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At WillaKenzie Estate, we believe great wine starts with great care—for the land, for our community, and for future generations. Nestled in the Willamette Valley, our mix of elevations, soils, and microclimates offers unparalleled diversity, which we carefully nurture through best-in-class sustainability practices.
Our commitment to sustainability isn’t just a philosophy—it’s the guiding principle behind everything we do. From upholding trusted, certified sustainable winemaking and viticultural practices to adopting innovative eco-friendly techniques, here are the top 10 ways we strive to protect our environment while crafting award-winning wines.
LIVE-Certified: Setting the Benchmark in Sustainable Viticulture and Winemaking
WillaKenzie Estate was the first winery in Oregon to achieve LIVE certification (Low Input Viticulture and Enology). Member #001, to be exact. LIVE is a certification of environmentally and socially responsible winegrowing in the Pacific Northwest. Think of it as the gold standard for certified sustainable viticulture and winemaking.
This prestigious certification means more than just low-impact practices—it’s about preserving and enhancing biodiversity, protecting native habitats, and fostering a healthier environment for our soil, plants, wildlife, and people alike.
Our certified sustainable commitments don’t end at the vineyard; our winery is also LIVE-certified, ensuring sustainable winemaking practices at every step of the process. This includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions, minimizing water and energy use, maintaining robust worker safety standards, and being a good neighbor in our community.
Every year, WillaKenzie Estate conducts a thorough assessment of its vineyards and winery to uphold the demanding requirements for LIVE certification, with an onsite audit by LIVE every third year to continue to be certified sustainable. By meeting and exceeding LIVE’s benchmarks, we’re not just creating better quality wines but safeguarding the natural beauty of our Willamette Valley home for generations to come.
Salmon-Safe Certified: Supporting Our Watershed
Healthy rivers and streams are the lifeblood of Oregon's natural environment. That’s why WillaKenzie is proud to be Salmon-Safe Certified. Operated in partnership with LIVE, the Salmon-Safe certification for vineyards focuses on reducing water runoff, protecting water quality, and enhancing habitats for native species—including the iconic salmon. We’re happy to share that we made LIVE’s 2025 shortlist for Hero of Salmon due to the amount of ecological infrastructure we have at the estate!
Our priority is to ensure we save water and that the water leaving our estate contributes to a thriving watershed, benefiting both wildlife and the community. Our hilltop irrigation pond provides water for the vines during the growing season, and our farming practices prioritize eco-friendly irrigation and soil-protection methods. For example, we use a “pressure chamber” to measure the water status of our grapevines week by week and block by block, irrigating only when absolutely necessary, and we do not use herbicides.
Protecting Biodiversity Across our Estate
At WillaKenzie, 75% of our 420-acre estate remains untouched and dedicated to its natural habitat. While only 25% of our land is planted to vines, the rest is alive with forests, wildflowers, pastures, pollinating bees, and an adorable longhorn herd.
This commitment ensures that our estate is more than just a vineyard—it’s a thriving ecosystem. You’ll witness longhorn cattle grazing and mitigating fire risk, bees pollinating wildflower meadows, and native birds darting through the fir trees. It all comes together to create a dynamic, balanced environment, which enhances not only the health of our vines but the vibrant, sensory experience of visiting our winery.
Cover Cropping for Healthy Soil
The health of our soil is crucial to both our vines and the grapes they produce. That’s why we’ve embraced the practice of cover cropping—planting clover, fava beans, oats, and radishes. This is one method we’re adopting as part of our transition to regenerative farming practices. Cover crops naturally enrich the soil with nutrients, prevent erosion, reduce the need for tilling, and help aerate the earth, encouraging the vines to send their roots deep. Cover crops also allow the soil to sequester nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.
Because cover crops compete with the vines for water and resources, we plant them between every other vineyard row—it’s all about balance. These crops add to our estate’s biodiversity by feeding local pollinators like bees and butterflies while providing a safe habitat for wildlife.
Cover crops are as good for the planet as they are for your palate. They create healthier soil and healthier vines, resulting in balanced, more flavorful wines that capture the character of our land in every sip.
Bee-Friendly Practices
Since 2022, we’ve proudly welcomed over 30,000 bees to the WillaKenzie family. Housed in two hives (a beehive buddy system) in our Clairière parcel, these buzzing workers play a vital role pollinating wildflowers and fruit trees on our estate and in the surrounding community.
From our sensory wildflower garden to local orchards, the bees not only improve biodiversity but also contribute to the beauty of our estate. While vines don’t require pollination, the bees are an essential part of our mission to protect and uplift the environment.
Longhorn Cattle for Sustainable Land Management
To further foster biodiversity and protect our land, we graze longhorn cattle on our estate pastures. These majestic animals help mitigate fire risks, prevent soil erosion, and improve soil fertility—all while adding to the ecological diversity of our estate.
The sight of these gentle giants is just one more reason why WillaKenzie offers a unique and immersive experience for visitors—especially in the spring, when the newborn calves arrive! We love our longhorns so much that they are featured on our reusable wine tote bags that you can buy in our tasting room (or receive for free if you are a member).
Solar-Powered Sustainable Winemaking
Sustainability at WillaKenzie isn’t limited to the vineyard—it extends to how we power our winemaking operations. Our 151kW solar panel arrays provide nearly 50% of our winery’s energy needs, producing 200 megawatts of clean energy annually.
But we’re not stopping there. Plans are underway to expand our solar capabilities to eventually power 100% of our estate’s needs. From switching to electric forklifts and driving our all-electric Ford F-150 (affectionately known as “Sparky”), we continually search for greener ways to operate.
Gravity-Fed Winery Design
Our gravity-fed winery design is as innovative as it is eco-friendly. Instead of relying on energy-intensive electric pumps, we use gravity to gently move grapes through the winemaking process.
This method not only reduces energy consumption, but it’s also gentler on the fruit, preserving the vibrant aromas, flavors, and textures that make our wines so special.
Lighter Bottles, Lower Carbon Footprint
Starting with our 2022 vintages, we introduced lighter-weight bottles for our Willamette Valley Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. This simple yet impactful change reduced our packaging and shipping CO2 emissions by 23% annually. The biggest contributor to carbon emissions in the wine industry is making and transporting glass bottles, so we are laser-focused on making progress in this area while maintaining the quality and integrity of our wines.
An Eco-Friendly Guest Experience
Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do—including how we welcome you to WillaKenzie Estate. From tasting menus printed on 100% post-consumer paper to reusable wine club tote bags—which vastly reduce our cardboard usage and save trees—our eco-friendly tasting room showcases our commitment to reducing waste.
Our water fountain alone saves thousands of plastic bottles every year, creating a greener experience for all our guests. This conscious design ensures you don’t just taste our wines—you see and feel our sustainability efforts during every visit.
Savor the Taste of Sustainability
By choosing to buy WillaKenzie Estate wines, you are supporting these 10 sustainability winemaking, viticulture, and tasting room practices and helping to preserve our diverse estate for future generations. These practices aren’t just better for the planet, they culminate in higher quality, more intensely flavorful wines. Winemaker Erik Kramer enables our varied terroirs to shine through the wines by gently shepherding the wines into fruition—and bottling our 2022 single-parcel Pinot Noirs and pinnacle wine, La Crête Pinot Noir, without fining or filtration. The immense beauty you see around you when you’re at our estate is what you taste in your glass.
Experience the beauty of sustainability at WillaKenzie Estate. Join us for a tasting, take an ATV tour of our eco-friendly vineyard, or become a wine club member to support sustainable winemaking at its finest.
