Crowley

Crowley Wines was founded in 2005 with a focus on transparent, terroir-driven winemaking. Starting at the source, we favor older clones of Chardonnay Wente and Draper and the classic Wadenswil and Pommard Pinot noir clones due to their late ripening nature and acid retention.

We work with family owned vineyards and prefer cooler, high elevation sites. Our friends and growers are committed to non-irrigated and low impact farming. We are members of the Deep Roots Coalition and our primary vineyard sources are LIVE certified or certified organic. In the winery our highest priority is to create the most direct evidence of both vintage and place while making elegant and exciting wines. This means (wine geek alert!) minimal acid additions, no extraction enzyme, employing native yeasts, extended aging in mostly neutral oak and minimal fining or filtration. We value purity of expression over stylized wines and hold essential the belief that we cannot improve on nature.

History

Hailing from upstate New York, Tyson’s interest in wine was first piqued by an impromptu weekend trip to the Fingerlakes. During this trip, he popped into a winery for a tasting and found himself as intrigued by the production process as the wines themselves. After graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in Operations Management, Tyson blazed a trail to the West Coast. Eager to work in the wine industry, he sent out resumes to a dozen or so wineries in the Willamette Valley. A few phone calls later Tyson landed a job as a cellar hand under winemaker Rob Stuart at Erath.

It was 1995 and Erath was one of the first Oregon wines to be distributed both nationally and internationally. While the work wasn’t glamorous (note: winemaking = cleaning), Tyson loved it. Harvests soon found him zipping around on a fork-lift taking extra care not to run over the eager young interns under his charge as cellar master. Over the course of seven vintages, Tyson absorbed the principles of producing wines under the conditions of Oregon’s unique terroir and set out for a different region.

Tyson arrived in New Zealand at Framingham in 2002 and and worked a Southern Hemisphere vintage. He then returned to Oregon to work double duty alongside his friends Doug Tunell at Brickhouse and Jim Prosser at J.K. Carriere. Tyson was inspired by Doug’s passion for expression and dedication to the land and Jim’s commitment to details and go it alone grit and took those lessons with him to a position at Archery Summit.

Eventually, Tyson landed with Cameron Winery where he worked alongside John Paul as the assistant winemaker for five years. At Cameron Tyson marked the seasons by the work; pruning and bottling in the winter, shoot thinning and labeling in the spring, leaf pulling in the summer and harvesting in the fall. In 2005 Tyson made his first four barrels of Entre Nous Pinot Noir at Cameron. In 2006 he added two more barrels to his program. Finally in 2007, Tyson forged out on his own and moved Crowley Wines’ production to the August Cellars studio where he continues to make the wines today (85 barrels and counting).

Winemaking

Crowley Wines produces 3,000 cases annually. Our small size allows for a hands-on approach from vineyard to barrel. We farm and manage the Four Winds Vineyard and work closely with our team of growers to achieve the uniqueness of each site. At harvest, freshness, lower alcohols, flavor and acidity are the touchstones of our picking decisions. Once that delicate balance is achieved we preserve it throughout the winemaking process, monitoring each cluster down the sorting table and nurturing every tank through natural fermentation to barrel. And then we wait. The winery’s release schedule is influenced by our belief that wine (like many things) benefits from patience. We age our wines for 12-20 months. Our underground barrel room provides optimal storing conditions allowing time for integration and maturity while preserving the wines’ elegance and liveliness well beyond the barrel and into bottle aging.