Page 131 - Southern Oregon Magazine Summer 2022

We started the tour by enjoying tastings of
their recent releases including the 2021
Spiral, Viognier, Grenache, and Syrah paired
with delicious wood-fired pizza prepared by
Chef Tim Payne.

A little over a year after acquiring Cowhorn,
Mini and her team continue to expand upon
the organic and biodynamic practices put in
place by the former owners. They are cur-
rently in the process of converting much of
the equipment from gas to electric. I asked
Mini to elaborate. “It isn’t necessarily a ben-
efit to the wine or winery, but rather to the
property as a whole and of course the planet.
At the center of who we are, what we do
and the philosophies we live by is the idea of
farming for the future and restoring health to
our land. By converting our heavy machin-
ery to electric, we are, well, acting on what
we preach! Additionally, not everything will
be electric as that is not possible given cer-
tain equipment and machinery required for
winemaking. Our goal is to convert what we
can to electric and that mainly falls within
the vineyard category/equipment: tractors,
ATVs, forklifts, etc. Our Tasting Room is run
almost completely by solar. We offset a large
percentage of our entire property power bill
with our solar panels and plan to add more in
the coming years.”
COW HORNS AND CRYSTALS

I was curious to learn more about biody-
namics, especially the use of cow horns and
crystals.

As we walked the vineyards, Mini shared
more about the #500 (horn manure) and
#501 (horn silica) process and preparation
critical to biodynamic farming and the name-
sake for the property. The #500 is a spray
made from organic cow manure stuffed in
cow horns and buried underground through-
out the winter. A tea rich in microbes is then
prepared from the ingredients and used to
fertilize the vineyard soil during bud break.
The #501 spray follows and is created by
grinding quartz crystals found on the estate
water. This silica solution is used to coat the
vines to help activate photosynthesis and pre-
vent disease.

Mini and her team plan to go deeper into
regenerative farming and permaculture.

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