Orenda (n.)

The Balance of Energy between all things

About Orenda Winery

Xander and Samantha met salsa dancing 10 years ago, just months before Xander left for 3 years volunteering in West Africa. Despite this, they maintained a long-distance connection. Volunteering in West Africa, Xander developed a passion for beekeeping and the environment. In parallel, Samantha continued her studies in chemistry and developing a love of flavors and expression. Seven years and ten thousand miles later, they discovered a life together that found a balance they never thought possible. They discovered Orenda.

About the label

Where some wines focus on the estate or the winemaker, we believe all credit in the beauty of our wine goes to nature. Therefore, we have stripped away the square white label and introduced a circular image representing the cycle of nature needed to support a wine from grape to glass.

The imagery on our label was produced by Gregory Euclide (https://www.gregoryeuclide.com/), whose art was made world famous for its appearance on Bon Iver’s 2011 Grammy award winning album (https://boniver.org/audio/bon-iver/). Greg’s art is renowned for its connection to our natural world and we were honored to feature his custom art inspired by our winery and our mission to bring orenda to winemaking.

Where we source

Wine should maintain a balance between bold and subtle flavors. Our mission is to find grapes that express complexity. To execute this vision, we have partnered with some of the highest elevation vineyards in Washington state. High elevation provides a cool climate with late ripening fruit. This allows the grapes more time to mature, making wine less bold and significantly more subtle than wines from warmer regions. When aged in small French oak barrels, the results are complex, dynamic flavors reminiscent of an old-world style rarely found in Washington wines.

We have partnerships with vineyards in both Yakima Valley (Elephant Mountain, Dineen and Konnowac) and Columbia Valley (Stillwater Creek). These vineyards feature some of the oldest Malbec and Petite Verdot vines in the state of Washington (Konnowac) and have been recognized in both Wine Spectator (Stillwater Creek) and Wine Enthusiast (Dineen) as the source of top 100 wines in the world.

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