Published October 23, 2025
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At Winter’s Hill Estate we nurture a mix of grass and flowering plants in between the rows of vines. These plantings are referred to as Cover Crops, and they provide a wide range of benefits:
- Through the rainy winter season, they encourage rainfall to soak into the soil without causing erosion.
- Mushrooms and other symbiotic fungi facilitate the capture of carbon from the atmosphere as plants grow, die, and decay over the years.
- They provide habitat for worms and other invertebrates that make nutrients available to the vines and other plants.
I could go on and on about how cover crops develop healthy soil systems…
Our Seasonal Strategy
When we develop a new vineyard, we need to balance the many benefits of cover crops with the competition for water and nutrients with the young vines. In that situation, we plant temporary cover crops in the fall, then cultivate them in the spring. That protects the soil through the rainy season, but allows the vines to grow strong during the summer.
The new vineyard next to the winery has been growing for three years, and it is now strong enough to compete with a permanent cover crop. In mid September, we prepared the soil and used a specialized seed drill from the Yamhill County Soil and Water Conservation District to plant a diverse mix of grass, clover, and other flowering plants from Buzz Seeds.
With the first rains of the season, those seeds began to germinate, and now we can see the rows of new growth developing in the vineyard. (See the picture above.) Over time, the plants will spread over the vineyard floor, helping us to maintain healthy soil for years to come.
Growing in More Than One Way
I love to see the green sprouts in the field, and I am also happy to see growth in the number of states where we can legally ship our wine. (See what I did there?) The United States has a dizzying array of state-by-state regulations that govern shipments of wine, and we hate to disappoint customers who are unable to receive our wine.
After a lot of work behind the scenes, we are pleased to announce that we are able to ship to many additional states that we could not ship to in the past. (Ohio and Pennsylvania, I’m looking at you!)
If you have friends and family in any of the newly available states, we’d greatly appreciate you sharing Winter’s Hill wines with them this holiday season!
