Burgundy has become quite expensive in many cases, and while I like Oregon PNs usually I find I tend to prefer Sta. Rita Hills PNs (and often Chards, though my wife & I often buy an inexpensive South African one that we love, mostly for her as she drinks little red). RTPL
I’m not really looking to emulate Burgundy, but rather to produce wines with a similar level and balance of acid, tannin, and dry extract. And mostly because those are requirements in the wines I like. The vineyards will define the expression.
We only get one time per year to make wine, so it takes quite a length of time to dial anything in. Most of us are applying somewhat similar techniques to Burgundy cellars, but the fruit is different. Altering the wines by vineyard work is quite an undertaking. Especially if, as Jim alluded, only a small portion of the industry are truly focused on it.
I am not trying to copy Burgundy, but I am extremely happy with the wines we’ve produced while using Burgundy as the North star to sail the ship by.
Has anyone had Roses & Arrow Pinots from Oregon?
It’s made by (consulting wine maker) Louis Michel Liger Belair… the wines seem really expensive… but do they have the magic fairy crack dust that Comte liger belair wines seems to have?
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I’d fact check that statement.
Which fact?
Ok - consulting wine maker Louis Michel. 
Anyhow, You get my question tho right?
Anyone had these, and Does R&A come close to replicating the magic that is clb?
There’s a difference, you realize, yes? He’s 5,300 miles away harvesting at almost the exact same time. What would you expect?
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I got to taste through a flight of Rose and Arrow wines not too long ago. They’re good wines, balanced, earthy. The Black Walnut Vineyard was really excellent, but the rest didn’t get me very excited. I felt like they really weren’t worth the price tag. Unfortunately I can’t answer if they were similar to Ligier Belair because I’ve never had any, but they didn’t remind me of burgundy very much, just an earthy, high end Oregon Pinot, with a more Burgundian price tag.
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Sure. I get the physical difference. And I have no expectations…
My question still holds and is valid I think… does the CLB magic dust appear at all on his Oregon collab project.
I ask that because to me, The “clb magic dust” isn’t terroir driven, as side by side same vintage/vineyard, clb wines show a distinct beauty. So the question is does LMLB’s vineyard philosophy/ winemaking choices / or whatever he makes clb - clb… does “THAT” make it over to Oregon, such that rose&arrow wines have that distinct profile as well.
I’m also not looking for the SAME clb wine. (Let me find a $150 clb reignot… no.)
Just as clb is quite distinct amongst burgundy. My curiosity with R&A is if they are distinct amongst willamette pinots with a similar beauty/balance/excellence.
Not to be flip, but it isn’t obvious that you’re getting what a consulting winemaker brings to the table in these sorts of instances.
It’s not like there aren’t plenty of examples of Burgundians making or consulting on wineries or wine projects here in Oregon. Does Resonance taste like Jadot? Does Nicholas Jay taste like Meo-Camozet? And on and on.
It’s not obvious.
Lets start this over.
Louis Michel Liger Belair is in France at harvest while the R&A wines are being made in Oregon. So during a hugely important period he’s skyping at best and busy with his own wines.
Time is a finite and very limiting factor in winemaking, and the ability to read and react to a situation unfolding in front of you is crucial to your ability to engage risks in winemaking that are essential to producing wines of place. If you’re not around, just use the standard WV regimen of sort rigorously, destem, cold soak for 5-7 days, ferment, rack to tank, settle to your preference, rack to barrels, and wait for your consultant to free up from his own wines long enough to come over and “fix” everything.
But the wines are MADE, as in the actual physical process, by an Oregon winemaker. As is Nicholas-Jay, while Jean-Nicholas Meo is busy making Meo-Camuzet. Tracy at Dom. Nicholas Jay is an excellent winemaker and has been here awhile.
Also-Thomas Savre is the winemaker at Lingua Franca, not Dominique Lafon or Larry Stone. Though Larry is present at harvest and Dominique consults(and is an owner, so he’s going to be more focused than a consultant). Thomas is, in my opinion, an excellent winemaker and does great work.
Jacques Lardier, longtime winemaker at Jadot is here in Oregon at Resonance, or was when it was established, as a retirement project.
That said-skyping consultants do not make the wines. Any more than a Dr. can perform a surgery via skype while performing a surgery of their own. So mostly these guys have recipes for harvest(recipes for France) and then come and try to fix the dish in a couple of visits each year.
However, none of them are native or have lived here for any amountof time. So they don’t know the soil, land, climate, vines, fruit, cellars,…sorry, they don’t know shit about Oregon. Which means that like most consultants, they are working in the realm of amelioration and extraction-in a color by numbers way.
Shockingly, making great Pinot Noir is hard. It’s also VERY site specific, and the small details are what separates the good from the great. It’s so site specific that in Burgundy, they don’t say that they make Chardonnay or Pinot Noir, they say WHERE they make the wines from, i.e. Muersault, Chambolle-Musigny, etc.
So based upon their own ideas about what matters in fruit…these expert consultants have very little expertise. They are very accomplished winemakers in their own regions and have a head start on 99.9% of humanity, and are probably ahead of most new winemakers in Oregon. But a new winemaker, living in Oregon, will rapidly gain knowledge that all the skyping in the world can’t convey.
Dominique Lafon consulted for Evening Land, and basically Mark Tarlov was paying Dominique for his knowledge of process(nuts and bolts) while Dominique got to learn the terroir of the Willamette Valley. And then he and Larry started Lingua Franca.
Being from a place matters. If you like complex Pinot Noir that really shows it’s terroir, then look for producers that are long term residents of their region and have 10 or more vintages under their belts(old vines and old winemakers often make more complex wines). For me, top of the totem pole is the site, and the second most important thing is the experience of the winemaker with that site.
That doesn’t mean that an inexperienced person can’t make a good/great wine without experience. In most years, Oregon fruit makes good wines for pretty much everyone but the inept(and based upon my 2002s even for the mostly ignorant). With the consultants, you will get very polished wines that usually taste very good but so far, for my palate, lack the nuance that I find in wineries like Belle Pente, Walter Scott, Evesham Wood, Cristom, PGC, Thomas, etc.
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I opened a '12 Fourrier Morey Clos Solon last week, which at first showed to me what I think of as “new world,” clean, fairly buoyant fruit. It was followed by a sappiness and briary quality that to me spoke of Bonnes Mares and which I don’t find elsewhere. What Richard T. said above seems right, if dealing with generalities: less sweet, more structure, more minerality. Also totally true, in my case, that these differences can be hard to id blind, so definitely some bias entering in. All in all, I think the wines made by Jim, Marcus and others are serious and often wonderful wines; they do seem different to me, at least when it comes to the reds. In whites, for whatever reason, it seems more of a convergence is possible between the two sites. Happy to source both!
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Thanks Marcus… super thoughtful, and great information. i count this post as my learnings of today.
And Jim, dude you are being flip! haha but not gonna hold it against ya. 
My question also relates to this thread in a way… To me terroir is obviously important but producer is SUPER important for burgundy (and Oregon).
As Marcus said, you need to know the region, weather, soil, the climate, etc etc etc and 10000 other things… so i do get that via skype/consultants are not the same as someone who’s lived the soil of the region. But that’s where my question is - how much influence in R&A’s case does LMLB make…
Clearly producer (vineyard / wine making) choices matter… Many producers in burgundy make Chaumes, Colombiere, or Echzeaux, etc… so why is it that CLB is so clearly exceptional (with a handful of other top top tier producers). it has to come back to vineyard/wine production choices right? So my question on Rose & Arrow was really - has Louis Michel’s choices/recommendations been beneficial… It might not be! b/c he doesn’t know this region at all as Marcus said… but maybe? And whatever the outcome, does R&A have that distinct ‘early approachability’, ‘sweet earth/fruit balance’, ‘good but not striking acid levels’, and a bit of that ‘magic dust’ so to speak… does any of that show up BEYOND the terroir, based on Louis Michel’s influence.
I’m not asking “does R&A taste like CLB”… of course not, the terroir is totally different. Just like I know NicJay doesn’t taste like Meo… but it’s the same as asking does Meo’s PRODUCER characteristics show up in NicJay… does LMLB’s producer characters show up in R&A… which is kinda what this whole thread is about right? flavors/aromas/terroir. i don’t think terroir is replicable… but how about producer influences? I don’t find consulting winemakers in oregon ‘better’… i find it interesting from a geeky perspective in understanding more what exactly they bring to the collaboration…
That said - i agree with Marcus - producers with long histories in a region is going to better reflect that region’s terroir. Consulting wine makers do make polished wines. I’m hoping to both personal continue to try more of both, and learn more about both.
Mark, your right about the CLB being a premier producer in Burgundy. But that’s because he is completely and utterly immersed in the farming and production details of his sites and cellar.
Consider that even the physical differences between the buildings a wine is fermented and produced in will make a noticeable difference in finished wines. I’ve been in four different production facilities, and all affect the process. That’s where my theories about regions with a significant amount of caves came from.
In my opinion, producers rise up because they chase great wines relentlessly, they aren’t satisfied by good, or even great results, and are always looking to improve in any area they can, and they are good at segregating what’s salient to the wine in the bottle and everything else.
In Oregon, site matters for the terroir, but I buy by producer because not everyone is good at producing wines that both show terroir and appeal to my very subjective palate. And the best producers here are the best because they eat, live, and breath the wines from this Valley(and have more natural talent and willingness to grind than others who also do so…just being a gym rat goes a long way, but when you are separating out the gym rats, it usually goes to talent and determination).
But none of those details actually translate across continents.
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Though not at Bern’s , where the desert “wing” is/was the “Harry Waugh” room…
I did not see this when I was writing my post; thanks for it, Marcus,
Great and important post.
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There are many producers though who say they try and help nature to do the job and are minimal interventionists.
A question is “do they adapt all they do to the terroir or do they let the terroir make a difference?”
I am sure there are different approach but, for instance, Fourrier uses 20% new wood for all his wines keeping them for 5 years irrespective of whether this is Griotte or Morey , others increase wood with the wine ability to cope…
Many have same vinification process for the different terroirs they own.
And work in the vineyard is often as work in the cellar and, there again, some do keep same approach and others adapt the “effort” to the price they can get from the terroir.
Obviously, there are may examples of owners having trained in Oregon before going back to Burgundy and vice versa. That’s called “cross fertilisation” (no pun intended of course)
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That’s a great question, but I doubt there is a right answer. Other than if you adapt for cuvee price, you risk overwhelming terroir.
It’s not binary though, there are wealth of options between uniformity of farming, and selling out to the cuvee price. Each site is an individual thing, and the vines within it are far from uniform. If you think of farming vines similarly to raising kids, it’s pretty easy to see that a standardized process will yield standard results.
For consumers, at some point it comes down to taking the time to track down producers who execute wines in a way that you enjoy and are loyal to the vineyard.
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You’re still not getting it. Read between the lines my friend. Louis-Michel doesn’t do jack.
Nor would he need to, the bold portion pretty much describes what is different in Oregon from Burgundy.
That said, it seems like buying a few bottles and exploring the wines would be the easiest answer. It bears posting though that this is Mark Tarlov’s third(fourth if you count Alit?) project in the Willamette Valley in 15 years…
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