wine that tastes like here.

One of the clearest expressions of who we are and what we believe at Burnt Hill didn’t start in the vineyard — it started in the woods.

Back in 2017, we were walking through the forest on this farm — staring up at these towering Ash trees — trees that had been growing here long before we showed up. And we knew their days were numbered.

The Emerald Ash Borer had arrived, and with it came the quiet heartbreak of watching something old and beautiful slip away. You could see it happening across Maryland — whole stands of Ash trees dying and collapsing into the forest floor.

Standing there, we asked ourselves: what does stewardship look like in this moment?

We couldn’t save the trees — not in the way we wanted to — but we could honor them. We could let them live on in a new form, right here, in the wines grown alongside their roots.

That’s when this crazy idea started to take shape — what if we could transform these Ash trees into vessels for fermenting and aging our wines? Not just as a creative reuse project, but as a way to tell a deeper story about the history of this land.

We reached out to our friends at Foeder Crafters — the only cooperages willing (or maybe crazy enough) to take on a project like this — and together we built our first three Ashwood foeders.

At the time, it felt like an experiment. Today, it feels like one of the most important things we’ve ever done.

As a farmer, this project has always been about connection for me — about terroir in the truest sense. If we say we want wine to taste like this place, why would we import every part of the process from somewhere else? Why wouldn’t the trees that grew alongside the vines have just as much right to shape the wine as the soil beneath them?

But when we pulled that first wine out of the Ash foeder — the texture, the aromatic lift, the energy — that’s when my sister Lisa, our winemaker, knew we were onto something even more profound.

Lisa sees the world through the lens of chemistry and microbiology — how little invisible things shape flavor and structure and feeling in a wine. And for her, these Ash foeders unlocked an entirely new layer of expression.

Fermenting and aging wine in Ash introduced a different microbial environment — native yeast and bacteria interacting with the wood in ways we hadn’t experienced before. The wines were textural, lifted, elegant — but what really stood out was this soft, almost haunting earthiness layered beneath the fruit. A whisper of mushroom, of forest floor, of quiet woods after a rain.

Unlike oak, which tends to shout vanilla and toast, Ash speaks softly. And it speaks of this place.

Lisa talks about the way Ash has a slower oxygen permeability, allowing the wines to evolve gently, integrating flavors over time without overpowering the fruit. It’s subtle. It’s refined. And it’s entirely unlike anything else we’ve tasted.

Since then, we’ve expanded the project — exploring other native hardwoods from our old-growth forests: American Black Cherry, Elm, Hickory, White Oak. Each species has its own grain, its own aroma, its own quiet fingerprint waiting to show up in the wine.

We don’t know exactly what to expect — and honestly, that’s what makes it so exciting.

Cherry might bring a touch of wild sweetness. Elm might lend structure. Hickory might surprise us completely. And that’s the point.

Farming regeneratively has always been about diversity for us — in the soil, in the vineyard, in the orchard, in the animals we raise. So why not in the cellar too?

Every tree we work with tells a story. A story of this ridge, this forest, this moment in time. Some of these trees stood here for 150 years. Now they stand again — in a new form — holding the wines grown in the same soil their roots once touched.

It’s a long-arc project. One tree, one cask, one bottle at a time.

But when I picture the future of Burnt Hill — long tables on the hilltop, glasses raised, wines poured from vessels built from these woods — it feels like the fullest expression of everything we’ve been working toward.

Wine that doesn’t just taste like Burnt Hill.

Wine that is Burnt Hill.