Jarad Hadi, Grape Ink: Change Is Always Hard at the Beginning

Although not exactly neighbours – Grape Ink (web – Instagram) makes his elegant Chardonnays, Pinots and Jura varieties in the northernmost part of Oregon, on the US West Coast – Jarad and I have quite a lot in common. The loess soils we both work with, the drive and curiosity, age, artistic wives... or the conviction that one cannot reject an idea until one has tried it, as I discovered during this interview.

Our conversation ended up being a two-way one, with Jarad asking me several smart and seemingly simple questions that actually made me realize certain things about my own story and stuff we take for granted – thank you Jarad, who'd have thought that getting out of your comfort zone could be this fun!

Words by Milan Nestarec and Lucie Kohoutová / Photos courtesy of Grape Ink

Last time we spoke, you were thriving on a 26-acre (10.5 ha) farm with pigs, alpacas, chickens etc – is this jolly ménagerie still going on? And what’s the role of wine in it?

I absolutely still have the 26-acre farm and it is what keeps me grounded! We have been reforesting it and often change what animals are at the farm based on the year and our responsibilities. The alpacas are quite consistent as we don’t eat them - yet.

As for the wine part, I now farm 3 hectares, cca 7 acres. Two hectares I live in and farm quite personally, on a site called Petalous Vineyards, and the remaining hectare is a project that I manage with close friends as it serves as a nursery and an imaginative garden – we call it Art Hill. All the vineyards I farm, I now own. The only vineyard I am gifted a bit of fruit from is Blooming Vineyards, a site I helped design both in the sense of plant material and farming strategies which we use to explore new varieties in the Willamette Valley – I enjoy the Aligoté grown there.

Your main focus is on what we could call the “mountain”, or Alpine varieties, right?

The vineyard I live at is focused on Savagnin and Chardonnay for white wines and Mondeuse, Pinot Noir and Trousseau for our reds. The new vineyard and nursery I have planted has many varieties from collections I have done over the last 7 years. These serve the community, act as repositories for other regions, and allow me to understand how they might work in Oregon. There are perhaps too many to list – Schiava, Meunier, Manseng, Grolleau, Pineau d’aunis, Grecanico Dorato, Persan, Chenin, Cabernet Franc. Nerello, Frappato, Nosiola…

Now a question from me – do you work with animals? Or does it feel like a different job?

Not at the moment – it does feel like a different job indeed. Everything we do depends on my mental and physical capacity. At a certain point, not too long ago, I told myself that I want to focus on fewer things and do them as precisely as possible, go deep, and learn as much as I can about them. Honestly, I'm afraid that if we started working with animals, I wouldn't have enough time for it and I'd take time away from where it really matters to me. Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to justify my own comfort, haha.

There were always animals in our family, but gradually, as life got faster, they started to disappear. Our way of life changed. It's a shame, but that's how it is. Maybe animals will come back to us one day, but it can't be forced. I definitely wouldn’t do it just because it’s part of some “BD manual” or seen as trendy, or the right box to check. If I don't genuinely feel it, I'd rather not do it.

When arranging the interview, you mentioned that you nowadays spend more time in Italy, working on a project in Tuscany – can you say more about it? What's life like for you now?

I probably spend 2 months in Europe between vine collection trips and trying to push projects overseas ahead. Life is quite fluid. I feel a connection to other places. Italy, for example, is from ties to family. Other projects seem tied to friendships.

I have been working on a project by Lago di Garda that will be released in a couple months. It is a small project with very old vines on limestone, made differently than the region is used to, which has been a very exciting conversation to exchange with others.

I get energy from being around other people – teaching and learning new perspectives consistently… so I am searching out these trips to bring more meaning. Perhaps a new project with Atlas Land in Sevilla is in the works… Life for me now is very complicated as I am wrapped up in quite an international web but this is the web that I spun myself into over many years. And what about you? When are you coming to Oregon? After Trump retires… Or before?

Ha! This reminds me a bit of myself – I've always longed to start new projects, discover new things and learn. It's still in me, but I've partly reined it in, because my life kept getting complicated as a result [laughs]. Actually, it's connected to what I said earlier – I need to focus on learning and getting better at what I already have now.

That said, I'm still tempted to make my own wine somewhere else, of course, and a few such projects have already been on the verge of happening. It'll come one day. Maybe in Oregon! That would tempt me. Because I firmly believe Trump will be over soon. So let's say — after that, yes [laugh].

A couple of years ago, you said that part of your consulting job was showing people [who are farming conventionally] that growing without pesticides and herbicides is actually possible. Have you seen positive change and wider adoption of natural growing practices over the years, or have something shifted?

Yes, very much so! We have converted hundreds of acres through these conversations towards safer agricultural practices. There is a fine line with farming Vitis Vinifera without inputs that is usually influenced by vigor and climate, so what is possible usually rides on these factors.

In Oregon, we are in a region that presents a great chance for gentle viticulture and I feel that providing others some guidance has helped them see that it works – in an environmental, ethical and financial sense.

However, once others see that certain practices are possible, they are happy to follow suit. This is a good feeling and makes me feel like I am engaging in work that is meaningful.

Is consulting still a big part of your life, besides Grape Ink? How do these "two lives" of yours inform each other?

I still do quite a bit of consulting on many sides of the industry, while also maintaining my projects. It's an odd balance as consulting feels practical and Grape Ink is philosophical.

The ability to encounter the personality of other vineyards and the diverse objectives of farmers and winemakers makes me feel like a strange ambassador. I am able to help promote positive choices and relationships.

However, Grape Ink has nothing to do with that. It is driven by my curiosity and attempt to allow self-expression and feeling, be it my own or the vineyard itself.

The access to information that I receive from my R&D work is great on both sides. I may be tasting a rosé that was under flor for 6 years one day, and a fresh sparkling base wine the next. One client might like Petit Manseng, the other Ribolla Gialla and the next a new hybrid for example, and I get to watch all these grow. I see it as an opportunity to try new things, with different lenses.

When I consult, I try my best to see from others’ perspectives and it connects me closer to the wine market. While Grape Ink connects me closer to myself. It’s an introspection of how I interact with wine and nature.

I read that you got to winemaking through your poetry, how did that happen ?

In the beginning, I tried making wine in my basement as a garagiste. I was 21 – still the legal drinking age where I grew up. I re-discovered wine in an attempt to get to Argentina for a book release, when a poetry collection that I wrote was translated to Spanish. A friend — Mark Piro, winemaker at Au Bon Climat, with whom I still make wine today — pointed me toward an experience in Mendoza, Argentina.

Mendoza was poetry for me and so was wine. Coffee and medialunas at 9pm, a wild uncertainty around every corner, passion pouring out of dusty streets holding onto their tethered European threads. In the winery, each decision appeared to have such an incredible mark on the wines being made. It was an endless tornado of questions that inspired a lot of my writing during that period. This experience set me on a path and made me want to continue questioning wine.

You spent your formative years in Bordeaux, learning to make the most expensive wines in the world, like the Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande. How similar or different is this approach in comparison with your own work? A lot of people might see it as a dichotomy, but I think we’re kinda past that black-and-white, conventional vs. natural discourse, and that the actual dynamics can be much more interesting. So what's the conversation between Jarad-the-Pauillac-trained-winemaker and Jarad-the-natural-winemaker?

I feel that I cannot reject an idea until I have tried it. My work now is hands-on, without technology which is a much different path than how we made wine in Pauillac.

I have strong ideals that I hope will always come from experiences and created by avoiding prejudgments. The important ideals I learned from Pichon Comtesse were in the vineyard.

It was my first experience with biodynamics, curettage experiments with Marco Simonit, a R&D project with Eric Boissenot (Latour, Lafite, Mouton etc.). I learned how to taste grapes and listen to those feelings. I also learned how to teach others.

What was the turning point, then?

Most expensive wines are expensive for the wrong reasons in my opinion. It is not often the subtleties and craftsmanship that are celebrated, but the marketing and prestige. So there we go… I had to make a turn. I could not work for a system that I stopped believing in.

I tried many wines that year I did not want to drink, saw many wineries with no heart, owned by insurance companies, and saw that corporate wine lacked purity and transparency.

I learned what I was not going to do.

The conventional X natural discourse feels like another marketing gimmick. It is why I do not often subscribe. It feels exclusive on either side.

However, to make something with a single ingredient is an artistic constraint. It also feels ethical. The simple steps I learned was one we all know as wine growers – wine is from the fruit and the fruit comes from the soil. As I began looking into showing the complexity of a vineyard site, I personally found more personality when allowing nature to express itself.

I had to take all these steps to know that certain paths were the wrong choice for me and my own project. We all strangely experience the past to not know the future.

And how did you, Milan, learn how to make wine?

Quite literally by trial and error. Nothing teaches you better, because this costs your hard-earned money.[laughs] And damn well you remember those mistakes so you don't have to pay, God forbid, twice. Although even that happened to me – I've paid a lot for my own stupidity, but that's happened, and keeps happening, to everyone. But I think the past tense isn't appropriate in my case – I'm still learning to make wine, and it'll stay that way until my very last vintage.

Have you changed significantly since your first vintage?

Today I feel like, after 25 years, I'm coming back to the beginning again — that I've gone full circle. I've tried out a lot of approaches and attitudes, including some pretty extreme ones, and I've come to realize that I want to make wine that's good, that people enjoy, and that brings them joy. Made honestly and sincerely. This is the most important thing for me.

I no longer want to attach any labels to my wines, saying they're this or that. It's enough for me if it's good [laughs]. I'm trying to make my life as simple as possible, even though it's not simple at all, there are temptations everywhere. Why not try those great new ceramic wine vessels, why not plant Assyrtiko since I love it, etc., etc. Every day, I have about 10 ideas like that.

I don't want to live an ascetic life, but I have to rein myself in, because I know myself, haha – I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

You planted vines and generally work with vineyards at 800 – 1,500 feet (roughly 240 – 460 meters) ALS, higher than most of the valley. What is your reasoning behind and experience from working with these sites?

The reason for these altitudes is primarily the changes in the soil, exposure to wind, climate change, and timing in which the grapes soften. I enjoy making wine in the fall, not in the summer, allowing the fruit a long ripening period.

Higher elevations in my region also express themselves in a very different way as the vineyards see diurnal shifts in temperature – often more than 20 degrees Celsius between day and night – and that brings acidity that keeps the wines alive.

Speaking about acidity, I read that originally, you started with sparkling wine in mind – but now your production is virtually still-wine only, correct? What changed?

This is true! My first vintage back home was warm and it changed my perspective. I was in one of the highest, most northern vineyards and I could still ripen the grapes quite easily. It did not seem genuine to make sparkling wines. Not the type of sparkling that I would dream of, at least.

I quickly started to realize that my favorite vintages were the cold ones and that still wines did not have to fit into a box. I did not need to make sparkling wines and the still wines seemed to express the picture of the neighborhood more clearly.

Is making sparkling wine still in the plans for you though? If yes, which style, grapes and method?

I am curious to make sparkling wines through collaboration with others. One project we are working on currently is a blend of wines dating back to 2010 – Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay from vintages that made sense. Another project is from a vineyard of Melon de Bourgogne that I planted for a friend in a nearby town that we age in glass at my studio.

And why do you make sparkling wines at Nestarec? Did it come from experimenting, or you felt it somewhere in the vineyard?

Good question. I should ask myself WHY more often [laughs]. It's incredibly liberating to get rid of things you don't need. But to get to your question — I'm not a huge sucker for sparkling wine, actually. If I had to pick one type of wine to stick to for the rest of my life, it would be red. That's the one that has everything a wine should have, for me.

You know, here it's customary to have a service that produces sparkling wine for you almost from A to Z — they handle the secondary fermentation, the disgorgement for you, store it in a tax warehouse, handle the legal paperwork. How can you then say you made that wine, how can you be proud of yourself that you finally, say, got it right on the seventh try?

Right.

I need the process, I need to fail miserably, and learn from it, so that today, after years, I am able to say that my ideals — fermenting wines using must from the following harvest — weren’t the best, to admit that the method perfected in Champagne simply has something to it. I'm a seeker of unconventional paths, but if it doesn't work, I accept it and take the advice.

I've never felt even the slightest urge to imitate something, or even to get close to it. I just wanted a sparkling wine for us, tried a bunch of varieties, and once again concluded that the time-proven ones were the best. Being the king of dead ends is fun, but only up to a point — you get tired of that too [laughs]. I still believe that a winemaker can instill originality, personality, or some kind of X-factor, as I call it, into wine without having to be extreme.

Is your wife Giulia still the one designing your labels? What’s her role at the winery?

Yes. My wife is a designer and an artist in all senses. She paints, sculpts, forges, blows glass, cooks, and extracts herbs and fruits. She has made every label other than one that was made by my daughter. I look up to her. I look up to her as she is an artist that produces art because she feels it in her… not to sell and not necessarily for anyone to see.

She is a bit busy for the winery now as she follows her own passions which is to help house homeless families. Many people don’t realize how much of a problem this is in the United States. I am proud of her for the work she does and like to mention her for this.

She mostly enjoys telling me how I can make my wines better…

You also make a lot of damigiana wines. Is that something that comes from your wife’s Italian origins? I reckon one of the reasons why you work with them is that it is a convenient vessel for small batch experimentation – or is there something else you like about it?

My wife’s grandpa indeed made wine in damigiane and concrete – but I only found that out accidentaly, the other night at dinner! I originally made wines in damigiane to explore what was possible with a new region. I felt that the size gave me a chance to think about wine in a lovely format that was still representative and expressed well the choices I made with the grapes. It gave me answers to my own wines or questions and the path they would take.

For example, the amount of time I would age a certain variety, if it develops well with flor or not, if the grapes blend well together, if botrytis is worth exploring etc. The size is convenient! I can do all the work myself if I need to and can’t find a friend to spend the afternoon with…

After the experimentation, however, I realized the experiments were the answer. That glass gave purity to the wines and allowed me to see exactly what was happening. Its size lets me know the wines in the most personal form and the vessels allowed the fruit to be the protagonist of the wine’s story instead of focusing on a vessel to transform the vineyard into something it was not.

Do you use glass? Or have you used/considered it? How did you choose what to age your wines in?

Oh boy, have I. I've scrubbed out demijohns like nobody's business [laughs]. Especially when we were starting out. There is a strong tradition of making wine for yourself, for your family, here in Moravia. That, combined with 20–30 different varieties in the vineyard, which is also traditional... well, the only vessel that adds up from that equation is a demijohn.

Over the years, I've learned one thing: making wine in small quantities is far harder than in large ones. It spoils far sooner than in a big vessel, and a demijohn has a pretty wide neck relative to its contents. I had to smile a little when I noticed the trend for big glass vessels, wineglobe or whatever it's called (when I found out the price, I wasn't sure whether to keep smiling, haha).

Every era carries its own hype – amphorae, concrete eggs, ceramic vessels… so now it's the demijohn renaissance. But in the end, it's just a container for wine; the important stuff happens elsewhere.

It inda reminds me a bit of my own longing for a vertical basket press – but do I really need it? Do I have something to press with? Yes, I do. Will my wines be better because of it? Maybe. Can I afford it? No! [laugh]. So what the hell am I even talking about here – I give myself a slap on the wrist and go do something useful. Then again, man can dream, right?

Anyways, let’s talk soil – we both work with loess. What is your experience working with it? Do you find it translates into the final wine in some particular way?

Loess is beautiful. It shines. The loess I farm on is shallow. The vines do not thrive with vigor and I really enjoy observing the farm and the extreme changes over a season. My experience is that the depths of the soil mark the wines.

In shallower soil, I see more tension, tannin and grip – the wines are rustic and nervous. On deeper loess, I observe more fruit and comfort. I prefer the shallow soil as it has a strong personality and tastes very different from the vigorous soils of red clay in other parts of the Willamette Valley.

Our loess soil is windblown minerals from the Columbia Gorge which runs between Oregon and Washington. It is made up of a lot of weathered basalt, sparkles with quartz and you can find iron and calcium pisolites in it as well. Under the loess, there is a concreted layer well known by soil scientists as fragipan which is a limiting factor for the vines. Not great soil for everything, but I enjoy it for wine.

What do you enjoy about loess? What do you hate about it? Is it a strong or weak soil in your region?

It’s the dominant soil in our area. But there's loess that contains lime, and there's loess that contains clay. I prefer the former. It shows exactly those qualities you mentioned – better tension and character.

For me, generally, the most suitable soil for winegrowing is volcanic. But I don't have that – I have loess, I have sand, I have clay. And I work with it; I've learned to, and I'm still learning. The important moment was coming to terms with what I have and stopping glancing over at what things could look like if I had this or that soil instead.

I think that from that moment on, I started producing better wines, because I started trusting the wines more. I stopped trying to push them into a certain style, comparing them, and accepted them fully as they are. Looking back, this was the most important moment in my whole 25 years of winemaking. Thank you for these questions, it's really fun and useful to stop for a bit and think things trough [laughs].

You’re working with a terraced vineyard – how did that happen and why? Is it common in Oregon, or is it something brought from elsewhere in the world?

Terracing came as an idea after a trip to Trentino/Alto Adige. I had a portion of a new property that was too steep and littered with invasive species. The best way I could think of farming this and diversifying the species grown on the hill was accessing it through terracing. It has taken 5 years and we are only now starting to begin to fill the terrace with small vines, bushes, and trees. It is uncommon in Oregon. I am sure there are others that must terrace… I just do not know them.

In one of your interviews, you say “I don’t think one producer can change a region. Whereas if we group together, we have a good chance to show what we think is special,” which I think is very true. How is this community effort going, what have you guys in Tualatin Hills AVA been up to recently?

I think there is not only power in numbers but also you adapt and learn more in a small community, as you must know. I have stepped away from Tualatin Hills AVA and focused more on the closer community and relationships I have around me.

I think as a small group, we are showing that Agroecology pays off not only in the field but in the wines themselves. I also think we are finding a way to include conversation around other fruit and vegetable crops and promote larger conversations on how to value farmland, fight off industrial development and development of data centers to support tech…

Growers such as Eagles Nest Reserve and Burl are two I enjoy exchanging with. ENR really has their head set on no-till, native cover crops and producing sparkling. Burl is very focused on vitiforestry, polyculture systems, brewing extracts and challenging the classic farming discourse with their efforts. Beyond thinking only about what we do and don’t spray in the vineyard, these other efforts in agriculture have been a focus for us to explore.

A beautiful aspect of our neighborhood is that we are still exploring new varieties and farming methods, making sure not to get stuck with what we already know but searching for what we still can discover.

Alice Feiring recently wrote that you went from 15 ppm at bottling to essentially zero. What changed? Was it a gradual conviction or a specific moment where you tasted the difference it made? Or is it simply that you managed to know how your vineyards and wine work well enough to be able to take this leap of faith?

Less sulfur has been more transparent of the work we do. Eventually the work led us to not adding anything. It is not a dogmatic approach, it is just what works for us now and seems to let the wines express something greater.

These choices have been led by curiosity but also to allow nature to express itself. The reality of having wines that are grown in a cold area and have substantial acid makes this possible for me to work this way and still enjoy the results.

I mean... also... it feels like an artistic constraint and a way to not cover all this work we are doing… It feels nice to make something that can be enjoyed even in a classic sense but without chemicals and additives that cover up some subtleties.

Why do you work with sulfur the way you do? And how did you arrive there?

I agree with you, and I still feel similarly, even though our current approach is different. My path back to using a small amount of sulfur before bottling was a gradual one. I was genuinely dismayed when a bottle of mine would simply go in the wrong direction over time. When mousiness showed up, or the wine oxidized within a few hours after opening the bottle, or it started to turn ropy – I'd sometimes stop talking to the people around me for a week.

I was acutely aware of how much work and sweat had gone into getting that wine into the bottle, and in the end, all of that – which isn't just a year of work, it's far, far more, as you know – gets ruined by four hours of air in an open bottle. No thank you, my life is too short for that. [laugh] It was a realization of my own worth, of the work of the people who do this with me. And if someone stops considering me a natural winemaker because I add a few ppm? Well, I've come to terms with that too. Sometimes you need to weigh things up.

Last question – you've worked in Argentina, France, California, Oregon, Italy, in a wide variety of contexts and sizes, so you have a lot of experience. What's the question you still don't have an answer to? What does the next year need to teach you?

The balance of life…

How to keep passion close to your heart without extinguishing the viability of a project and your sanity.

Next year, I hope, teaches me to find even more joy in what I do and to be present in these moments. The years pass so quickly and I don’t want to lose the joy of the process in search of only some far-fetched result in the future.

Regarding wine… perhaps learning more about tannins and my honest feeling towards them…

To be or not to be…

READ MORE OF OUR WINEMAKER INTERVIEWS & NESTAREC MUSINGS