Hedges Family Estate is the winery that said “no.” The 20-year-old winery farms more than 100 acres of vines in Washington’s most prestigious Red Mountain appellation, so you’d think that the Hedges family could just sit back, make wine, and rake in the good press. Instead, three years ago they stopped submitting their wines to the critics for scoring, and this month will begin a three-year process to certify the winery’s operations as biodynamic.
Grading wines on a 100-point scale may feed into the American need to rank everything, but the practice most often results in wines that are manufactured to win over the council of tastemakers rather than ones that reflect the place they come from. Wineries hate playing the game to get the good scores but advertise their high marks like crazy to increase sales.
The biodynamic certification that the Hedges are seeking parallels organic certification, focusing on the stewardship of the land and the shunning of synthetic pesticides and chemicals. But biodynamics goes further into philosophical realms, treating a farm (or winery) as a living organism, using only what is native to that particular terrain to sustain, cure, and grow. If Hedges Family Estates earns certification, it will become one of only two wineries in the state to farm biodynamically, along with Walla Walla’s Cayuse Vineyards.
So what does biodynamic farming have to do with wine scores? Absolutely nothing—and that’s the point. It seems counterintuitive for an established business to seek out biodynamic certification, because farming biodynamically isn’t cheap. But by taking both steps, the Hedges are making a statement about their role as winemakers and grape growers: To grow the best product of their land, they don’t need an outlander’s opinion of what that product should be. The Hedges are bucking the trend of brand building and switching to marketing the romance of wine, playing to that dreamy idea of a château that the phrase “family estate” conjures up.
“We’re trying to reduce our image margin and increase our poetic margin,” says Christophe Hedges, who oversees the winery’s national sales. “We’re not traded publicly, so we can do what we want. It’s very liberating.” Hedges may be one of Washington’s biggest wineries, producing around 65,000 cases a year. “But on the big stage,” says Christophe, “we’re still a small family-owned winery trying to compete with conglomerations and the other little guys.”
There are kinks to work out, and the Hedges want to document the certification process on their Web site, sharing the details to cultivate the romance of what they’re doing and help dispel false impressions about biodynamics. Right now, the family has planted a lavender field to increase the bee population, and they’re picking up a herd of miniature sheep (too short to reach the grapes) to graze and tidy the vineyards.
As consumers become increasingly concerned with where and how their food is grown, products touting labels like “biodynamic” or “organic” are coming into greater demand. However, using biodynamics as a viable marketing strategy is no empty promise on the label. It commits a company to the quality of its product above all other monetary concerns. A winery is a farm, after all. Striving for sustainability can guarantee the future of a farm—and a family—when striving for profit alone cannot.
