“This Is It”: How Christophe Baron Found the Stones
The birth of one of the most distinct terroirs in the world.
Jan de Weerd - Spoken Wines
This will hide itself!
“This Is It”: How Christophe Baron Found the Stones
The birth of one of the most distinct terroirs in the world.
The day before Christophe Baron was to leave for Oregon’s Willamette Valley to purchase land for a vineyard, he climbed into the pickup truck with his friend Scott Byerley who took him into a place no one had planted vines before. What he saw looked nothing like a place for grapes. A vacant plot that looked desolate and scorched. There was no soil to speak of. Only stones — endless, unforgiving stones — scattered across a barren alluvial fan near Milton-Freewater, just over the Oregon border from Walla Walla.
Christophe stepped out, picked up a couple of fist-sized stones, and said three words that would change American wine forever:
“This is it.”
And that decision back in 1996 resulted in what is now known as the Rocks District of Milton-Freewater AVA.
When the Stones Reveal Themselves
Christophe had seen this before.
Not in Washington, but across the great wine regions of the world: the galets roulés of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the granite slopes of Hermitage and Côte-Rôtie, the glacial debris of Mendoza. Again and again, the same truth revealed itself — the most expressive wines came from places where vines struggled, where soils were compromised, rocky, unforgiving.
So when he found himself stumbling onto an alluvial fan formed at the end of the last ice age, he recognized what he saw. Lava-derived basalt stones, rich in iron and manganese, that had been carried down from the Blue Mountains by ancient floods, piled hundreds of feet deep beneath the surface. The stones he was looking for
No farmer would call this generous land.
But Christophe wasn’t looking for generosity.
He was looking for tension.
“If I hadn’t opened that book the night before,” he told us, referring to a photo of the Southern Rhône cobblestones that he had been sharing the night before with his local farmer friend, “I would probably be in the Willamette Valley today crafting Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.”
Instead, instinct intervened.
He changed his plans overnight — abandoning the safety of an established region to create something entirely new, in a place where fruit orchards once stood and vineyards did not.
He didn’t want to follow a path.
He wanted to set one.
Christophe found what he was looking for: lava-derived basalt stones, rich in iron and manganese, carried down by ancient floods. Photo Andrea Johnson.
How an Honest Wine Is Created
Christophe often returns to one phrase when describing his work: honest wine.
“Honest wine starts in the vineyard,” he says. “It’s about being honest with the land. Listening. Not forcing.”
For Baron, that philosophy is not abstract. It translates into biodynamic farming, meticulous attention to detail, and deep respect for the natural rhythms of the place. Christophe’s belief in biodynamics traces back to his student days in Burgundy, after reading about Nicolas Joly and tasting wines farmed conventionally, organically, and biodynamically — blind.
“The biodynamic wines always had more life,” he said.
“More freshness. More tension. More clarity.”
Like the difference between a two-star and three-star Michelin restaurant, the gap isn’t flash. It’s care. Small decisions made consistently, year after year. It is all about the details.
Everything that happens in the cellar exists only to express what has already been earned in the vineyard. Native yeasts ferment spontaneously. No commercial yeast has ever been introduced. Each vintage carries its own microbial voice — its own fingerprint. “The wine speaks for itself,” Christophe says. “We are there for the wine. Not the other way around.”
Taste across Christophe Baron’s wines, and the signature is unmistakable.
The Signature in the Glass: "La Patte"
Taste across Christophe Baron’s wines — No Girls Double Lucky, Horsepower, Cayuse Vineyards, Bionic Frog, Hors Catégorie — and the signature is unmistakable.
They are precise, powerful — but never heavy — savory, layered, and alive. There is lift. There is energy. There is tension held perfectly at the center.
Grenache from Horsepower, planted at extraordinarily high density and cultivated with draft horses, ripens later and at lower sugars. The result is flavor without heaviness — wines that hover rather than sit.
Syrah, the grape that put the Stones on the map, expresses itself with savory depth, mineral edge, and aromatic precision. These are not wines of extraction. They are wines of infusion — tasted daily, adjusted instinctively, pressed before force ever enters the equation.
Across every label and price point, the message remains consistent: place first. Even Double Lucky — intentionally created at a more accessible price point — carries the same stone-driven nuance, just spoken at a softer volume.
“The hand is there,” he said. “But it’s there because of what happens before the grapes ever arrive at the wine studio. Your crop is the shadow of the farmer.” What fascinates us is how this patience coexists with Christophe’s boldest decisions — the ones made in an instant. Cayuse. Hors Catégorie. Horsepower. Each born from a moment of absolute clarity.
If you like to try the wines get on the mailing list now because there is a 'little of a wait'. Depending on the wine anywhere from 7 to 8 years. But like Christophe's wines it takes time and patience, and as he showed us, you got to start somewhere: bionicwines.com. Of course, you can also check with your local wine store and they will be able to find a way to get it.
