Day 4
Junichi Fujita
This was one of my more anticipated visits, and one of the visits I got the most questions about.
In the Thomas section of this post, I spoke about my delusions of having a small plot of land and doing everything myself, the way John Thomas did. Here comes Junichi Fujita, doing exactly that. A 4-5 acre plot in McMinnville AVA high up a ridgeline. He is in a particularly cool and windswept part of the AVA, and his plot faces I believe south/southeast. He shares a fence line with Hyland vineyard on one side and Brittan vineyard down the slope.
Junichi is extremely kind and extremely thoughtful. You can see him deeply consider and think while answering questions, often found with a hand on his chin and taking a pause before speaking.
His farming practices were deeply influenced by the writings of Fukouoka, who in summary described a “no intervention, do nothing” process and allow a plot of land to speak its voice. Junichi will openly tell you he tried this for years and was never able to bear fruit from the vineyard. The soils on his property are relatively shallow and tough, the vines needed a little help. He modified his approach a little bit, taking some things from Fukouoka’s teachings and some from modern viticulture. With these subtle modifications, the estate vines have actively produced fruit, though some select vines on the bottom of the slope are still struggling a bit.
On farming, he is taking an equilateral triangle approach to planting vines. This allows for several “paths” to be made in the vineyard, not just linear rows. The best analogy I can make is how military cemeteries can have multiple “paths” when looking in different directions. The multiple paths will ultimately work to prevent soil impaction. Further, he is pursuing head-trained vines rather than cane-pruned or cordon style. As a result, the fruit end up hanging in the middle of the vine with plenty of shade protection from leaves.
Junichi spent a good chunk of time in France and has had many of the great wines of the world. He is doing his part to take those teaching and apply them to his vineyard. For example, he is not using a single clonal variety of PN, rather pursuing almost 20 clones interspersed throughout the vineyard. Further, there’s a number of varieties on the property, including syrah, gamay, chardonnay, and I believe some pinot gris as well as aligoté. He cites historical records of great vineyards from France and Italy. The Romanee Conti vineyard had excellent record keeping, and apparently about 20-30% of the vines were white grapes in the 1800s, and a lesser percentage in the early 1900s. From a chemistry perspective, co-fermentation of white and red grapes can allow the white components to stabilize tannins and improve color (commonly seen in the Rhone). I think he ultimately will separate things out, but don’t be surprised if a chunk of white grapes end up in a predominantly Pinot blend.
Onto the wines and winemaking. When it comes harvest time, he has help from friends and family. He uses small buckets to promote fruit integrity and takes his time with picking, much like they do in France. He cites other pickings he’s seen where there’s leaves, bad clusters, etc. and relatively rough handling of the fruit. Further, the large 1-ton bins commonly used have a tendency to crush fruit preemptively and let the juice out. He said for all his ferments, once the fruit goes into tank he opens the bottom and there has yet to be juice flowing out. The fruit is impeccably handled. His attention to detail and care when handling fruit is admirable.
With winemaking, he doesn’t pursue heavy extraction but manages to get a lot of color out of the wine. He is not aiming to paint the juice in oak and is using no new oak. The newest oak he uses is about 4-5 years old, and the oldest is somewhere between 15-20 years old. Read that again. I was pretty stunned as well. He only replaces them when he feels there is too much leakage, too much angel’s share, or something else wrong with the barrel.
Alright enough talking about techniques and ethos, onto the wines themselves. Of note he does not use any additional sulfur, so he takes a very stringent process in making sure the wine is clean.
I tried multiple barrel samples as well as multiple bottles, including the yet to be released 2023 and 24 estate vineyard PN. The throughline of these wines is purity and clarity. There is a darker blue and purple fruit bramble character, with savory undertone and floral elegance. The color is almost electric and magenta like, which translates to the flavors on the palate. There is certainly acidity here, and an elegant blanket of tannins as well. In a lot of ways, the flavor profile reminded me of Jasud. Complex purple brambly fruit but with incredible transparency.
The 24 Bracken I found to be representative of the PN from that site. If you’ve had the Perkins Harter PN before, you’ll immediately recognize the fun, crunchy, brambly fruit with appropriate structure underneath. One of 24 Brittan barrels was still finishing malolactic fermentation (he will let the barrels take their time, no need to rush on these) and the other had completed it. I tried both. What is remarkable is that even in these old puncheons, there’s still a kiss of oak influence. Brittan was a little bit darker in tone and more rounded fruit than his estate vineyard, darker purple brambly fruit with good minerality, plenty of clarity, and good support from tannins.
Briefly on the labels. They are decorative yes, but also meaningful. I went as far to tell him that some (like myself) may find his labels too fanciful and expensive, whereas the focus should be on the wine. I used the labels on Beta wines as an example to counter. He told me the paper is handmade from Japan (I believe his hometown), and the blue is natural indigo dye from Japan. The art on the label is hand-drawn calligraphy, done by him. For the blue label shown, one half is a river, and the other half is a person. He is hand applying and hand painting every single label. That was a pretty major foot-in-mouth moment.
When will his estate wines release? He’s not sure, he has a baby on the way pretty soon. We joked the baby release may prioritize the wine release. (Edit: he has previously released a 2022 from his estate vineyard, Juna. My mistake!)
If you’re a romantic delusional wine nerd like me (come on board, I know there’s plenty of you out there), this is the kind of project and kind of person you want to support. He is a vineyard owner, winemaker, and farmer, and basically doing all this himself. He is taking the Burgundian familial approach to his 4-5 acres and putting his blood sweat and tears into it. Much in the way that John Thomas did some 40+ years ago, and similar to the way Ketan did Jasud more recently.
Junichi’s wines and approach are different. They taste different. Their clarity and fruit character is different. What he’s doing and how he’s doing it is different. Your perception and interpretation of the wines is ultimately your own, but the wines are worth checking out at a minimum.
Martin Woods
I’ve been a big fan of this producer for some time and briefly mentioned them on here a couple times. I found their chards at retail and was pretty blown away. I reached out to the winery and was graciously invited to visit the property, which is also Evan Martin’s home. A long drive up a gravel road lined with trees and winding turns, you come out into a clearance to find a winery with a house perched on top. I was met by Aaron (who also can be found behind the bar at HiFi). Aaron plays cellar master, Evan Martin plays winemaker, and one other person whose name I’m forgetting also helps out. This broad (and successful) lineup is managed and put together essentially by 3 people. Pretty crazy.
I was handed a glass of cab franc rose, which was absolutely stunning. I don’t think a lot of this is made, but expect it to get gobbled up pretty quickly. Moving on to the barrel room is a retrofitted barn with insulation and cooling, stacked almost to the ceiling. I went through a bunch of the red wines including multiple Pinot single vineyards, the cab franc, syrah, and gamay. I had previously told Aaron I wasn’t too sure about the PNs, but maybe it was vintage variation because the 22s are just stunning (a theme by this point of the trip). Good fruit with really nice acidity and tannic support. The 22 cab franc was very good for me—it does have pyrazine so if you are averse to that it may not be the vintage for you. The 21 had just a kiss of it but more as a herbal complex note, which I think is worth a look. Honestly, I was pretty surprised that Evan and team can make so many good reds across multiple sites and multiple grapes.
The chards here are excellent. There’s supple reduction, but incredible coiling, layering, and depth, with proper acidity and phenolic tension. They are not made in an overtly reductive style, so they will be open and expressive in an earlier window IMO. Koosah once again is a standout. The Rieslings are very good too, and the noble rot is made in a BA/TBA style with over 100g/L RS. Really compelling.
I know I raved about the chards, but I criminally underrated the reds prior to this. Really insightful tasting. These are good guys making very, very good wine at competitive pricing. They seem to be pretty well distributed, so look around a bit and you may find some. If not, definitely reach out to the winery. The critics are taking note of what goes on here, so don’t wait too long.
X-Novo
Many of us know the name of this vineyard from Walter Scott and Morgen Long. It is located in Eola-Amity Hills and sees plenty of that Van Duzer wind. They’ve recently started their own project and making chard and pinot from the X-Omni vineyard (despite brand name being X-novo). I want to emphasize this is a working winery and not really set up for tastings. They were very kind to make time and see me despite the last minute request. I was hosted by Morgan Trapp who is cellarmaster by title but intimately involved with every step of the winemaking, and by all intents and purposes, an assistant winemaker.
The property itself has expanded over time, but the original vines are 10-15 years old over by the original house. X-Novo and X-Omni both have some younger vines that are coming online soon. There’s some serious neighbors to this vineyard, including Cristom, Soter, and Temperance Hill.Farming is done at a very high level here, hence it shows up on top-level producer bottlings. Interestingly, they do a bit of early deleafing. I was walking the grounds with Morgan and noticed the fruit zone was pretty wide open, despite not being near harvest and prior to veraison. I forget exactly why, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with early wind exposure and sun exposure.
The wines themselves are reasonably distinct from other producers’ bottlings. The 2019 vintage seems to have been made more in the Walter Scott style, but 21-23 have less intentional reduction and tend to show more yellow fruit and depth up front. Still plenty of phenolic tension and acidity underneath. I think as the vintages go they will hone in on their style and expression of their site. The PN here I thought was excellent. Beautifully consistent with Eola fruit, almost medicinal red cherry and raspberry, complex fresh undertones, really lovely tension. 22 was superior to 21 for me.
Craig Williams is the head winemaker, Jamie Lewis assists, and Morgan Trapp is cellar master for the project. Morgan is on site basically at all times, and the team meets routinely to taste and discuss winemaking/farming. During harvest, it is all hands on deck and everyone is at the vineyard.
