As for Eola-Amity, I’d second the recommendation of St. Innocent. However, being neighbors to each other, I think Cristom should be thrown into this pot as well. IMHO Cristom inches out St. Innocent as best representation of the Eola-Amity AVA.
I’d be happy with Cristom as well. But distinctly different styles. I like both so I’m easy ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
J
Dan,
I’m a bit biased, as I’ve helped Mo Ayoub out with harvest and doing some tastings from time to time, but I think Ayoub wines are some of the absolute best in OR. There is something truly special about his estate vineyard, and that is one of my favorite wines year to year.
I’m in agreement with Cristom and Evesham Wood for Eola Amity, but there are a ton of great wines from that AVA. If I was limiting myself to one it’s hard not to mention Bethel heights Flat Block bottling.
We’re bottling Goodfellow FC SVDs from:
Dundee Hills-Durant Vineyard
Yamhill-Carlton-Bishop Creek
Ribbon Ridge-Whistling Ridge
All are old vine, dry farmed sites that are excellent examples of the AVA, as long as you like a more restrained and cellaring oriented style of winemaking. Stems, native yeast, no cold soaks, little new wood(16-20% in most vintages), and generally 20 months elevage before bottling.
However, Bishop Creek was purchased by Jean-Nicholas Meo(Meo-Camuzet) and Jay Boberg(California music industry veteran and all around nice guy) last year. I am not sure how long we’ll keep our block, but at least through 2015. It’s a great site, own rooted Wadensville planted in 1989.
Hate to resurrect an old thread, and not sure that another 5 years since the last post will change much, but I appreciate people who have been posting specific producers that are representative of these AVAs.
When smelling or tasting an OR PN from a specific AVA, are there certain classic characteristics in the wine that are telling for a given AVA, related to its terroir? Or is the region (and thus its vines) too young to really discern those differences currently? For example, is there a certain characteristic in the wines of Ribbon Ridge that’s different from Yamhill-Carlton, that’s different from Eola-Amity Hills?
I think that the guildsomm podcast did a great job with this topic at one point. it was an interview with David Adelsheim. definitely worth a listen at some point if you’ve got some time (ha)
Edit: also with your “not sure another 5 years will change much” keep in mind that one of the last posts talks about “Marcus Goodfellow’s new label, Goodfellow” (!) so I think probably the time will show! haha
Thanks! Downloading it now.
My experience is that winemaker style (including fruit/vineyard management) trumps everything.
RT
While this thread is current again, I’d like to toss in Hyland Vineyard for the McMinnville appelation. Kelly Fox and Patricia Green are both using Hyland grapes now, as well as Winderlea and Penner-Ash. Hyland has their own estate bottling too, but for something distinctive, I recommend the first two, using the Coury clone.
Though I single out the Coury Clone wines for particular distinction, Brittan, Couer de Terre, and Maysara are all worth seeking out.
This is what I have assumed as well.
Matt, I did listen to the GuildSomm podcast with David Adelsheim (really, the last 20 minutes of it where he gets into differences between the sub-AVAs). Nice general overview.
Anything but Domaine Serene, I never got this winery. Patricia Green, Evening Land and Beaux Freres for me.
absolutely true. im pretty bad at knowing which Oregon vineyards are actually in which AVAs because I really just trust producers above all else actually. it would be interesting to have a tasting of a couple terroir driven producers that make wines from several AVAs and have a comparison of producers and AVAs side by side.
From what I have seen there are definite differences to the AVAs, even with profound effects of producer style(picking decisions will definitely change the fruit characteristics of a wine). The youth of the region does lead to some muddying of understanding terroir, but I think this is more due to lack of exploration than lack of quality of material. For the purpose of tasting specific differences, most of the AVAs are really probably too big, and would do better to be carved into smaller pieces (for economics and reaching the broader public, the current size is probably just fine).
Tasting a number of producers from one AVA is enlightening for sure, and so can tasting a number of regions from a single producer. Regardless, I highly suggest grabbing a map and if possible exploring a small pocket of an AVA, rather than trying 2 or 3 wines and thinking that it will necessarily reveal the whole area(or that differences are entirely due to producer style).
Beaux Freres, Patricia Green Estate and Whistling Ridge Vineyard are all on a single hill in the Ribbon Ridge AVA, Brick House and Ayres are the next hill over. The land and the air feels different between the two, even if the dirt is the same.
Bethel Heights, Temperance Hill, Justice and Lewman are all set together, and between the vineyards you could easily come up with twenty wineries (and thus producer styles) Temperance stretches from the west though to the east side of the hill it covers, and slopes down to Cristom(and so in and of itself is not close to a uniform terroir).
This is just a tiny patch of the Eola-Amity Hills. Driving further north on the east side of the AVA everything feels both more open and more arid, the vineyards share space with grain and seed farms more than Christmas Trees, roads that wind through the hills get you something else all together.
Both the Eola- Amity Hills and Ribbon Ridge(sites that we work with) always seem more red fruited to me. Different tones, but both with the same underlying mineral strength. They are both highly wind- affected, but with different soil series. Though they are relatively far apart, in structural profile they seem more similar than the other AVAs.
The Dundee Hills is red-toned as well, but always significantly softer and more fruit forward. A riper red, without the mineral red-black of Ribbon Ridge and Eola-Amity. Even here though, the east and the west side differ profoundly (again, both in the expression of the grapes, and in the way that the land/air feels).
Yamhill-Carlton is a big horse-shoe shape, and though the wines always seem purple/purple-black (with a serious savory streak) there is a pretty big difference in terroir between the east and west sides of the AVA. (West are in a rain shadow up against the coastal range foothills, east seem hotter and more open). There is also a pretty heavy concentration of producers who are looking for a bigger wine here. That aside, I absolutely agree with previous suggestions of seeking out Belle Pente for an excellent wine in the AVA. It would be helpful to compare their Yamhill-Carlton Estate to their Murto bottling from the Dundee Hills (I have heard Brian compare the spice cabinet of the Dundee Hills to the herb garden of Yamhill-Carlton).
I am less familiar with Chehalem Mountains and McMinnville AVA, so will let someone else step in here. McMinnville AVA always feels like a drier and windier version of the west side of Yamhill-Carlton, with the Chehalem Mountains being a patchwork of soils and influences that is one of the biggest arguments for subdividing AVAs that I can see.
At some point I hope you can visit. It is a beautiful area, but the differences of the micro-climates start to speak for themselves if you get a chance to drive around the back roads and see some of the vineyard land.
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Thanks for your insights Megan. I pulled the Prince of Pinot issue from awhile ago that goes over the AVAs in terms of difference of their geography, soil types, and typicity of the flavor profile. Willamette Valley has been on my list of places to visit, and I will be planning a trip once it’s safe to travel again.
is Prince of Pinot a podcast? that sounds like a great resource. Of course Megan is too!
Rusty’s December 17, 2008 edition is a good start. (Prince of Pinot Volume 7 Issue 7)
I saw this thread got resurrected - lots of good information here to mull over.
But I have to be honest and question the whole premise of Kirk’s original question - irrespective of age, why would one limit their collecting/drinking to just one producer in each AVA? I mean, hypothetically, if the five best producers of Oregon Pinot are all in Ribbon Ridge, and the 20th best producer happens to work in Yamhill, but is still considered the best in Yamhill by a large margin, who cares in the overall scheme of things, and as a corollary, why would I feel compelled as a consumer to buy wines from the 20th best producer?
The other interesting thing to me in terms of what is happening in the past five years - while the thread when first established was clearly Pinot-focused, to my way of thinking, right now the most exciting development in the last five years has been the growing recognition that Oregon is producing world class Chardonnay. I’m sure that current Pinot production still dwarfs every other grape, but I’d have to believe that the fastest growing grape in the last five years in terms of acreage planted there is Chardonnay.
Yes and maybe. Not my area of expertise but I believe there’s been a big surge in grapes like Viognier, Merlot, Cabernet, etc., due to winery growth in the Rogue Valley and Umpqua AVAs. Pinot Gris is still remarkably popular.
RT
For Eola-Amity and Yamhill-Carlton, St. Innocent is my favorite.