Domaine Drouhin makes elegant, Burgundian-style wines, such as these chardonnays from Dundee Hills and from their Roserock Vineyard in Eola-Amity Hills. (Photo by JamesSuckling.com)
We went big in our tastings of Oregon wines this year. We uncorked more than 800 bottles in our largest review of the state so far and found plenty of evidence to substantiate its reputation for making consistently top-notch pinot noir, with a smaller but potentially even more impressive selection of chardonnay.
Antica Terra Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills Antikythera 2018 again topped our ratings, showing an incredible complexity of aromas with a chalky, stony texture and layered, spicy character, and Antica Terra’s 2018 Ceras and 2018 Botanica also made it into the top five of all the wines we rated this year from Oregon.
“For me, the ’18s were so exciting,” said Maggie Harrison, the owner and winemaker of Antica Terra. She said 2018 was dry and warm, with consistency and a longer harvest, resulting in “much greater diversity of expression on the table” – as could be seen from her array of wines.
For Oregon winemakers, how to deal with warming temperatures has become a common theme. “Each year, I think we’re getting a little bit better at handling the heat,” said Tom Gerrie, owner and winemaker of Cristom. Cristom Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Eola-Amity Hills Jessie Vineyard 2018 was another wine in our top five of the report.
2019, however, broke the spell of warm, dry vintages. “There was a tremendous blessing with the ‘19 vintage in that we got a little bit of rain just prior to harvest,” Gerrie said. “It gave a tremendous amount of life back to the vines. We were then able to gain some hang time later in the season.”
While it’s tempting to draw a parallel with Burgundy’s regional variations, such as Cote de Beaune vs. Cote de Nuits, there are fewer general differences among the 10 Willamette Valley AVAs (Oregon has 21 AVAs in total). But as a varietal sensitive to both terroir and winemaking, pinot noir expresses a unique personality based on a combination of differences in soil, elevation and microclimate, as well as clone, rootstock and vine age.
Gerrie said that from his perspective, the unique personalities of pinot noir derive more from the soil than from the other geographical elements of each individual AVA. The Willamette Valley’s Jory volcanic basalt soils are found at the highest elevations, a unique phenomenon resulting from long-ago collisions of the earth’s plates.
“Our deep volcanic soils are extremely bright and red-fruited, very high-toned, very floral,” he said, with vines planted in the shallow, rocky soils under more stress, resulting in fruit that “can be dark and brooding, almost blue-fruited.”
“And I think the sedimentary soils can act similarly to that as well,” he added. “So you have these ancient 60-million-year-old ancient sea floor soils here – places like Yamhill-Carlton and Ribbon Ridge – and the fruit can be quite dark.”
READ MORE 2018 OREGON VINTAGE: VINEYARD SAVVY REAPS CONSISTENCY AND QUALITY
CHARDONNAY’S FUTURE
Fewer producers in Oregon focus on chardonnay, but those that do, such as 00 Wines, are making incredible whites. Its Chardonnay Willamette Valley Eola-Amity Hills Freya Hermann Cuvee 2018, which was among our top five wines, showed impressive texture and structure thanks to a focus on phenolic extraction, alongside an exquisite purity of fruit, with flinty and spicy elements.
“It was really never anyone’s focal point, because of course pinot noir has been the big story in Oregon since the very beginning,” Chris Hermann, the co-founder of 00 Wines, said of carving out a niche for chardonnay in the state’s wine scene.
Chardonnay comprised only 17 percent of our tastings, compared with two-thirds pinot noir, but out of our top 30 wines, 11 were chardonnay – more than double the average proportion. They showed more diversity in style and character, with all of them expressing a sharp backbone of acidity thanks to the high diurnal temperature range across the state. Despite the region’s youth and continued focus on pinot noir, we find that the best chardonnays compete with the great whites of Burgundy, and at much less of a premium, too.
Veronique Boss-Drouhin, the renowned winemaker for both Domaine Drouhin in Oregon and Maison Joseph Drouhin in Burgundy, believes that chardonnay will be the next exciting wine from Oregon. “I think there is a good future for chardonnay,” she said. “It still will take us a little bit of time to exactly understand how that fruit is behaving.”
We think there’s plenty of room to grow, given Oregon’s longstanding focus on pinot noir and how the market may have slightly overlooked the state’s chardonnay.
“I think pinot noir found success earlier than chardonnay because when the first pioneers came here and planted in the 60s and 70s, they were looking for the next great American red wine,” explained Michael Fay, the winemaker at Domaine Serene, whose Chardonnay Dundee Hills Recolte Grand Cru 2017 impressed us with its compelling intensity, complexity and vibrancy.
“When chardonnay was first planted in Oregon, a lot of the wrong clones were planted,” he continued. “They were planting the clones of chardonnay that were successful in California – later-ripening clones, let’s call them. Those were really challenging to get consistently ripe, especially if you were looking at planting at high elevations.”
RISING TEMPS, ELEVATED SITES
Now, perhaps due to global warming, Oregon’s climate is similar to that of the Sonoma Coast in California. The state, about 500 miles north of Sonoma, experiences long exposure to gentle sun, promoting the development of elegant, balanced fruit with high natural acidity. The risk of unripe fruits is no longer an issue, and forward-thinking producers are now even looking to cooler sites.
“Now more and more are planting on east-facing slopes, and of course ever higher in elevation,” Hermann said. “Whereas in the 1980s, early 90s, no one would have probably planted normally above 500 or 600 feet, now people are planting at 1,000 feet, at 1,100 feet, directly in response to the warming.”
Rising temperatures mean that Oregon may now be in a sweet spot for grape-growing. But producers are also facing unprecedented fires across the country, resulting in smoke filling the valley for nine days in September of 2020, affecting every single AVA. Conscientious producers struggled to bottle wines because of the smoke taint.
READ MORE OREGON’S BEST AND BRIGHTEST OFFER GREAT PINOTS AND CHARDONNAY
Boss-Drouhin said that because of the smoke, Domaine Drouhin decided to declassify its entire production of pinot that year, producing a single wine to be sold under a negotiant label. She explained that it takes only a few hours of smoke to affect grapes, resulting in smoke taint that develops in a wine with time.
“I can’t promise you that in two years, if we bottle the wine, no one will have an issue or nothing will come back,” she said.
And with more fires in Oregon over the past month, producers like Boss-Drouhin have needed to rapidly learn how to mitigate the effects of smoke and experiment with different winemaking techniques, such as reduced skin maceration and careful selection of press fractions.
We also tasted some fresh whites from pinot gris, but although Oregon’s signature white in the past, these failed to impress at just under 90 points on average. We tasted some zesty rieslings too at an average of just under 91 points, but saw more potential and consistency in Oregon’s sparkling wines. With their bright acidity, wines such as Domaine Serene Dundee Hills Evenstad Reserve Brut NV showed more freshness, minerality and refinement compared with Californian sparkling wines.
“My own belief is that in the next 20 or 30 years, Oregon will actually be as well known, if not better known, for its chardonnay than the pinot noir because there’s something about the chardonnay fruit that’s so extraordinary,” said Hermann, of 00 Wines.
The region is still young, with producers gradually discovering the land and making more deliberate decisions regarding where best to plant vines, factoring in elevation and soil type. With most vines still in an early stage, there is room to improve, and we hope that more Oregon producers can eventually unlock the potential for great chardonnay.
– Claire Nesbitt, Associate Editor
The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated for this report by the tasters at JamesSuckling.com. They include many of the latest releases not yet available on the market, but which will be available soon.
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