Oregon's Pinot Noir Diversity
Wild swings in vintage conditions give vintners plenty of chances—and challenges
Oregon Pinot Noir vintners like to crow that they experience vintage variation like Burgundy does, and thus make a similar range of wine styles from the fickle Pinot Noir grape. The vintages greeting consumers on the retail shelves today take it to an extreme.
After a series of warm years in Oregon that culminated with a blazing hot 2003, things cooled off in 2004 and 2005, resulting in wines of moderate intensity. Most Oregon Pinot Noirs arriving on the market are from 2006, whose growing season started out hot and was interrupted by rains before a long period of heat arrived to ripen the grapes fully. The vintage challenged winemakers to find some finesse in a growing season that could have made big, broad, ungainly wines.
Arriving next, 2007 could not present a more different profile. Rain, the most Oregon had seen at harvest since 1997, produced many tart, light and, at their best, fragrant wines. This time, the weather tested winemakers to get some flesh into the wines, which at their worst can be hard-edged and biting.
"[2007 is] a nice vintage, an Oregon vintage," says Josh Bergström, whose eponymous wines usually rate among the best. "It has great color, aromatics and structure. It's unfortunate that it has to come after '06. Those who liked the succulent, supple '06s are going to wonder what happened. They're going to say 'we liked that recipe better.' But Oregon is a tough place to do that year after year."
"These two vintages are going to appeal to a whole different range of people. Lots of Oregon vintages do," says Harry Peterson-Nedry, owner of Chehalem Vineyards. "The cooler vintages, such as 2005 and 2007, are like the studious nerd types that take some time to show what they have. [2006] is more like the cheerleader or quarterback type that blossoms early."
The best wines from 2006 are like the Beaux Frères Pinot Noir Ribbon Ridge The Upper Terrace 2006 (94, $90), elegant and refined, with a plush underpinning to luscious raspberry, blackberry and black plum fruit, or like the Elk Cove Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Mount Richmond 2006 (93, $48), a luscious mouthful of cherry, blackberry, cream and espresso flavors that linger seductively on the long, expressive finish. Both wines wear their fleshiness easily.
There are plenty of outstanding 2006s like these in this report, which covers the nearly 400 Oregon wines reviewed over the past 12 months. Of the approximately 220 2006 Pinot Noirs tasted for this report, nearly 130 rate 90 points or higher on Wine Spectator's 100-point scale. The ones that fell short are a tad aggressive, such as Lemelson Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Thea's Selection 2006 (89, $38), which has a biting edge to its blackberry and blackberry leaf aromas and flavors, or overcompensate and come out a shade too light, as is the case with the Archery Summit Pinot Noir Dundee Hills Archery Summit Estate 2006 (88, $150), in most vintages a wine of grandeur and elegance but this time lacking enough blackberry and cherry fruit to balance the firm texture and earthy notes.
However, Archery Summit made this report's best 2005. The texture of its polished Dundee Hills Arcus Estate 2005 (95, $100) sets off the pure blackberry, currant and dark plum fruit, surrounded by hints of cinnamon and white pepper. Typical of other good late-release 2005s, Domaine Serene Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Evenstad Reserve 2005 (93, $58) hangs its distinctive cherry, black cherry, cinnamon and mocha flavors on a graceful frame.
The first wines on the market from 2007 do not look as promising. Few of the early releases have the fruit flavors and smooth textures to balance their bracingly high acidities. Argyle got it right with its light, fragrant Pinot Noir Willamette Valley 2007 (89, $28), a very pretty, drink-me-now style. I found plenty of similarly successful efforts while tasting the 2007s at other consistently outstanding Oregon wineries, but other wines are too tart, funky or lacking in flavor. The best wines are light and fragrant, and few exceed 13.5 percent alcohol, with most in the 13 percent ballpark, about a point lower than usual. Expect the majority of these '07s to arrive on store shelves throughout the coming year.
Different vintners took different routes to achieve what they did in 2007. Some picked early in order to get sound fruit into their wineries before the rain. At Argyle, winemaker Rollin Soles looked at the weather, saw that most of his vineyards were just about ripe, and decided to put on a full-court press to pick as much as possible before the rain started. In so doing, he broke the code of Oregon veterans, who pride themselves in not overreacting to rain.
"We laugh at the new winemaker just arrived from California picking unripe grapes because he is afraid of a little rain," Soles says. "You never want to be the first one to pull the trigger. In 2007, I was that guy." Seeing forecasts that called for 10 days of heavy rains, Soles sent out his crew to pick all the grapes that qualified as ripe.
The wines came out great, at least the ones for the high-end Nuthouse and Spirithouse blends, tasted from barrel; they show ripe black fruit flavors (unusual for a vintage in which most other wineries veered toward the red fruit end of the spectrum), open textures and impeccable balance. Some other producers waited until the rains stopped, hoping that the grapes would ripen under the warm sun, as they did in 2006. But it never got warm. The rain diluted flavors, and cool weather kept the grapes from ripening fully. Still, the worst did not occur; the cool temperatures kept mold from spreading, and good vineyards harvested mostly sound fruit.
"The key to 2007 was maturity," says Peterson-Nedry. "Older vines, we have learned, are more robust to things like rainfall. And we're smarter as winemakers. If you've been through wet vintages like 1997 and 2005, you learn how to sort the bunches carefully, and to pull out tools like tannin additions and cleaning up musts."
As you might expect, warmer sites performed better in 2007. In cellar after cellar, the wines from cooler vineyards tasted harsh compared with the light, elegant stuff from warmer spots. It was also a good year for Dijon clones, which Oregon has been planting widely since the early 1990s. They ripen earlier than Oregon's traditional Pommard and Wädenswil clones.
At Bethel Heights, a barrel sample from Justice Vineyard, planted in 1999 mostly to Dijon clones, showed supple texture and generous plum flavors, while a sample from Flat Block, planted in 1979 with the Pommard clone, showed rose petal and strawberry flavors on a light frame. As for West Block vineyard: "We won't bottle [it] this year," says Ben Casteel, now making the wines for the family estate. "It's all Wädenswil, and it barely got ripe. Way too much acidity."
Bethel Heights kept picking through the rains. "We don't have enough capacity in the winery to bring in everything at once," laments Ted Casteel, who manages the vineyards. "Every day we would go out and decide which were the ripest grapes. It's amazing that Pinot Noir will continue to ripen in 60° [F] weather."
Tasted from tank and ready for bottling, Bergström's '07s showed light textures and pretty red fruit flavors that had intensity. "We saw very little dilution in 2007," says Bergström. He thinks those who were able to pick ripe grapes before the rain made bigger, more generous wines than those who waited, and that those who picked in between the first couple of rainstorms made the weakest wines. "If you waited until after the fifth rain, you could get the physical ripeness, and make some elegant wines."
At Domaine Serene, I tasted several unreleased 2006s against 2007 cuvées of the same vineyards still in barrel. In each case, the younger vintage emphasized red fruit flavors, such as raspberry and cranberry, over blueberry and plum. And the '07s had much higher acidities, and lower alcohol levels. They felt elegant, and not diluted. "They have flavor development without the high alcohols," says Eleni Papadakis, Serene's associate winemaker. She arrived earlier this year to replace Tony Rynders, who had been the winemaker since 1998.
As iffy as it is for red wines, 2007 looks like a fine vintage for whites. Chehalem has released a Riesling and a Pinot Gris with vitality and refinement: both wines are outstanding (90 to 94 points). Tasted pre-release at the winery, Chehalem's Chardonnay Ian's Reserve looks like many of the 2007 whites I tasted this fall at other Oregon wineries: bright in flavor, elegant in structure.
The Ian's Reserve 2005 (91, $34) is the top Chardonnay in this report: ripe and spicy, with classic pear, nougat and cream flavors that remain silky and tempting through the long, harmonious finish. Chardonnays like this suggest that Oregon is turning the corner with this varietal. For years, the wines often seemed weak compared with those from elsewhere in the New World, lacking vivid flavors. Today, without losing the sense of restraint that characterized the best early versions, Oregon's Chardonnays consistently achieve more depth and character than in the past.
Also worth attention are Argyle's supple Chardonnay Willamette Valley Nuthouse 2006 (90, $35), with its glowing core of pear flavor at the center and hints of balsamic and cardamom around the edges, and, from the bargain shelf, O'Reilly's Chardonnay Oregon 2006 (87, $12), with an unusual black pepper note riding over pear and earth flavors.
Oregon likes to tout its Pinot Gris, made in a style that hovers between the richness of Alsace wines and the easygoing freshness of Italian Pinot Grigio. Among the best examples are Montinore Pinot Gris Willamette Valley 2006 (90, $13), brimming with peach, pear and melon fruit; Elk Cove Pinot Gris Willamette Valley 2007 (89, $19), offering cantaloupe and pear on a silky frame; and Willamette Valley Pinot Gris Willamette Valley 2007 (88, $15), which integrates its fruit and spice elements especially well.
One offbeat wine to seek out is Ponzi's polished Arneis Willamette Valley 2007 (89, $20). Made from a Piedmontese grape variety, it's bright and juicy, with a refreshingly tart edge to the grapefruit and pear flavors.
For consumers who want mouthfilling richness in their Pinot Noirs, 2006 is the vintage to grab now. For those who like Oregon's white wines and were fans of the lighter-weight 2004 and 2005 Pinots, 2007 will not be the disappointment it looked like it might be. Despite all the rain, good producers made '07s that won't embarrass anyone. That sound you hear is the Oregon vintners breathing a collective sigh of relief.
Editor at large Harvey Steiman is Wine Spectator's lead taster of wines from Oregon.
WINE SCIENCE
Harry Peterson-Nedry explores Pinot Noir's potential
Harry Peterson-Nedry, founder of Chehalem, rolled the dice in 1980 when he bought land for a prospective vineyard. He knew little about viticulture, but he liked the site—45 acres on a ridge at the western end of the Chehalem Range. "I looked at it just once and said OK [to the real estate agent]. I was utterly naive, but I was lucky," he says.
The admission seems a bit surprising from Peterson-Nedry, 60, because there may not be a more circumspect winemaker in all of Oregon. For 27 years, beginning in 1969, he worked at tech companies doing statistics, engineering and consulting. So he wasn't one to just jump into commercial winemaking, but first made experimental Pinot Noir batches for seven years, producing a wine for release (under the Chehalem label) only in 1990.
The goal of the experiments was to evaluate variables, including soil type, vineyard elevation, yeast variety and fermentation temperature, among others. To get the data he wanted, Peterson-Nedry did multiple fermentations of the same grape lots. For the first three years of his experiments, he bought grapes.
In 1985, he began to get fruit from his vineyard, called Ridgecrest. The property has proved outstanding and was the first site planted in what is now Ribbon Ridge, an appellation that contains 20 vineyards on 500 acres. Since 2002, six of the eight single-vineyard Ridgecrest Pinots made by Peterson-Nedry, under the Chehalem and RR (Ribbon Ridge Winery) labels, have earned at least 90 points.
Following purchases of contiguous properties, the Ridgecrest vineyard now contains 60 acres of vines, including 40 of Pinot Noir and 8 of Pinot Gris, with the balance planted to Chardonnay, Gamay Noir, Riesling and Grüner Veltliner. Chehalem also gets grapes from the 32-acre Corral Creek Vineyard, at the site of the production facility in Newberg, and from Stoller Vineyard, owned by Peterson-Nedry's primary partners in Chehalem, Bill and Cathy Stoller.
Peterson-Nedry now aims for more elegance and complexity in his Pinot Noirs. He has come to prefer gentler extraction methods, and often uses indigenous yeasts, which tend to encourage more placid fermentations. He also likes the additional tannin that comes from fermenting with an average of about 25 percent whole clusters.
Of Chehalem's current annual production of 21,000 cases, Pinot Noir accounts for 40 percent, with white wines constituting the remainder. "We find whites are underrepresented in our climate, and I plant and make what I like to drink," he says.
The winery makes two Chardonnays, the Willamette Valley Inox, fermented in stainless steel, and the barrel-fermented Willamette Valley Ian's Reserve. Peterson-Nedry attributes recent improvements in Willamette Valley Chardonnays to replanting with Dijon clones, which ripen earlier and have more intensity than the Chardonnay clones that were first planted in Oregon. "The Dijon clones were the secret to the [Inox] style for us, because they were rich enough that they didn't need oak," he says.
Peterson-Nedry like to explore the stylistic possibilities of varietals. He makes two styles each of Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc. One style is achieved by stainless-steel fermentation, which highlights vibrancy, and the other by neutral-oak fermentation, which imparts more richness. He says low yields—usually less than 3 tons per acre—are necessary for white varieties to ripen in Oregon's cool climate.
He just started to develop another, as-yet-unnamed 38-acre property, purchased in 2000, across the road from Ridgecrest. On a bright, windy afternoon in September, dust devils swirl over the bare land, dotted with 20 backhoe pits dug to evaluate soil variations. "But I'll need more soil samples before planting," he says. —Daniel Sogg
INVESTING IN TERROIR
Dick and Deirdre Shea traded Wall Street for winemaking
It's easy to imagine Dick Shea, co-owner of Shea Vineyards with his wife, Deirdre, at his former career on Wall Street. He's clean-shaven, with jeans and work shirt as pressed as any business suit. When rocks from the gravel driveway get kicked onto the cement crush pad, Shea nudges them back into place.
Wanting things just so has served Dick, 61, and Deirdre, 55, quite well, as has their business sense. Shea Vineyard, located in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA of Willamette Valley, is arguably the best-known grape source in Oregon, supplying Pinot Noir for many of the state's top producers, including Beaux Frères, Bergström and Ken Wright Cellars. The 200-acre property contains 140 acres of vines, of which 135 are Pinot and 5 are Chardonnay. Since the 2004 vintage, Wine Spectator has reviewed 37 Pinot Noirs whose labels indicate that they were made with Shea grapes; 28 of them received 90 points or more on its 100-point scale.
Dick and Deirdre started the vineyard in 1989, thinking of it as an investment. They lived in Connecticut at the time, and Dick worked on Wall Street. He had never been interested in wine, but the family that founded his firm owned famed Bordeaux estate Château Haut-Brion. That piqued some interest, and when a retailer offered a case of Adelsheim Pinot Noir Elizabeth's Reserve 1986, he gave it a try. "I just thought it was fabulous and unlike anything I'd had before. I didn't even know they made wine in Oregon," he says.
One month later, he was on a plane to Portland to look for a Willamette Valley vineyard to buy. Dick approached it like a savvy investor, doing thorough research. "I learned a lot just going up driveways and asking people what they were doing. If I'd done that on Wall Street, walking into Goldman Sachs, they'd think I was crazy and call the police," he says.
Rather than focusing on the Dundee Hills—the only part of Willamette with a significant Pinot Noir track record—he chose a property in an undeveloped area. "It's Investment 101. If you follow that thinking [of only buying the known quantity] to its conclusion, you'd just buy in Napa Valley," says Dick.
The first substantial crop, in 1992, came during an economic downturn when the grape market was weak, so some of the Pinot wasn't picked. Their big break came in 1994, when Ken Wright, then winemaker at Panther Creek, asked them to reduce yields and aim for more ripeness in a particular block. Wright left Panther Creek that vintage to start his own winery, but both he and his former employers wanted Shea grapes that year, and both wines excelled.
After that, vintners were lining up, and the Sheas now sell to 19 wineries. Clients express particular admiration for Javier Marin, the vineyard manager, who is responsible for meeting their (different) viticultural expectations. Pinots made from Shea Vineyard tend to be deeply concentrated and supple, with bold structure.
The Sheas moved to Portland in 1999, the same year they launched their own brand, Shea Wine Cellars. Last year, they made 5,500 cases, with five Pinot Noir bottlings and one Chardonnay. Prices range from $35 per bottle (for the Chardonnay) to $75. Their 7,000-square-foot winery has enough space to accommodate the anticipated maximum production of 6,500 cases.
The land that cost them $3,000 an acre in 1989 might now bring 20 times that. And Deirdre and Dick recognize that good business segued into a great lifestyle. "It was planned as an investment, but we didn't expect the emotional connection that developed to the vineyard," she says. —Daniel Sogg
