Finding peace in caring for the land

Oregon native Doug Tunnell spent nearly two decades covering war zones for CBS News, much of that time in Lebanon, Iran, and Chad. Stationed later in Germany and France, he fell in love with wine. And when he learned that a prominent French winemaker had bought acreage in Oregon, he decided to follow suit and returned to Oregon to found a small farm in the Willamette Valley.

What originally started as a sad little hazelnut farm choked with chemicals was cleared and turned into an entirely organically-farmed vineyard. Doug’s fruit was in high demand and his connection to the land deepened. His light-on-the-land approach was a deliberate counterpoint to the ravages that he had seen war wreak on the landscape in the Mideast. Eventually moving beyond organic, the Brick House Vineyard became one of the first biodynamic vineyards in Oregon.

Doug explains: “While the organic practices are largely passive, the Biodynamic practices are pro-active. They feed our farm and our imagination. We have come to regard the farm as a holistic organism – much like the human body — built on interdependent relationships that, when in good health, act and react in harmonious balance.”