A new Old World
A snap of line across muscled shoulders. A purposeful lift of the head. A strain of harness leading a kick of dust and a jolt of metal. Acre by acre, row by row, the plow scrapes through the stones as steel-shod hooves crash heavily to earth.
Draft horses, who put the horsepower in Horsepower, were first domesticated in ancient Egypt. Though their armor-clad ancestors carried Medieval knights into battle, that legendary power was eventually harnessed for more peaceful purposes.
By the 19th century, draft horses had transformed farming practices in Europe and the United States, and by the early 20th century thousands of horses were working on American farms.*
At Christophe Baron’s family vineyards in the Champagne region of France, it wasn’t until 1957 that his grandfather’s last horse was finally retired. His name was Bijou, which means “jewel” in French, and his legacy has been reborn at Horsepower.
Christophe Baron, the pioneering vigneron, not only established successful vineyards in the Stones of the Walla Walla Valley and introduced biodynamic farming methods but also revived an historical tradition—use of horses for cultivation. The first horse, a Belgian draft horse, arrived in 2008, with the second following a year later. Today, these horses, along with their teamsters, cultivate tightly spaced, 19th-century-style vineyards that only they can navigate, using specialized farming equipment crafted by a blacksmith in Burgundy, France.
That’s why, on any given day in any of our three vineyards, the only sound you’re likely to hear is the hoofbeat of tradition, played and preserved on the stones of Horsepower.