Located in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, within the Van Duzer Corridor AVA, Johan Vineyards is an 85-acre certified Biodynamic® estate winery. Our goal is to create a self-sustained holistic farm system with the energy to produce an honest expression of itself, to share with others.

The Biodynamic Approach &
The Farm Individuality


The fundamental principles of Biodynamic farming emerged from a series of lectures and conversations led by Rudolf Steiner, held in June 1924. In response to his community’s concern for a change in nutrition during the rise of industrial agriculture, Steiner outlined a unified approach to agriculture that relates the ecology of the earth-organism to that of the entire cosmos.

Much like Steiner, we see our vineyard as an individual organism that will eventually showcase its own identity through the fruit it develops. Biodynamic farming combines the knowledge of premium viticulture practices with an understanding on how to treat the vineyard and its surrounding areas in order to achieve desired long-term farming results. We use the preparations 500-508 as prescribed by Steiner, which are a range of homeopathic applications to promote healthy and holistic growth.

In addition, we maintain over 30 acres as a biodiversity preserve, which includes virgin oak savannah and biologically active riparian zones.

the van duzer corridor ava

Johan Vineyards is one of five bonded wineries within the newly established Van Duzer Corridor AVA. The unique growing conditions within our viticultural area yield wine grapes with a compelling expression of Oregon’s sense of place. Our calcareous sedimentary soils with non-native erratic granite contrast our easterly neighbors’ iron-rich volcanic soils; we see a greater pH buffering capacity in our soils conducive to a healthy and diverse soil microbiome. The resulting wines from our site have exotic and complex aromatics with balancing acidic structure and tension. In addition to the soil characteristics, our site is affected by the unapologetic and persistent coastal winds. Daily, the sun heats the valley floor and causes a “heat-sink” effect. This differential draws maritime air through the coast range, directly across our site. Annually, we see 30-40% greater daily wind speeds compared to our neighbors in the north Willamette Valley.