Day two, which is today:
Ate breakfast at Crescent Cafe, which had surprisingly good eggs.
Headed out to meet Todd at Biggio-Hamina. Todd has a very cool warehouse space that’s very close to McMinnville. He showed me around his operation, including a small bottling line that means he can basically bottle when it pleases him. Todd opened a bunch of wines. My favorites were the syrahs. The just-bottled 2009 was really like a baby Cornas. Tightly wound, smokey and meaty on the nose. I got the sense that there was some fruit underneath, but it wasn’t coming out much. Really striking, very French. The 2007 (which we opened at the end, I’m going out of order) had a great cracked pepper nose, some dark fruit on the palate, and agin, was very French. I was really taken with these wines. Not typical new world syrah at all, and surprising coming from Oregon.
Todd opened the 2010 and 2012 Zenith pinots, which were both very good. My notes say cherry and earth, plenty of structure. We talked a bit about 2013 (which I did with most everyone). There was a torrential downpour at the end of 2013, and Todd was down on the vintage. He declassified all the wine into his base pinot. We tried it, and it wasn’t as good as the 10 and 12 Zenith for sure, but was plenty good for the $20 he charges, and seemed like a great glass pour option. Then we did the syrahs, and then he poured a skin contact Pino Grigio from 2013, that I really enjoyed. I didn’t write it down, but it had something like 30 days of skin contact, and was essentially treated like a red wine. It tasted like a lighter bodied, fruity red. I would’ve guessed Italian red blind. Much darker than the Romato at Cameron, and really delicious. I was really taken with it. One thing I like about Todd as a winemaker is he’s willing to do something different. In this case I think he succeeded. Todd’s very outgoing, and easy to talk to. I definitely could’ve stayed much longer, but had a last-minute appointment at Westrey, so took my leave.
Headed back into town to visit David Autrey at Westrey. Westrey’s facility is in the same industrial area as Goodfellow, Eyrie, and Heater Allen, and from the outside it looks nothing like a winery. It’s a run down brown house that looks like it was plopped in a parking lot in an industrial park. David called it “the meth lab”. I was really amazed. In my mind, Westrey is one of the top producers in Oregon. Cameron’s winery felt like a real French winery. Westrey’s seemed like, well, a meth lab. The proof, of course, is in the bottle, and Westrey definitely stacks up.
David lines up nine of his current releases on a counter. Nine bottles of Westrey! What an amazing experience. I wish I’d brought a voice recorder. David has been through so many vintages in Oregon, and is clearly so knowledgeable about all aspects of farming and viticulture. It was great to hear him just talk for a while. He was much higher on the 2013s than Todd, calling them mostly classic in the vein of 2008, 2010, and 2011. He felt that the rains didn’t hurt his wine much - the long, dry summer meant that the vines needed water anyway, and the rain brought brix down to a better level. (David claimed that, by the numbers, all four are pretty similar vintages. Go figure.) He wasn’t bullish on the 2012s - he said 2012 was such an outlier vintage, unlike any other he’s seen in OR, so he can’t know where the wines are going to go. They had a lot of baby fat, and are shedding some of it now, but he doesn’t know what will happen in 20 years.
We talked a bunch about Chardonnay, and how it’s getting more respect now. A bunch of his reserve Chardonnay is own-rooted, and he feels that the lack of irrigation and original rootstock contributes a bunch to complexity. The 2012 Cuvee 20 is also a combination of two barrels of own-rooted pinot in Oracle and Abbey Ridge. A recurring theme for this trip has been my surprise at how much original rootstock remains in Oregon, and how little people talk about it.
I didn’t take notes while tasting, but purchased my three favorites. The 2013 reserve chardonnay had amazing density and complexity without any flabbiness. The 2012 Oracle was, I thought, showing better than the 2011 (which has a bit of that graham cracker nose that you sometimes find on OR pinot). The 2013 Abbey Ridge was another classic. I told David the 2010 was one of my wines of the vintage, and got a little chiding for opening it too early. We also talked a bit about the difference between Cameron and Westrey Abbey Ridge - the Westrey block is just one clone, so he feels that Cameron is able to make a more complete wine, while the Westrey is always more feminine. Could be true, but the 2013 was amazing. Keep an eye out.
My last McMinnville appointment of the day was at Matello. Marcus had to be in Portland, so I met up with Gaironn instead to taste through a bunch of the wines. I thought the 2012 pinots were a little cranky compared to a Whistling Ridge I had last week. The whites were great, though, including a nice Riesling that apparently is not continuing past 2012. We talked mostly about the shift from Matello to Goodfellow for the higher end wines, and about kids (their son is almost one). I took home some of the 2012 Richard’s Chardonnay, which was excellent as always, and a few of the single vineyard 2012 pinots that I don’t own.
After a morning of tasting in the city, I headed out to Walter Scott, which is nestled in the hills outside of Salem. They’re on the Justice Vineyard property, which was nice to see after having tasted with David at Westrey.
Ken and Erica at Walter Scott are great hosts. Ken was moving combining some Freedom Hill chardonnay in a tank when I arrived, preparing for bottling in a few weeks. It was fun to see some active winery work while we worked through some wines. Everything they’ve bottled except one 2013 pinot is sold out, so we went through all of the 2014s in barrel. 7 pinots and 3 chards. Ken and Erica are very generous, very outgoing, and, again, are terrific hosts. I am generally most excited about their chard program, but three of the 2014 pinots really stood out to me. Temperance Hill, Seven Springs, and Clos des Oiseaux were my favorites, perhaps just because they were the most open. I’m new to barrel tasting, but those were my pinot picks.
Ken and Erica are also full of stories, none of which I wrote down. Their block of Seven Springs they have for only two years. It’s one of the oldest plantings, and it really showed. In 2016 they’re moving to a newer block, which I’m sure will still be good, but it will be worth seeking out the 2014 (and hopefully 2015). Evening Land, of course, kicked everyone out of Seven Springs when they came in, but Ken says Raj Parr, who came on in 2014 as a consultant, wants to be a part of the valley community and has been selling more fruit. We talked about the history of Clos des Oiseaux, the vineyard they farm, and how well it’s progressed. All three wines had great length, nice bright fruit, and good structure. Ken is much lower on whole cluster, usually 5-15%, but there was plenty of tannins in the 2014 barrel samples.
All three of the 2014 chards are, of course, great. Good fruit, high acidity, no butter, no flab. More precise than the Westrey, less overt fruitiness, and more stoney. Again, didn’t take notes at the time, but I believe the X-Novo was the most tropical. The Vojtilla has a nice quinine quality, which I find very attractive in chards. I also got to taste some of the lees from a wine that had been moved to tank earlier. It was like a chardonnay smoothy. Very tasty.
I wish I had written down more of Ken and Erica’s stories, but their passion for their work really shines through. Ninety minutes flew by. Since I was in the neighborhood, I figured I’d head to St Innocent, which has regular tasting room hours.
The regular tasting room experience is so different from making appointments. I had a wine flight poured by a very nice but very young guy who was good at giving me the spiel about the wines, but didn’t do much to further my personal connection to them. I really like St Innocent, though, and I thought the 2013 pinots were really good. The 2013 Justice was my favorite of the tasting, along with the 2013 Chardonnay. They also had a 2006 Blanc de Blanc for sale which I’d never seen before, so I had to get one. Not much more to say about St Innocent.
