Then, in 1989, Chambers shifted to the production side of wine making, joining Chateau Benoit in the Willamette Valley as Director of Marketing. As part of his job, Chambers managed grape contracts, which is how he found his present vineyard in August of that year. “I visited here and I fell in love with the place,” he says. “I thought it was magical.” Chambers casually mentioned to the owner that he’d love to have the property should he ever decide to sell. The owner called him just four months later.

During the summer of 1990, the Chambers family moved from Eugene to the southern Willamette Valley, and everyone took on the task of learning to drive a tractor and farm their land. “I’ve taught myself all about viticulture, soil science, and soil microbiology,” says Chambers. “When I want to know something, I get obsessive about it.” Through his research, Chambers learned about biodynamic wine making and decided to try his hand at it. “When I was a young man,” he says, “I played the bassoon because everyone else played the clarinet. It’s part of my moniker, subvert the dominant paradigm, break the rules.”

Chambers views the philosophy and practices intuited in 1924 by the founder of biodynamic agriculture, Rudolf Steiner, as a guide. In the last chapter of his lectures, Steiner emphasizes that biodynamic practices aren’t the final answer. “Take this information and play with it. Experiment. Push the envelope,” is how Chambers interprets his mentor’s words on the subject.

Today, Resonance is one of 40 certified biodynamic vineyards in the United States. In addition to meeting all the standards of organic farming, Chambers is required to employ additional agricultural methods that include botanical teas, compost preparations, and following an astrological calendar to determine times for planting, spraying, and harvesting.

The canines stretch and rise as we stride atop a gentle slope to Resonance Vineyard’s youthful block, a mix of two Pinot Noir clones, Wadensvil and Pommard, that were planted on seven acres in 2006 and will be picked for the first time this fall. Chambers sweeps one arm to his left, orchestrating the trees, and notes, “A lot of our brush here is wild cherries—see that red peaking through?”

Countless Oregon farms, including Resonance, have transitioned from fruit orchards, hazelnut farms, or wildly rampant blackberry briars into vineyard rows. Some believe wild briar and pear essence lingers in the aromatics and taste of the wines. “I love this notion Matt Kramer [wine writer] has of somewhereness to describe terroir,” says Chambers. Terroir is a French term constituting a taste of place. “I really do believe that at the pinnacle of wine making, we achieve an expression of place.”

Chambers waves to the sky as we walk on, rocky dirt crumbling beneath our feet, crossing the ancient Yamhill and Willakenzie soil, to a block of older vines. “This block was planted in 1987,” he says. “It’s 21 years old and a pure block of the original Wadensvil Pinot Noir rootstock, coveted and rare.”

Pointing ahead, Chambers notes a radionic tower and then we step toward a barrel compost, which provides (along with three other barrels) the only fertilizer used at Resonance. Chambers kneels on a grassy patch, lifting a board off the top, as the hounds and I crowd around neatly circled light gray bricks, framing a beautiful pile of deep, dark compost. “Basically, a mixture of cow manure from the cows you saw at the bottom of the hill, with nettle, horsetail, and egg shells,” he explains. (The other compost barrels hold preparations containing different medicinal plants: yarrow, chamomile, and dandelion, to comply with biodynamic practices.) After it’s decomposed for a year, the compost is spread under the vines, building structure and microbial activity in the soil.

We then weave through old vine pommard, planted in 1981, which is gnarled and twisted like coastal cypress trees bent to the wind. The grape leaves arch and tilt toward the sunlight, slow dancing to warm rays. The perfume of a grape vine captivates—it’s subtle and mysterious, yet intoxicatingly seductive.

“Stick your nose in a blossom and breathe deeply,” Chambers suggests. “Can you smell it? I’ve always struggled to describe the perfume of the grape vine: spicy, sweet—obviously, it’s floral.” After a few moments of silence, he continues: “It smells like a sultan’s princess.”