cynthian vineyards & top-grafting
Cynthian Vineyards sits above Dallas, Oregon in the Van Duzer Corridor AVA — a wind-swept Willamette Valley site where cooling ocean air creates the kind of balance and structure that makes great wine possible. In this video, vineyard GM Lane Kinkade and Kate Arnold Wines owner Jean Arnold walk through top-grafting, a technique that transitions existing vines to new varietals while preserving the power of an established root system. It's how Cynthian is evolving with intention — and how our upcoming 2025 Cynthian Vineyards Gamay Noir is taking shape.
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Jean: So the cross-grafting, how does it work, brother? I’ve gotta stop calling it cross-grafting.
Lane: Yeah, top-grafting. Top-grafting is basically just using the roots of the pre-existing plant and we're completely changing the variety. So it's transitioned from Pinot Noir, a 777 clone, to now an entirely different varietal. So basically, they're coming into our Pinots that we lovingly taken care of for 15 years and brutally saw off the top of them. They have this really amazing knife work where they're very controlled.
Jean: The notches are unbelievable, artisanal.
Lane: A machine, if you spent 100 years training, could not do what these guys can do. It's an incredible amount of talent.
They're then, you know, grafting them at the top part, right just above the cut. And then essentially we're painting some sealant on the top so that it's not going to be infected.
Jean: Reduces moisture exposure?
Lane: Absolutely, yeah. Cause you've hacked off the top, right? Which is really exposing it to the elements. We're still getting rain in this season, so what we really don't want to have is rot penetrate throughout and kill our 15-year-old plants. They're at their most vulnerable time. It's the most scared that we've been at the vineyard, but we're really excited about it because it means that we can offer more variety of wine through our products as well as to the winemakers that buy grapes from us.