… One in which a 93-acre estate in Oregon’s Willamette Valley evolves into a polyculture vineyard, orchard, market garden, herb garden, and conservatory that introduces evolved farming systems that cultivate produce with measurably better nutritional outcomes.
The Rehnborg Farm is in Helvetia, Oregon, the coldest corner of the Willamette Valley, where winds from the Colombia Gorge whip through the Pacific Northwest’s famously fertile plain towards the mountains that frame the ocean beyond. Here, wildly varied ecological habitats and flora support pollinators for the estate’s vineyards, perennial fruit trees, sundry flowers, and restorative cover crops. Domesticated chickens reside alongside wild fauna. All elements of the living food web are connected, and respected.
Imagine if a bottle of wine could point us towards a stronger, more symbiotic Earth …
Our objective is to conduct progressive experiments that reveal how changing and increasing biological diversity affects soil health and, from there, the nutrient levels and flavors of everything we grow. By exploring these links and intertwining our findings, we hope to help better quantify the value of regenerative farming practices for human health, planetary health, and farmer prosperity.
OUR VINEYARDS
Our vineyards are in the coldest corner of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, on the eastern border of the Tualatin Hills AVA, the most northern viticultural area in the valley. This distinct terroir gains its character from its unique geography — it’s north of Chehalem Mountain and east of the Coast Range — and geology.
Seventeen million years ago, the Columbia River Basalt Group (a massive lava flow) rushed down from Eastern Oregon to the Columbia Gorge, shaping the landscape and blanketing its soils. Next, windblown “loess” (fine-grained, wind-blown silt) from the same ancient basalt, following the same route, layered the land before the Missoula Floods razed the area 13,000 and 15,000 years ago. These formidable events left behind deep alluvial deposits with colluvial basalt and windblown basaltic loess. Today, the stratums combine to create our estate’s rare silt loam soil, rich with beneficial minerals.
Our south- to slightly southeast-facing,10-acre Trestle parcel sits at between 320 and 380 feet above sea level, and houses five vineyard blocks, including Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Cabernet Franc, and Chenin Blanc vines.
Our forthcoming south-facing, 6-acre Forest parcel sits at between 420 and 460 feet above sea level. Formerly an apple orchard, the parcel has been converted to vitiforestry, a concept emphasizing soil and ecosystem biodiversity. Various tree species reside amidst the vines, which will include Mondeuse, Chenin Blanc, Petit Manseng grapes — varietals not commonly seen in the Willamette Valley — as well as block planted with the hybrid Fleurtai varietal, trained high to allow sheep to graze in the vineyard year-round.
OUR HISTORY
The first known residents of our Helvetia neighborhood were the Indigenous Ataflati people. Later, Swiss immigrants played an influential role in the area. Our friends at Eagles Nest Reserve have chronicled this evolution on their website. (We also highly encourage you to visit their stunning tasting room.)
More recently, in the 1980s, our site’s visionary past owners began evolving the land. In addition to developing the property’s infrastructure and landscaping, they planted an array of fruit trees and other horticultural wonders.
In 2021, we (the Rehnborg family) acquired the property with the future-forward vision of stewarding its diverse agriculture to explore the connections between growing practices and living soil — and their collective impact on plant health, carbon sequestration, and the nutrient content of produce cultivated using progressive regenerative farming systems.
We share our experiments, successes, failures, ideas, and the beauty of the estate with our community — with the aspiration of opening a path to a more holistically balanced ecosystem, where farming quantifiably improves the Earth and all its inhabitants.