David Schildknecht writes: "In 1988, CBS foreign correspondent Doug Tunnell – having picked up a love of wine and then a viticultural itch during professional assignments in France and Germany, and heard with excitement about the commitment the Drouhins were making to Willamette wine growing – began prospecting by proxy the countryside where he had grown up. In 1990, he “retired” from the stressful globetrotting that had made him internationally familiar to pursue another labor-intensive vocation, growing Pinot Noir with both environmental sensitivity and the highest qualitative ideals, on a southeast-facing, basalt-based bowl very near which Harry Peterson-Nedry was farming and, by the time Tunnell arrived, Michael Etzel had just begun establishing the Beaux Freres Vineyard. By 1995, Tunnell had completed most of his intended planting, having established a good base of ungrafted Pommard Selection Pinot Noir, but soon thereafter also was able to take advantage of the clonal material which was then just becoming available from Dijon, and which he grafted to phylloxera-resistant rootstock as a precaution. Tunnel’s hands-on research has made him one of this country’s prime inspirations and go-to authorities on the practice of biodynamic viticulture, a subject on which – even to a skeptic like me – he comes off as anything but superstitious or doctrinaire."