Just to clarify Jim…No single vineyard Pinots from just the Dundee Hills or from all of Oregon?
We will produce no single vineyard Pinots from 2020. There will be a relatively small amount of the Willamette Valley Reserve (around 1,000 cases versus a normal production of about 5,000 cases). We may have some larger quantity of a Pinot Noir that I would call “glass pour friendly” in terms of price and style but I’m not willing to say that’s for sure yet. No single vineyard Chardonnay. Maybe a WV Chardonnay. Not sure. Likely no SB. We are debuting a very nice rose of Tempranillo from Freedom Hill Vineyard.
Not trying to over take this thread as this is about a different winery. We happen to share fruit sources (Weber) and work with vineyards adjacent to one another up the hill from there so I know particularly well the struggles and problems in that area.
Slight drift…I can still remember a 2008 Littorai Pinot Noir Les Larmes I drank over ten years ago as the smokiest wine I’ve ever had.
Some wineries, Navarro for instance, released some 2008 wines with the explicit caution that they were smokey. A friend bought some and liked them. I did not.
They were nowhere as smoke infused as the original Ex Umbris made by Owen Roe after a Washington wildfire, and sold with a smoke alert. I just did a quick check on Cellartracker and saw ratings of 77 and 93 points. Tastes differ.
I was dating a lady somehow related to David and drank a few of those Ex Umbris. They were not my cup of tea. She had more bottles of them than I care to remember and loved them.
Did she smoke?
Reading this just makes me sad, legit Mr. Rogers sad. 2020 has not given anyone any rest. The fires were a gut punch. Now the residuals will be felt for quite a bit, akin to COVID.
Hoping a better 2021 for all.
Littorai declassified all of their 2008 Anderson Valley Pinot fruit they kept into the Les Larmes (they also sold some grapes), and much of the Sonoma Coast Pinot fruit into another appellation Pinot Noir as well. Of the fruit they kept, some went into a direct press rose. For the appellation wines, they vinified to minimize extraction and maximize the fruit, and told customers they should drink them young (recommended within a year of release). They also swapped the order of release of those two Appellation wines with the 2007 versions. They were transparent about the issues and also lowered the prices on these two 2008 wines.
The 2008 Les Larmes was smoky, but far from the smokiest wine I’ve had. I also found Littorai be a model of transparency in a very difficult situation (I went back and reviewed their release letters from the two years the 2008s were sold).
I recall going to their pickup day in 2008 when a lot of California wineries were dealing with their first big smoke event. Ken Zinns and I chatted a bit with Ted about what they were doing because there was some smoke tainted fruit to deal with at a couple of wineries where we helped. He told us what they did but said he didn’t think there were any magic solutions.
I think the best approach is to do the best you can and be up front with your customers.
-Al
Guh - such a heartbreaker. Her wines are a favorite of mine, as is she. Same for Jim! Was trying to gauge the smoke impact this year, and haven’t heard much until now. 2021 vintage starts now, but gosh - losing a really solid vintage at the last moment is brutal. Chalking up 2020 as a truly tough year all around for many, adding this is piling it on.
Yes, definitely a heart breaker. From everything I’ve read, it was shaping up to be a very good vintage. I discovered them fairly recently, but I love Kelley’s wines and it’s a pity there won’t be any 2020 reds.
-Al
It’s a straight loss if you don’t work with it. And realistically, nothing ever gets fixed or learned, if you don’t try.
I respect all of the Oregon producers that I know, and hold Kelley and Jim in high regard. Also, every winery has different restrictions on their production and process, and you can’t just change that overnight. But I am surprised, and bluntly disappointed, to see so many statements passing on red wine production in 2020 before Thanksgiving.
Your last sentence rings true to me.
It’s also worth noting that 2008 was in the earlier understanding of smoke taint. Things have progressed since then, sadly that’s primarily because the issue is reoccurring more frequently.
FIFY
Just to be clear Mike, I bought an extra two blocks of Temperance Hill this year because wineries walked out on contracts. It was destabilizing the vineyard’s abillity to stay solvent enough to farm in 2021(there are at least two other larger wineries who took significantly bigger amounts of extra fruit than I did.) Those Temperance Hill blocks are among the best wines I have in the cellar, so in my opinion, too much of the bailing out was without enough data points. The first producer to walk did so after 2 days of smoke, hardly enough time or real consideration of the situation to simply drop the loss on the vineyard.
Dai Crisp, the vineyard manager, was getting offers of 20% on contract from some of the wneries, and nothing from some others. I have a friend getting some fruit from THV who offered 50%, but to my knowledge they are the only winery doing so.
There are plenty of wineries like PGC and Kelley who took their fruit and will find ways to handle it, but that’s not industry wide. Given that when the smoke hits, the grower has invested almost all of the vintage costs and the winery has invested only in new cooperage at that point, splitting 50/50 would be the easiest road a winery should take.
That’s a big ask when you’re looking at a possible fail of the vintage. But it is the right thing to do, at the very least.