#TGU forever!
Thanks for this, Ken,
Very illuminating. I love that sense of material, density that I find in some of the best burgs. Is part of what you are suggesting that your wines from '19 on show more of this? Up and down the range? Just curious, as I have some both earlier than '19 and '19 and later and it might be fun to compare.
I’m hopeful someone in Oregon really starts to make some good traditional method bubbly. If Under The Wire/Ultramarine can get close from places I’d never buy chardonnay from–I’d think Oregon could blow it out of the water?
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Great discussion and comments. Regional growing attributes create the compelling attributes found in OR Chardonnay. And affords wineries (and the new generation of winemakers) an expansive palette for their winemaking approach. Exciting times indeed!
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There already are several. And ever heard of @Marcus_Goodfellow ? He is work on several bubbly bottlings. They are are going to be game changers when they finally get released.
Tom Sivilli (Ass’t Winemaker @ Cameron) makes a killer sparkling wine (Sivilli Wine Co). I think his 2018 is pretty much gone, though it looks like Vinopolis still has some.
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They’re very much different textures—and as for what’s better, I tend to side with you…but the market doesn’t always. To me, phenolics at carry a hint of bitterness, which I find really pleasant in their ability to balance fruit and accentuate the perception of acidity. The crushing/hard pressing to get those characteristics often brings a bit of skin tannin into the game, as well, and all of those factors make a wine less appealing for a customer who is looking for a “smooth” Chardonnay.
The move towards “more texture” for many years in Chard was very much driven by the desire for more opulence in the wines, and opulence in the “Parker” vein meant a battonage/gycerol-driven texture, which accentuates rather than balances rich fruit.
Personally, I’ve been crushing our white fruit for a few years now before pressing (and before that, pressing moderately hard/tumbling the grapes more in the press to extract skin compounds). We can pick at pretty modest sugar levels here in the WV and still have plenty of fruit (I suspect largely because of the clay topsoils we have over the parent rock material), so ways to de-gloss it a bit appeal to what I’m after.
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Stephen,
I don’t usually use sustainable as a metric for wine, though that’s mostly due to the bottle itself. And it is a vague term that, kind of like ‘non-interventionist winemaking’.
In terms of care of the land, an honest look at the Valley would need to start with deforestation and the loss of what was the natural habitat for centuries. 97% of the Willamette Valleys native White oak savannas are gone. The Oak Accord (see the Willamette Partnership website) is an accord to protect these savannas from further loss, as well as other forested areas.
Vineyards are a significant impact on the loss of trees in the Valley, so sustainable farming should have to include some form of offset for that loss or maintaining some portion of a property in native timber or established trees. Many vineyards maintain portions of the property in native plants, and it’s a part of LIVE certification IIRC, but there’s no mandatory inclusion of bigger trees in that.
Perhaps the biggest impending sustainability crisis is water. While vineyards, especially dry farmed ones, typically are not water hogs most wineries use a lot of water. In France wineries are often in the municipalities, and for sustainability one of the biggest choices would be to locate the winery on city water though even then water efficiency in the winemaking process should be a primary focus for all of us. Trisaetum, is set up to be water neutral at the winery, which is a very laudable accomplishment, and probably extremely necessary in their Ribbon ridge neighborhood.
While this may seem like it’s not about sustainable farming, since we’re only talking about wine then the winery practices and farming are all one action (vigneron).
For sustainable farming, Eric Texier’s commentary is salient. If you’re organic and biodynamic, there are many benefits but if you have to factor in the extra time working the vineyard. If that’s on a tractor then diesel use is increased as is compaction.
If you are employing ideas from Fukuoka’s philosophy, and I definitely lean towards much of his philosophy, then the real truth is that you shouldn’t be planting grapes. Growing blueberries on the farm I grew up on took no real maintenance other than keeping the blackberries at bay. These, blueberrie and blackberries, are the more logical choice for what grows naturally here. I obviously love what I do enough to dedicate my life to it, but we humans often, when looking at a philosophy will take the part we like and leave behind the rest. Rigorous honesty in the way of natural farming is growing what naturally grows in a region rather than what you want to grow.
That said, there are a lot of vineyards that I like that work hard to be as non-invasive as possible.
Temperance Hill is certified organic. It’s also a remarkable terroir, with a singular and beautiful expression.
Whistling Ridge, Patricia Green Estate, and Beaux Freres are all contiguous vineyards. Beaux Freres is farmed organically and biodynamically(I agree with Tai-Ran regarding biodynamics. It’s blindly prescriptive at times. But I think that vineyard owners who farm this way are also very connected to what’s happening in the vineyard, and simply make good farmers.) both Patricia Green(I believe) and Whistling Ridge are farmed organically. Whistling Ridge took the longest to get to this. But we also have been no-till, and focused on low impact farming since 2006. We did cultivate the vineyard in 2022 due to the freeze in April and also because a constant state of no-till challenges the vines and generally saps vigor each vintage. I found the wines became much more what I wanted to make but the vines can only lose vigor for so many years in a row. I expect that we will move to trying to tilling irregularly in order to preserve the life of the vine.
Brickhouse, farmed by Doug Tunnell, is also organic and biodynamic.
Eyrie is organic, and Jason Lett is a very committed and thoughtful grower focused on our responsibilities as vignerons.
Josh Bergstrom-also organic and biodynamic. Josh doesn’t get the recognition for this that he deserves (IMO).
There are many others, and I’ll leave that to other posters. But few people in the Valley are not committing to kind work in growing plants.
While there is much to appreciate in Fukuoka, there are also very real world problems with it. Fukuoka’s son took over the farm with it in financial difficulty.
Nature and the fruit it provides does occur without our intervention. But nature is neither kind nor merciful. Agriculture as an act is man’s effort to bring consistency to plant production, both in yields and health of the plant and to a level higher than what nature provides.
If we all farmed similarly to Tai-Ran, what would the yields be? And what would the price per bottle of the wines be? How many people would we continue to employ? And how tenuous would the industry be?
If ‘natural’ farming yields half the fruit of responsible farming, then the wines must be twice as expensive. And it would require clearing twice as much land to produce the same amount. Neither of those seem like good choices to me. I don’t think that we should move to factory farming for yields at all.
But I do believe that there is a responsibility that occurs when we clear the naturally occcuring plants to begin agriculture on plants of our preference. I look forward to tasting his Chardonnay at some point, and hope that it sets a bar for quality that would justify the low yields per acre and price points attendant with that.
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Craig,
You need to put ITB in your signature.
And at risk of being recognized for the superstar you are, you should let everyone know you farm a few acres in the Valley…that Ex-Novo place being one of them 
Tom is getting fruit from the Flats block at Temperance Hill from 2022 forward for his sparkling project. That’s an incredible block, IMO, for his sparkling project and one I had pitched Dai on just a bit too late. We’re utilizing fruit from the West Field at Temperance for our program, which is the other section at THV that should ge amazing for sparkling wine. Both are old vine(planted in the 80s) single high wire trellis blocks.
I’m very excited to see his results from Temperance Hill and about what we have in puncheon from there oursleves.
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Taken to it’s logical extreme, there would be no vinifera grown in the US and phylloxera would have obliterated that specie of grape in Europe, no? Not a world I want to live in.
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While that’s very appreciated, I think that the current and upcoming set of releases from some of the better WV sparkling producers are really excellent wines.
Lundeen 2017 La Cantera BdN is delicious
Granville 2017 Dundee Hills is a new level
From much of what I have tried.
2015 Grand Moraine Blanc de Blanc is delicious (and Shane Moore’s Grand Moraine Chardonnays belong in this thread, he does great work and represents the Jackson Family Estates very well).
Mellen-Meyer’s upcoming 2021 WV Brut is exceptional and if his pricing stays the same, it’s a phenomenal deal.
It’s an exciting time in the Valley right now.
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Correct, and same here. As I noted, I spend all of my working life on Vinifera.
It’s where the fairy tales start to drive me a bit crazy.
Very little in my industry makes me want to stop making wine and go do something else than having people who have little to no track record going out to prove they are going to show everyone up using methodologies that have possibly disastrous consequences (and possibly not). Mildew knows no boundaries.
Tai-Ran has an isolated vineyard, and his experiment is actually pretty interesting, but you shouldn’t publish before it’s done. That’s bad science. And to be fair, he didn’t write the commentary associated with his E&R bottles. But this type of commentary is like the vinous version of Q-anon…no proof, big statements, and motivated by sales.
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I saw all things Chardonnay. This WV is really good.
Marcus, haven’t seen you for a while. Hope you are well.
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You as well Travis!
I’ve never had Under the Wire or Ultramarine, so I can’t tell you how it ranks with them. But Argyle’s ‘Extended Tirage’ series is really, really nice. Especially with some age (say, 6 years + from vintage). Every bottle I’ve had I’ve done a double-take and thought to myself “wow, if I was blinded this, I’d think I was drinking quality Champagne”.
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I think supported by a certain kind of person who buys into the romance of it all as well. I admit I find the idea romantic, but I also know through first-hand experience how brutally hard even home gardening can be, especially when trying to tend more towards the more romantic ideas of organic/low/no intervention. For example, downy mildew descending on my basil plants, and learning that the treatment for it is basically ‘nuke the plants, and don’t ever expect to grow basil there again’ (a bit of hyperbole perhaps, but not much).
I can’t fathom dealing with it on a larger scale, with the intent to make money.
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So, is anyone attending the Chardonnay Celebration tomorrow or has it been postponed due to the weather? I’m looking forward to some reviews from the astute Oregon peeps…
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It’s happening but they had to shift today’s venue and I cannot see people driving at night to go to things. Main highways are fine but even busy side roads have stretches of frozen stuff and it’s supposed to be in the teens/low 20s tonight and tomorrow night. I suspect a lot of no shows for night stuff. I wouldn’t be driving tonight in these parts. No way.
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After reading this, I will name my new Chard “sous bois”. Brilliant 
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