Winemaking is the art of preventing grape juice from becoming vinegar, but for us, our winegrowing is more a novel than a short story. Making vinegar is the next chapter in the story of Troon Vineyard. Wine and vinegar are sequential expressions of our Biodynamic viticulture. As part of the same plot, we are crafting our vinegar with the same intentionality and aspiration as our wines.

That and we thought it would be fun. It is.

Jennifer Tiesl, part of our farm team and, has taken on this new project with the zestiness a vinegarist should have. Jennifer’s first step was to reach out to an amazing local resource—Kirsten Shockey, Applegate Valley resident, renowned fermentation expert, and author of Homebrewed Vinegar, among many other books. Kirsten has also co-founded the Fermentation School. Together, they’ve built our vinegar works.

In this episode of our podcast, Jennifer and Kirsten discuss how we have moved this project forward as we prepare to release our first Troon Vineyard and Farm Estate Biodynamic® Red Wine Vinegar.

Our first vinegar is from our Estate Syrah. As always in wine production, some barrels, tanks, and carboys accumulate many gallons of wine that don’t make it into bottles. We felt these orphaned wines needed a home worthy of the work we invested in them, and the idea of making vinegar with a pedigree was a natural next step.

The next step was where to make our vinegar. It’s not a great idea to make vinegar in a winery. There is a bit of a conflict in microbiology, as one of the main tenets of winemaking is not to make vinegar. Luckily, there is a historic barn on the exact opposite corner of our farm from the winery, and we converted part of this barn to become our vinegar works. We had a place; now we needed wine.

To understand why we have wines without a home, you have to appreciate our blending process, which begins with Troon winemaker Nate Wall commandeering several racks of wine glasses from our tasting room. Beakers of barrel and tank samples of wine fill the little space left on the table after the wine glasses are deployed. The potential blend combinations seem countless, but after hours of iteration after iteration, the final choices for the blend are made. It is amazing how the smallest changes can change the personality of a wine. A percent more here or a half-percent less there make a real difference in the final wine. The inevitable result of such a rigorous selection process is some very good wine is left homeless.

Not anymore. We will release our first Estate Biodynamic Vinegar later this summer. Following in years to come will be Troon Vinegars with extended barrel aging.

Our vinegar story will be imbued with the same energy as the novel our winemaking has become. After all, it is a sequel.

You won’t be able to put either book down.