Results Partners / Matt Novak
Vineyard Manager

Results Partners (RP) has been developing and managing vineyards in the NW Willamette Valley since 1980. In the ensuing years RP has grown to become the largest and most comprehensive vineyard development and management company in the state of Oregon. RP has vast experience in vineyard assessment and development, as well as in all forms of sustainable vineyard management practices. As with all great companies RP’s continued success is due to its experienced, knowledgeable, and dedicated employees.

Matt Novak, President of RP grew up in and around vineyards in St. Helena, California. During the summer months when his childhood peers were bussing tables for work Matt was instead working in various vineyards throughout Napa. After graduating from Oregon State University Matt spent the next four years working and travelling in South America, including service with the Peace Corps in Ecuador and culminating with a one year contract to aid in the development of a crown jewel vineyard for Nicolás Catena in Tupungato, Mendoza, Argentina. Upon returning to the U.S. from Argentina Matt enrolled in and subsequently completed a M.S. in Viticulture at the University of California, Davis. Post U.C. Davis Matt worked in vineyard development and management with David Abreu and Franciscan, both in Napa, before moving to Oregon to join RP with his wife Stephanie and two daughters, Casey and Claire.

Matt and his team at Results Partners began working with Winderlea® in May 2008.

Philippe Armenier
Biodynamic® Consultant

Philippe Armenier is considered to be one of the foremost practitioners or Biodynamic® farming in the world. Based upon the writings of Rudolph Steiner, who is best known in this country as the philosphical founder of the Waldorf® Schools, Biodynamic® agriculture is a whole farm approach that combines intense natural practices commonly found in organic farming along with the addition of unique preparations intended to stimulate plant and biological life as well as to bring the farm in to balance with the natural rthyms of the earth, the sun, the moon, and the other planets. “Biodynamic agriculture is a way of living, working and relating to nature and the vocations of agriculture based on good common-sense practices, a consciousness of the uniqueness of each landscape, and the inner development of each and every practitioner.” (quoted from the website of the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association – www.biodynamics.com/biodynamics).

Philippe’s education in winegrowing came at the feet of his father, Elie Armenier at his family’s vineyard and winery in Chateauneuf du Pape, Domaine deMarcoux. Philippe began sharing vineyard management and winemaking responsibilities with his father in 1973 and took over in 1980 upon his father’s passing. Dissatisfied with the results of decades of chemical farming which had robbed the soil of its life, Philippe looked for alternatives. His wife, pianist Brigitte Armenier http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/armenier, gave him a copy of Steiner’s, Agriculture Course, a series of lectures given by Steiner to a group of farmers at Schloss Koberwitz in Germany. Like Philippe, they had discovered their soils and crops to be failing after years of chemical farming. Philippe converted his vineyards to Biodynamic® practices beginning in the late 1980’s. The results were obvious in the vineyard, where the soils sprung to life, as well as in the winery. The estate and the wines it produced rose dramatically in stature over the coming decade and now Domaine de Marcoux is consistently considered one of the best wine producers in Chateauneuf du Pape.

Eager to spend more time studying and teaching others about Biodynamic® farming, Philippe, Brigitte, and their children left France for the United States in 2001. He has built a thriving consulting practice and now advises dozens of growers like us in this unique approach to farming. His clients represent a whose who of the top growers and wineries in the country. Philippe started working with Winderlea® in April 2009.