyard in the Applegate Valley is our Premier Cru for Loire Valley grapes growing in Oregon. The nose is playful and buoyant with notes of flint and chamomile tea, while the palate is generous, full of ripe stone fruit with a pithy edge of zest and minerality. 'Moonstones' is an aura lifter, a party starter, and a sunrise nightcap.

Chamomile . Tisane . Stone Fruit Medley . Caper Berry . Tang

FOOD yellow tail crudo with a caviar bump

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.

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