Oregon winemakers in recent years have been troubled by natural events in the vineyards, like 2020’s wildfire smoke, 2021’s heat spikes and 2022’s sobering spring frost. Not to mention droopy economic news in the tasting rooms and retail shops, where sales and winery visitors decreased in 2023. No wonder they were happy to share some terrific new wines, mostly 2021s and 2022s, with our tasting team last month in the Willamette Valley.
Associate Editor Andrii Stetsiuk, Tasting Manager Kevin Davy, Publisher John Williams and I braved snow, sleet and mud to taste and rate 843 wines – 505 pinot noirs, 175 chardonnays and an eclectic mix of other wines from sparkling to pinot gris, gamay noir and syrah.
Wrapped in layers of sweaters and raincoats, our shivering, warm-weather team from Hong Kong and California met the cold-hardy winemakers of the Willamette in their shirtsleeves and light vests for numerous off-site visits and tastings in addition to concentrated tastings each day. And what stood out was the consistently high quality and mouth-watering balance of the 268 pinot noirs from the 2021 vintage we rated. At or near the top in scores were memorable new releases from Rose & Arrow, Nicolas Jay, Domaine Serene, Soter, Arterberry Maresh and Antica Terra.
For one spectacular example, the Rose & Arrow Estate Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills Touchstone 2021 seemed almost to stop time as its muscular structure of fine-grained tannins and bracing acidity were seamlessly integrated into opulent fruit and floral perfumes. Very close in quality was the Rose & Arrow Estate Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Eola-Amity Hills Stonecreek 2021, sourced from a small block of vines planted in basalt soil.
That wine and other outstanding ones from designated vineyards or vineyard blocks with unique taste personalities emphasized Oregon’s increasing mastery in identifying the very best micro-terroirs – often in conjunction with older vines. The Nicolas Jay Pinot Noir McMinnville Momtazi 2021 shows that vineyard’s almost pungent, peppery, wild-herb quality, as does another from Mo Momtazi’s property, the Day Wines Pinot Noir Willamette Valley McMinnville Momtazi Vineyard 2021.
The freshness, tension and concentration of 2021 that came with the pinots could also be found in the chardonnays from the vintage. Great examples were not hard to find, including the three highest-rated of them – the Ponzi Vineyards Chardonnay Willamette Valley Chehalem Mountains Aurora 2021, Bergström Chardonnay Willamette Valley Sigrid 2021 and Soter Chardonnay Willamette Valley Estates 2021.
Since the tasting was not limited to Burgundian grape varieties nor the Willamette Valley, we also tasted through an assortment of good to very good wines from the Rogue Valley, Applegate Valley, The Rocks District and Columbia Valley. Notables included a white Troon Vineyard Vermentino Applegate Valley 2022 and a red Annalema Trousseau Mosier Hills Estate 2022.
For the 2021 pinot noirs, we recommend that consumers and collectors buy the vintage with little hesitation because it exemplifies why this grape variety is so well suited to the terroir of Willamette Valley. Typically medium-bodied, often with alcohols below 13.8 and healthy, tangy acidity for balance, the wines in general display vivid, nicely ripe fruit flavors, savory, woodsy accents, lithe, silky tannins and long finishes. Our descriptors for the top wines consistently emphasize great acid and tannin structure: nervy, tense, agile, bracing, intricate, refined, pure and vibrant.
If those terms sound too cool and vibrant for a dramatic 2021 growing season that included temperatures as high as 117 Fahrenheit (47 Celsius) in Salem, you have to consider when the heat events occurred: not at or near harvest. The worst, a record-setter, came during three days at the end of June, after bloom. Other, lesser heat events before and after that were all part of a warmer-than-usual and drier-than-usual growing season.
The Willamette Valley experienced temperatures 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average, the Oregon Wine Board reported, while other parts of the state and the Pacific Northwest recorded 3 degrees to 3.9 degrees higher than average.
When the worst of it hit in late June, the grapes were more than two months away from harvesting, still green and tight, not yet plumped up with juice and sugar. So the heat damage was much less than might be expected in late August or September. The remainder of the summer was warm, before cooling down in October, which allowed plenty of time for phenolic ripeness and good weather for harvest.
“It was not an astronomically warm season overall, but a pretty long summer with lots of hang time, one of those when you pick things when you want to rather than being forced by the weather,” said Noah Roberts, the assistant winemaker at Nicolas Jay winery in Newberg. “2021 is defined by the intensity of the wines. There is a through line of acidity. We were a little unsure at first how it would turn out, but now we think it’s a great Oregon vintage.” After the difficult 2020 season, he added, “We were owed one and we got one.”
Michael Fay, the vice president of winemaking at Domaine Serene in the Dundee Hills, agreed about the ease of the pick. “The 2021 wines are more delicate and elegant than 2022, and more influenced by the coolness of the harvest weeks, despite the fact that it was really warm earlier. These pinot noirs are the only ones I remember that were already put together and classy in May following the harvest.”
FIRST PEEK AT 2022
The team reviewed 25 late-release pinot noirs from the 2019 vintage, with all but two scoring 90 points or more. As reported in last year’s Oregon Annual Report, 2019 was a cool vintage in the Willamette Valley with intermittent rains, making it difficult to work in the vineyards but resulting in stunning wines for producers who paid attention to canopy and yield management.
Noteworthy wines from 2020 include a few Willamette Valley whites and reds, like the outstanding Schone Tal Cellars Pinot Noir Yamhill-Carlton Hirschy Vineyard 2020 and the Gautreau Family Chardonnay Eola Amity Hills 2020, which was fresh and full of character. There were also a handful of relatively high-scoring syrahs and red blends from other parts of the state.
We also took our first in-depth look at 2022 wines, reviewing 178 Willamette Valley pinot noirs and 68 chardonnays. Eleven pinots scored 95 points or above, the highest two being the Arterberry Maresh Pinot Noir Dundee Hills Maresh 2022 and Evening Land Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills Seven Springs Estate Summum 2022. We gave scores of 94 to 27 more, so there was plenty of good news.
“2022 was a historically cool vintage,” said Kevin Goldsmith, the hospitality director at Evening Land. “It kicked off with frost, but the vines recovered and had plenty of time to ripen. We harvested two to three weeks later than typical, and in good weather.”
The wines we were most enthusiastic about tended to be vivid and fruity, often showing tangy red fruits like cranberries, raspberries and strawberries on snappy, crunchy textures with savory, forest-like, herbaceous accents and often minerals, too. “These are quite a bit more fruit forward, and consumers may prefer them to 2021,” Roberts, of Nicolas Jay, said of their 2022s.
More details on 2022 came from Guillaume Large, the winemaker at Resonance Vineyard in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA, who described the mid-April severe frost that dropped temperatures there to 25 degrees Fahrenheit for three nights. He said many vines had gone through bud break and some chardonnay vines already had green leaves exposed, which were killed by the sub-freezing cold.
“The spring stayed wet and cold but new shoots began growing from secondary buds,” Large said. “Then from the end of June we had 100 degrees and the plants grew fast, though full bloom was delayed until mid-July, three or more weeks later than usual. But ideal conditions set in until harvest. We had fruit coming from secondary buds that was well balanced, and weather in September and October gave us great conditions for clean and beautiful fruit.”
SITE-SPECIFIC CHARDONNAYS
James and the team have been enthusing about Oregon chardonnay in recent years, and each time we come away more impressed with their combination of linear acidity, subtle fruits and silky textures. They manage to give plenty of flavor and a sense of the richness we love in Chardonnay while keeping alcohol levels generally 1 percent lower in alcohol than many top California and Washington wines.
We tasted 68 chardonnays from 2022, with three of the six that scored 95 or higher coming from winemaker Jim Maresh. His Arterberry Maresh Chardonnay Dundee Hills Maresh Vineyard 2022 was our highest-scoring bottle from the vintage. It’s a spectacular wine with a touch of umami character; broad and impressive with depth and layers but still polished and very refined.
Maresh told Kevin, our tasting manager, that his love for Burgundy inspires a style that’s dependent on great sites and wines that are precise. “When I adopted my practices and started finishing my white in stainless steel, that was the biggest leap in improving my winemaking.” Two of his Tan Fruit brand chardonnays were virtually as impressive as the Arterberry Maresh.
RIDING A DOWNTURN
The economic atmosphere for Oregon wines hasn’t looked as bright lately as many of the wines we rated. The state was not immune from the nationwide trend in 2023 of decreasing wine sales. Many of its wineries are quite small, and these especially rely on direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales, rather than the three-tier system of producer, wholesaler and retailer.
DTC sales decreased 9 percent in 2023, according to an annual report by Sovos/Wine Business, yet prices per bottle went up by 7.2 percent. Visits to Oregon wineries, which is a key factor in DTC sales, also sagged. Oregon wineries had the sharpest drop in visitors among eight West Coast wine regions when Silicon Valley Bank compared pre- and post-pandemic survey data.
Store sales of Oregon wines in the United States in 2023 sagged to the lowest level since 2019 as Covid-era sales spikes dissolved, according to NIQ (Nielsen) data, although they were still higher than pre-Covid levels.
Multiple Oregon winemakers and executives blamed Portland’s sad situation of homelessness and drug fatalities for part of the lackluster sales performance. Their sense was that visitors traveling through Portland had decreased, thus also reducing nearby winery visits. Some Northern California wineries blame a similar situation in San Francisco for drops they’ve seen in their sales and traffic.
However, wildfire smoke affecting the 2020 crop in the Willamette Valley surely accounted for some of the decline in Oregon wine sales last year. There just weren’t many 2020 pinot noirs released or even made, due to smoke effects in the grapes and wines. 2020s should have counted for a large number of the 369 pinot noirs we reviewed last year for the 2023 report, but there were only 18.
Despite the challenges of recent years, consumers, collectors and the wine trade still have literally hundreds of good options in the extensive tasting notes and reviews below. One more thing worth pointing out is that Oregon is still a relatively small wine-producing region, with only about 45,000 acres of grapevines in the whole state, or roughly the same acreage as the single county of Napa, California.
This isn’t enough for producers to sell their wines through wider commercial channels, but when you buy an Oregon winemaker’s product on their website, in a restaurant or wine shop, the odds are quite high that it’s a small-production wine of excellent quality. Out of the 843 wines we tasted and rated for this report, only 66 scored less than 90 points.
– Jim Gordon, Executive Editor
Note: You can sort the wines below by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.
