we did the wine tourism thing this past Sunday after seeing Tedeschi-Trucks band outdoors in the rain Saturday night in Salem. If you can see this band and you enjoy RnR music or big bands drop everything to go, they are extraordinary.
Anyway on Sunday we went to three Willamette Valley wineries, board darlings and unknowns, and tasted and chatted. WV is so beautiful to visit, consistently stunning. So all three places were blowing out Pinot Gris, recent releases and older vintages. Upon longer visits, during more private conversations, all three places had either vignerons or estate owners tell me they were pulling out their Pinot Gris.
I’m not often surprised by the wine world but this was news to me.
This has been going on for awhile as Chardonnay is on the ascent. I don’t mind PG, but i’ve Never understood why PG was the most planted white grape in OR by a large margin.
I would bet there is a sell through issue too. Shelf life on most OR PG isn’t going to be as high as Pinot or Chard, so from that stand point, probably more prudent to go with longer shelf life varietals.
I’d also be willing to bet that the land values in the Willamette are having a major effect on that as well. Chard will fetch a higher price while PG is a quick turnaround wine for producers and will never retail for what Chard will
Been saying this for years and the reality of it is finally settling in. Pinot Gris outside of basically one place on earth just isn’t that amazing. It has a distinct ceiling to it and given its relative ease to grow, relative low acidity and relative early picking dates makes it an easy thing to market at a mass level and sell in quantities to airports and banquets halls. It’s inoffensive and ignorable which are two highly marketable characteristics of large production wines.
So, in Oregon it will and is becoming stratified into basically 2 (and with a nod folks like Marcus and Kelley Fox and a couple/few others, 3) distinct groups. The first is simply the volume people. Make thousands, preferably 10s of thousands of cases of it. Profit by volume. The second is the amount a winery could sell out of there tasting room from, probably, what they have planted at their Estate or some sort of tightly held vineyard. Different amounts for different wineries. But, in general, not that much. The third is the small amount of people doing something different and unique with it. Anything in between is death. Growers of it trying to sell it as fruit are finding limited buyers as only a small handful of the big boys. It’s just not a very diverse wine to sell.
Enjoyed the Trucks. Tedeschi band 2 years ago in Albuquerque though it rained on that one too. I have always found PG insipid. It is produced better in Alsace and Alto Adige that Oregon.
Yup. As much as I like PG from Marcus, Kelley and a few others, I’ve had awesome Chardonnay from a broader swath of producers at different price points. Seems like a no brained for various reasons mentioned in this thread that PG plantings finally fall back to reality while Chardonnay increases. Hell, I’d like to see it fall below Pinot Blanc as I’ve had many enjoyable bottles of OR PB that outshine PG IMO.
I was really enamored with Oregon Pinot Gris in about 1987 (I think Ponzi and Eyrie were the only producers then), and have occasionally tasted good ones since, though I think I could count the really goods ones in the last decade on one hand. I agree with Scott that it is much easier to find good Chardonnay than drinkable Pinot Gris in Oregon. I still get gifted PG occasionally and except for a few top producers (Eyrie & Goodfellow), I generally use it as cooking wine. I would rather see at least some of the plantings grafted over to Gamay and perhaps Syrah.
There was a time 15-20 years ago that inexpensive oregon pinot gris was my go to white- King Estate on the cheap low end, Eyrie and others higher up. We liked that it wasn’t oaky like many chardonnay, less aggressive grapefruit and grassy as many of the sauv blancs. Now anytime I try it, it just seems uninteresting. There are a lot more chardonnay options that are less oaky and buttery, and the real reason is that now it is much easier to find good Albarino, good Rose, Gruner Veltliner, and the like.
And more importantly, where the heck has the Big Doc been! We need his color on the boards! Like cowbell, one can never get enough. As for Pinot Gris, I doubt that I have had any outside of Alsace, and from there, Major yum!
Probably, but that wouldn’t give enough credit to the Germans. I’ve generally preferred Grauburgunders (the German name) to most Alsatian pinot gris, as they have more acid. Sadly, they are pretty much impossible to find here. Donnhoff makes a great one, but it’s not imported, so far as I know.