A wide stretch of round river stones lay exposed to the sun — a field most people would have overlooked. It was 1996, and Christophe Baron, a young vigneron originally from Champagne, was on his way to Oregon to invest in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. A friend, seeing the photo in a book he was carrying of the stony vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, told him there was land “like that here.”