Family owned since 1981, Quivira Vineyards believes in intentional winegrowing and honors a thoughtful commitment to organic farming. With the ultimate goal of being completely self-sustaining, in the vineyards and gardens we strive to limit off-farm inputs by generating fertility through the composting of winery pomace and estate livestock manure. We use extensive cover cropping in the gardens and vineyards to support fertility and soil health. This practice also serves to strengthen the farm as a whole by moving away from monoculture through crop diversity. Another core tenet of our farming practices lies in biological diversity.
The creeks and riparian corridors that run through Quivira's property provide tremendous diversity as well as a home to Coho salmon and Steelhead trout during the spawning season. We are also committed to integrating plants, animals, and microbes into Quivira’s natural surroundings and creating perfectly balanced self-regulating systems. Quivira is unique in that we not only create all of our prepared vineyard applications, but we grow the material on the Estate.
The winemaking style at Quivira emphasizes balance and transparency of terroir utilizing thoughtful low-input winemaking to produce wines that proudly showcase their varietals and origins. In crafting these wines, Hugh uses a light touch when working with the raw materials. This is not a hands-off approach, it simply means that manipulation is intentionally and thoughtfully minimized to only those operations the wine truly needs. In fact, it requires even more engagement via more frequent observation and tasting to best know when and when not to intervene. Hugh likes to develop complexity by judiciously using a few techniques: blending, co-fermentation, phased harvesting and barrel aging - both oak and acacia wood.
