We’re all familiar with the Shea name. Some of you have been drinking Panther Creek wine from this vineyard for years.  We’ve come to love and have high expectations for the magic bottles that carry this name.  Always recognizable, always distinct, Pinot Noir from Shea Vineyard gets to the heart of the unique and authentic quality of Oregon Pinot Noir.

Here’s a quick look at where these grapes come from before they arrive at Panther Creek’s crushpad.

Shea Vineyard was first planted to wine grapes in the late 1980s by Dick and Deirdre Shea and sits on sedimentary soil over fractured sandstone. Vine spacing is 5×7 yielding 1,245 plants per acre.   The vineyard is planted with Pommard, Wäidenswil, Dijon 114, 115, 777 clones and sits right in the Yamhill Carlton American Viticultural Area.  Grapes from Shea Vineyard are used to make some of Oregon’s best wines and we are honored to have a longstanding tradition of carrying the Shea name alongside our label.  If you are not familiar with wine from Shea Vineyard its time to get acquainted.

Dick Shea, Liz Chambers, Bill Hanson meet up for lunch in downtown McMinnville.

Here is a message from the people at Shea Vineyard on their approach to to farming:

“Our approach to growing wine grapes that express their terroir and our approach to being responsible stewards of the land are rooted in science. We use the results of scientific analysis as our guiding light. We have not concluded that all synthetic materials are by definition harmful. In this outlook we are joined by the USDA and sustainable farming organizations such as LIVE and Salmon Safe. This is in contrast to some well publicized approaches to growing that seem to us to be rooted in romanticism and nostalgia for farming in an earlier era.

We are pleased that we have recently been recognized for our efforts. Recently the US Department of Agriculture created the Conservation Security Program to recognize and support outstanding stewardship of agricultural lands. CSP identifies those “farmers and ranchers who are meeting the highest standards of conservation and environmental management”. In our Yamhill River basin over 500 farms pursued the program. 104 were accepted based on past and current practices. 32 of those were recognized as having practices at the highest level of stewardship. Shea Vineyard was one of the 32.”