Why is Oregon chardonnay so expensive?

I’m sure this question can be best answered by Jim, Marcus, and Todd, but I’d love to hear any other thoughts, and I look forward to other random insults and other off-topic witticisms.

I thought reds were generally more expensive because of the new barrels, the time required to store it prior to release, etc. etc. etc. However, as I’m just beginning to learn about Oregon whites, I’m finding myself experiencing a little sticker shock. Take the outfit mentioned by Jim recently, Domaine Divio - I checked out their website last night and discovered their chardonnay is their second most expensive offering, more expensive than even a Dundee Pinot. What gives? Is this simply a supply & demand issue? Is Oregon chardonnay that good?

As an aside, or to start the drift already, I recently learned about the Matello Whistling Ridge White (mercifully priced ~$20 or so). A co-fermented Riesling, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir, and Gewurztraminer sounds absolutely delicious!

In general, I don’t think it is helpful to try to determine wine prices by figuring out costs. Sure, eventually, the ability to charge more for a wine finds its way into land costs, but really wines are prices by what you will pay to get them (unless the winery is generous and has owned the land for a long time).

Chard grape prices have soared. If you have an estate vineyard, not so much of an issue. But either way you can’t crop too high, like the Pinot, then likely same barrel regime as the Pinot, maybe filtering where you might not filter the Reds so added cost. My point - it’s not like making the chard is so much cheaper. The market hasn’t been willing to go so high with it but that’s changing. Most production is still under $30, but honestly I’m happy to see people striving for greater things with chard, even if top end bottlings are going for more money. The wines in general are really worth while.

Disclosure - I make OR Chard but it’s only $23.

Scott, you have to search for value, with the understanding that one man’s bargain is another’s highway robbery. Value probably won’t come looking for you.

There’s very good to exellent Chardonnay in OR for $20 - $50. Top level examples can be found for $40 - $75. Very good base quality Burg Chards (i.e.: Roulot Bourgogne Blanc) are often $50+. Village level Meursault from Roulot…you’re talking $100+.

California Chard pricing is usually a bit higher than OR (with many exceptions). Rhys for example, $60 retail for the Santa Cruz Mtn Chard. Some people love the Ramey Hyde for $50-ish.

Snag a bottle of 2013 Crowley 4 winds for $38 or Drouhin Arthur for $32. If you don’t like the styles, you can refine your search criteria or accept that OR Chards are “expensive” and move on.

RT

It’s expensive because people are paying the asking price.

If you thought about the decades of trial and error, you’d want to pay more.

Disclaimer: I don’t make Chardonnay.

We took 6 vintages off from making Chardonnay mostly because we weren’t crazy about what we were making. Was proud enough to chalk it up to “not having a very good source of fruit.” Then Tyson Crowley started making kick ass wine from the same vineyard. Bastard. So…decided we needed to re-arrange our priorities, suck it up and learn what the cool kids were doing and get back into it. What are we talking about? Oh, right, why is it expensive? I don’t know. Because people can get it. I don’t know what we are going to charge. I think it’s good but when you go years without tasting raw wine of a certain variety and you change your approach knowing what is and is going to happen is difficult.

Disclaimer, I’m in Minneapolis and had a 2004 Raveneau Butteaux on a wine list for $150 last night and that wine makes me think maybe no one else should make Chardonnay. Just them.

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This.

Not sure who you buy from, but other than the top end Cameron Chards and Arterberry Maresh Vineyard Chard, I spend the same or less $$ on OR Chards than OR Pinots. IMO the Chards are absolutely worth the tariffs. Not sure how you define expensive, but you can get the following wines for about $25 or under and all are well worth it - Cameron Dundee Hills, Walter Scott WV, Crowley WV, Eyrie Dundee Hills, Westrey Reserve, Belle Pente Belle Pente Vineyard, Evesham Wood WV. Spend $5-10/bottle more and you have a plethora of fantastic options that have been discussed in other OR Chard threads.

Monsieur Trimpi plied me with a bottle of the 2013 Crowley Four Winds Chard recently. After being blown away (and my better half liking it even more than I did), I was able to buy a case at an all-in price of $44 a bottle.

If you can recommend a similar bottle qualitatively from Burgundy at the same price point, I’m all ears :wink:

As excited as I’ve been about an Oregon wine project in a while & I have no idea what the price will be.

I don’t think Oregon Chardonnay is expensive relative to Chardonnay elsewhere. There just isn’t as much of it, so the scarcity may make the prices seem higher.

On a recommendation here on WB from someone who attended an Oregon Chardonnay syposium, I bought some bottles of Brittan Chardonnay, I think they were around $35. Really excellent, vibrant chardonnay.

My question was always why there isn’t more chardonnay coming out of Willamette Valley. It seems like a pretty obvious site for chardonnay.

Bingo we have a winner. [winner.gif]

It’s all about “value pricing”!

Quality Chardonnay fruit is relatively scarce in the Willamette Valley.

A number of Chard-focused vineyards have been planted over the last few years and that fruit is beginning to come on line so I believe you’ll see more availability in coming vintages.

I don’t think the WV is a place where bargain wines are going to come from. Land is not cheap, nor is labor.
But yields are smaller than they are in California.


The Oregonians brought in INRA (Dijon) clones of pinot and chard back in the 80s, but by the time things went through quarantine, all people cared about was pinot, so not much good clone chardonnay was planted.

There are a couple of cost factors people haven’t mentioned that make white cheaper to produce.

First, there’s the working capital cost of having all that inventory aging for longer before you can sell it.

Second – and Mel can check me on this – reds are typically in barrel for more than 12 months, whereas a white may cycle in and out of barrels in less than a year. If it does, you only need half the number of barrels for the same annual production of white, and only half as many new barrels if you’re using new oak.

Yep. Fluke of history, but it’s coming now. My snapshot perspective two decades ago was white production was mostly for in-state consumption and from predominantly Germanic and Alsatian varieties. Stores had a much bigger import selection from Germany and Alsace compared to here in CA, too.

It seems the Pinot market up there is a bit saturated, as it is here. There’s certainly a lot of quality exploration into other grape varieties lately, and maybe some more attention on the other quality regions, too.

Jim may want to correct me, but it’s my understanding that chard was originally planted in Oregon, pretty much on the theory that chard can/should grow where pinot noir grows. It is also my understanding that the chard clones that were used turned out to not be very well suited to western Oregon’s climate and soil. I may have my timing wrong, but I believe that was also about the time that was towards the end of California’s “the more oak, the better” approach to chard and it didn’t work in Oregon, either. Some people then turned to pinot gris, but the results were pretty much so-so. Now growers are trying chard again with different clones and the results are tasting a lot better.

I love DDO’s Arthur. I look forward to getting my hands on some of Jim’s white.

Sigh.

At a recent tasting of 20+ 2010 Chardonnays, the top 4 or 5 all came from old vine California clones. The problem was not with the vines. The problems were over-cropping, young vines, and general ignorance on how to make good Chardonnay. Tualatin Vineyards, Eyrie, and several others made great Chardonnays as far back as the 80’s. Frankly, I think it can be a challenge to get enough “tension” in some of the Dijon clone wines.

There are a number of really good Chardonnays in the $15-$30 range. Eyrie, Walter Scott, Cameron, Crowley, Westrey, and DDO all make nice wines in that price range. Yeah, there are more expensive single vineyard stuff out there, but really good, less expensive wines can be had.

I just bought a case of Evesham Wood’s Chard for $9/bottle and a case of Cameron for $12/bottle. Both are delicious and incredibly affordable. Everyone else did a great job mentioning the other $15-$50 wines available.

Not much to add over what others have said but I wanted to comment on this:

I thought reds were generally more expensive because of the new barrels, the time required to store it prior to release, etc. etc. etc.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true, whether for Chardonnay or any other white. If you do barrel fermenting or store your wine in barrels for some time, and the barrels are new, that cost element is going to be the same regardless of whether it’s red or white wine.

More important is probably the cost of grapes - a lot of producers act kind of like negociants, buying fruit and vinifying it. So the cost of grapes is going to be a bigger issue than barrels.

But most important is the fact that people will pay. A few years ago Petite Sirah was more expensive than Cabernet Sauvignon but good luck getting anyone to pay you one, two, or three hundred dollars for a bottle of Petite Sirah. Chardonnay is far and away the most popular white wine at both the higher and lower ends of the price spectrum. There’s the occasional SQN mixed bag of white grapes that pops up but that’s an outlier - people will pay for Chardonnay like they won’t pay for Riesling or even Sauvignon Blanc. Given the fact that many of the Oregon producers are fairly new and haven’t amortized their costs since grandpa built the winery, if I were there I’d plant Chardonnay and charge whatever I could.