Blood From Turnips? No, Wine From Rocks

Christophe Baron grows wine grapes in rocks.

Vines need to struggle to make the best fruit, and so did he, planting his crop amid the stones of an ancient Walla Walla riverbed.

“Every vine went in with a crowbar,” he says.

Yields are low in the Cailloux--French for stone--Vineyard, about 2 tons per acre, and the small, intensely flavored grapes are handpicked, treated gently and sorted carefully.

Baron was on his way to Oregon’s Willamette Valley in 1996 to start a winery when he spotted the 10 acres that would become his cobblestone vineyard in the pastoral farm country of the Walla Walla Valley in southeastern Washington.

“Stop the car,” he called out to his friends. “This is it. I’m staying.”

They told him he was crazy. He told them: “I’m going to plant a vineyard in the rocks.”

The idea was not without precedent. Some of the best French wines come from stone vineyards, and Baron grew up in France’s Marne Valley.

When grapes grow in rocks, the root system must go deep. During the day, the rocks heat up and return the warmth to the vineyard at night, so the grapes ripen faster.

Baron studied viticulture and enology in Champagne and Burgundy and continued his education at the Adelsheim Vineyard in Newberg, Ore., and Waterbrook Winery in Lowden, just west of here.

Then came heady days as a globe-trotting winemaker for a British company in Australia, New Zealand and Romania.

In a nearly classic immigrant story, four years ago he returned to the United States. The centuries-old traditions and regulations of French winemaking seemed too restrictive. In America there was freedom, and in the Northwest it was wide open.

“Tradition is good, but you should have synergy between tradition and innovation,” Baron says.

He purchased the rocky acreage that would become the stone vineyard, 15 miles south of Walla Walla, just over the Oregon border, and opened the Cayuse Winery with the sunshine-yellow storefront in Walla Walla’s historic downtown.

He chose the name Cayuse because it is an apparent corruption of the French word cailloux, said to be the origin of the name French-Canadian traders gave the Indians who lived around the ancient riverbed--”people of the stone.”

It’s crush time now, and Baron, his hands stained purple from fermented grapes, is in his element as a vigneron, or winemaker.

“It’s a dream year,” he says. “1998 was great. 1999 was outstanding. 2000? Is there a word above outstanding? Three outstanding vintages in a row--the French would be so jealous.”

Wine grape growers and winemakers in Washington have called this a near-perfect year. A record harvest is forecast, demand exceeds supply and the state’s wine industry couldn’t grow much faster.

From the Yakima Valley southeast to the Walla Walla Valley, wine grape plantings have more than doubled since 1993 to almost 25,000 acres.

Baron’s story and those of others like him, whether they are from Europe or California, reinforce the notion that Washington is still the land of opportunity for winemaking, says Steve Burns, director of the state Wine Commission in Seattle.

“Obviously France, for good or bad, is sometimes the way we judge credibility in the wine business. The fact that so many French people are coming here . . . it means that we’re a player,” he says.

Baron says he has made the vineyards the focus at Cayuse, which now has four totaling 34 acres, planted mostly in the increasingly popular syrah but also viognier, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot.

In the Cailloux Vineyard, small clusters of syrah grapes hang low on the vines. The color is deep purple, the flavors of the fruit are rich, the skin feels velvety. The yield of 2 to 2 1/2 tons of grapes per acre is about half the average.

Baron walks across the bed of stones worn smooth by millennia of exposure to the elements.

He farms organically, using only sulfur to ward off an infestation of powdery mildew.

Since 1998, Cayuse has made wine from grapes grown only in the Walla Walla Valley, a distinct wine-growing region called an appellation. The wine is produced at the spotless Pepper Bridge Winery, beginning with this crush.

“Everything has got to be very, very clean,” Baron says as he shows off the huge stainless steel vats used for fermenting. “You should be able to eat off the floor.”