Liska Wines, Willamette Valley
Washington DC regional sales only
| Country & Region | Willamette Valley, Oregon |
| Producer | Chris Butler and Draga Zheleva |
| Founded | 2021 |
| Website | www.liskawine.com/ |
At our first harvest we did together in Germany, that’s where my true love of wine happened. I had a lot of German Rieslings, a lot of acidic wines, and I was like, okay, this is what I like and what I want to make in the future.
—Draga Zheleva
Chris Butler and Bulgaria’s Draga Zheleva met at UC Davis, where they were in the same viticulture & enology masters program. Chris got the wine bug through home brewing in California’s bay area, which led him down a rabbit hole of science studies and a double major in food science and microbiology at Oregon State. After harvests in Washington and New Zealand, he got into UC Davis. Draga grew up surrounded by home winemaking in Bulgaria and came to the US on a student visa, where she studied marine biology in Juneau, Alaska. Her real love was agriculture, however, and a professor in Juneau encouraged her to apply to Davis. It was a propitious decision.
Following the masters program, they worked a summer at the lower Mosel’s Heymann-Lowenstein winery, which proved to be foundational in terms not just of a style of wine that spoke to them—acid driven and lower alcohol—but of the role of wine in culture, society and family.
After Germany, they worked at wineries in western Australia before deciding that Oregon and its cooler climate was where they wanted to put down roots. Once there, they split up, with Chris taking a harvest job with Chehalem Winery in the north while Draga took one at Wooldridge Winery in the Applegate Valley in the south to see which area would best suit the style of wine they wanted to make. The Willamette Valley won, and they moved to McMinnville
Just before the 2019 harvest, Chris joined the winemaking team at Cristom, headed up by Dan Estrin, who himself had only started a month earlier after a 7-year stint at Littorai Wines. The two men were highly conscious of the fact that Cristom was a successful winery with an established style, and from 2019 onward they have worked together to fine tune that style and its success. In 2024, Chris became Associate Winemaker.
It was during Lockdown that Draga and Chris conceived of Liska, a Bulgarian term of endearment for a female fox and the name of their rescue German Shepherd (in Bulgarian, the proper pronunciation is lee-ska). Cristom offered its facilities, and with the ’21 vintage Liska took flight: 450 cases of Riesling, Gruner, Gewurtz, Gamay and Syrah. Originally, they had only contracted for Riesling and Gamay, and when in July the other varieties unexpectedly became available, they gulped and said yes, which terrified Chris and further enlivened Draga. She was pregnant at the time, and it was the busiest harvest either of them has ever worked.
These days they work with just over half a dozen vineyard sources, mostly in the Eola-Amity AVA. All are dry-farmed and most are no-till and farmed organically. Pick dates are chosen with an eye for acid-driven wines with lower ABVs, while cellar practices are very much hands off and dictated by good science.
By vintage 2024, production reached just over 1,000 cases, which is about as big as Chris and Draga want Liska to be for the near term. The labels are Draga’s—they are based on her linocuts, or relief prints carved out of linoleum blocks, and each has a relationship to its wine.
The Wines
| Wine | Blend | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Heceta White | a vintage blend | Heceta (he-sita) is Liska’s calling card, a laser-focused representation of each vintage in the Willamette Valley. The name comes from Heceta Head on the Oregon coast, a favorite spot for Chris and Draga. The label’s artwork reflects the salinity of the wine and the tide pools that sit at the base of this headland. Ferments are indigenous in barrel and the wine is aged for ~5 months in neutral 228L barrel, 300L hogsheads and 500L puncheons. Tech sheet from the domaine here. |
| Grüner Veltliner | Grüner Veltliner | Tasted blind, you'd be in the Austrian hills. This is a racy yet rich Grüner laced with white pepper and lime. The source is primarily the Holme Vineyard in the Eola-Amity hills supplemented in some years with fruit from the Illahe Vineyard in the Mount Pisgah Polk County AVA. The wine ferments spontaneously in barrel, undergoes partial ML and is aged in neutral 500L barrels for ~11 months. |
| Riesling Royer Vineyard | Riesling | Chris and Draga are huge fans of serious dry German Riesling. Eola-Amity’s Royer Vineyard, with its high altitude, rocky volcanic soils and direct exposure to the coastal winds of the Van Duzer Corridor, is one of the best Riesling sites in Oregon. Its wines consistently have stone-fruit aromatics and concentrated acidity all knit into a fabric of salinity. Native ferments in barrel without malo and aged on its fine lees in neutral oak hogsheads and puncheons for ~10 months. Tech sheet from the domaine here. |
| Gamay Noir | Gamay Noir | Gamay from the Willamette can be bold and structural or delicate and subtly savory. This marries those extremes into bright red fruit, crunchy tannins and refreshing acidity. It’s layered, chillable and delicious. Sources are Eola-Amity’s Bjornson Vineyard, planted in volcanic soils at 450-550 feet on a southeastern slope in 2006; and Willamette’s Pamar Vineyard in the Van Duzer Corridor, planted in marine sediments at 300-550 feet on east-southeasterly slopes in 2019. Some whole cluster according to the vintage, native ferments, semi-carbonic and gentle extractions. Aged ~10 months on its lees in neutral barrel and bottled without fining or filtration. Tech sheet from the domaine here. |
| Mondeuse | Mondeuse | From the Pamar Vineyard in the windy Van Duzer corridor, here you have a pale rendition of this Alpine variety. It's a savory wine of pithy elegance. Ferments were native in neutral barrel, and the wine aged on its lees for nine months in those barrels. |
| Syrah Symbion Vineyard | Syrah | Syrah is exceedingly rare in the Willamette for good reason: it doesn’t always ripen. When it does, it’s a special wine with flavors of black pepper, brined olives, cranberries and smoked meat—a feast for the senses. Cristom’s founding winemaker Steve Doerner planted Symbion in 2001 in volcanic soils at 400-500 feet on an east-facing slope in the Eola-Amity Hills. This comes from a half-acre of Syrah, made with native ferments, a proportion of whole cluster according to the vintage, and aged on its fine lees for ~18 months in neutral barrels. Bottled without fining or filtration. Tech sheet from the domaine here. |