Recent Oregon Vintage Experiences

WINE TALK
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Inspired by the recent red Burgundy vintage thread. Couldn’t find much about how certain vintages are drinking, mostly details on the growing seasons. I’ve occasionally come across great insights from others on specific vintages but was hoping we could centralize some of those.

I’ve only caught the bug for Oregon wine recently and mostly drink reds (haven’t even had a white older than 2020) but figure I can provide a jumping off point. My uninformed thoughts based on limited experience:

2023: Haven’t tried any reds yet but whites are energetic with pleasingly high acidity.

2022: Reds are more approachable than 21s and not as heavily structured. In my experience they’re also a bit more variable between producers – some have great fruit, silky tannins, and are well-balanced while others have showed poorly, lacking energy and vibrancy (especially on the lower end of the price spectrum). 22 whites are very well-balanced, good now but will develop nicely as well. My favorite white vintage of the decade so far.

2021: Contrary to 22, it seems like you had to try to make a bad red in 21. Complex and very well-structured with good acidity, low alcohol, and tannins to age. Any reds I’ve disliked have been due to stylistic preferences (over-extracted, over-oaked, etc.). Fantastic aging potential, I suspect these will shut down soon but I’ve been trying to load up! The whites seem less giving than 20, 22, and 23.

2020: Unsurprisingly, any reds I’ve had have tasted disjointed. Whites have been very pretty and floral with low alcohol; not sure if they have much stuffing for aging though.

2019: Reds are light and pretty. Whole cluster wines show an evident (and pleasant) dried spice profile, perhaps due to the coldness of the vintage. Mostly shut down now, felt that all the 2019s I tried recently needed at least 3 more years.

2018: Reds are more full-bodied with higher alcohol than I’d like. I’ve stopped opening them as I’m curious to see if development of tertiary notes over the next 3+ years will help them show better.

2017: Opened a couple of these recently. Reds show fresh red fruits and are starting to come out of their shell with classic lovely OR forest floor notes. Just lacking a bit of intensity right now, I think these will really enter their peak drinking window in a year or two.

2016: Loved all the 16s I had this year. Tons of beautiful tertiary and floral notes with red fruit. Well-balanced for aging but showing wonderfully right now.

2015: More rounded structurally but delicious, in their peak window right now. Fruit shows a bit sweeter than other vintages but is complimented by a wonderful forest floor and dried herb flavor profile. Structure might be too rounded to really improve past 2030, but I’m buying these for short-term drinking when I can find them. Hedonistic but not as ripe as 2018 in my experience.

2014: Probably the most elegant vintage in the past 10 years for me. Fruit is more high-toned than other vintages as well. The best wines are balanced with good acidity and obvious stuffing for further aging, but others seem unexpressive. I’ve found that any dumb phase for pinot noir is usually over by year 10 so this surprises me a bit, I may have just been unlucky with a few bottles though!

2013 and older I only have experience with one or two bottles from each vintage, so don’t want to make any generalizations.

Would love to hear your recent experiences!

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The first thing I would say is that the producer is more important than vintage every time. I also am wary of trying to generalize too much since I know I’m working form limited data points. That said, here’s some of my impressions on recent vintages.

2023: I don’t have enough data points yet. Tried one red (Vincent WV pinot) and a small handful of white. Too few data points to say anything meaningful.

2022: So far the pinots are a mixed bag for me. Every time I think I’m starting to get a handle on the vintage I try something that doesn’t fit my generalization. There are certainly some very good wines. I agree they’re less structured than 2021. More forward fruit character in the reds. Some have bright, fresh fruit with good acidity, but softer tannins. Maybe less “classic” structure but the acidity levels on many make me think many of the wines will age well. I think the whites are pretty strong across the board (from what I’ve tasted).

2021: I think a great vintage of well balanced wines (both white and red) that will age well. Well structured to age. I seem to have bought way more of the than I realize (and I continue to). I agree that it seems consistently good across almost all the wines I’ve tasted. Open and approachable for the most part on release and they continue to drink well. I expect they will age very well and I will be happy I bought so heavily

2020: The year of the smoke. Reds are a bust. Some good whites that are leaner with higher acidity, but likely not long lived.

2019: For me, the best pinot noir vintage in the last ten years. Leaner, lighter, good acidity but with tremendous depth and structure. Many wines I’ve had remind me of the Oregon wines I cut my teeth on from the late 80’s and early 90’s. I agree the best wines are shut down but they have a bright future.

2018: Reds tend to be bigger, brawnier and more tannic. I found a lot of reds hard and charmless on release. Many continue to be that way. But I think most of the wines will come around given enough time. I think the best wines will be incredibly long lived. The whites are really impressive. Bigger, richer, with good structure.

2017: I love 2017 reds for current drinking and agree they’re just starting to show themselves. I think it is a slightly softer vintage and don’t think they’ll last as long as some other vintages. It’s another vintage where the quality is pretty consistent across almost all of the producers I’ve had. Pretty wines

2016: One of the three hot years (2014-2016). I think the 2016’s are actually pretty good considering the heat. Many seemed a bit big when they were young, but in general, I think they’ve really come into their own. Of the three hot years of 2014-2016, I think 2016 will age best and is likely my favorite. Some great whites as well.

2015: I liked these better than 2014 and 2016 in their youth. I think they’re still good wines, but some are riper and more forward than I’d like. They are rounder and likely not as well suited to aging as other vintages. But I still have some that I’m hanging onto for several more years since I think some are still several years from peak.

2014: Early on, a lot of people I know here locally in Oregon were down on these. It was a hot year and a lot of the wines had riper fruit, higher alcohol and seemed out of whack. I have to say, a lot of 2014’s have really blossomed into very good, balanced wines that don’t show the riper fruit and alcohol that many feared. I don’t have a lot of them but what I’ve opened has been impressive.

I won’t go back further than 2014 for now. One thing to note is that I’m often wary of summarizing vintages, because I realize that so many of my impressions are still based on a fairly limited amount of wines. I was in the business in the late 80’s and 90’s and used to taste far more extensively across regions that I can now. So I have a much smaller set of data points and the Oregon wine scene has expanded so much since the early 90’s when I moved here. So my vintage impressions are limited. It will be interesting to see other people’s comments and maybe we can collectively build a more cohesive view of various vintages.

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Love the insights, great to get more color! Definitely agree that producer is more important than vintage, I think crystallizing vintage thoughts is especially helpful for deciding between a few vintages from the same producer.

Interesting that we seem to agree on a fair amount of vintage characteristics, especially re: 2022 variability. I wonder if some of those wines just hadn’t yet fully resolved from elevage when we tasted them. Sounds like I’ve just been unlucky with a handful 2014s, will have to try again!

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I think part of the issue of the variability of 2022 is the freeze that happened in April. As I understand it, some vineyards that were at higher elevations and ones that had older vines (which flower later and hadn’t all flowered) had less issues with fruit loss because of the freeze. But a ton of folks lost a lot of fruit and had to rely on the vines using secondary shoots to recover. There were also big differences in frost damage based on where you were. So some areas were harder hit than others, and I assume that has a lot to do with the variability.

But there are other folks here that are more knowledgeable about it than me, so I hope they chime in.

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For PN with a few comments about whites.

2022: Promising, but too early for me to judge.
2021: Very good vintage; reds well structured.
2020: Wash out for reds; whites OK but below average.
2019: Excellent vintage. Hard to keep hands off.
2018: Fine if you like the style, but the reds need time.
2017: Perhaps lighter than average, but very pleasant and already drinking well. The Longplay Lia’s vineyard we drank last night was charming.
2016: This is a vintage I love. It is very Oregonian with full, tasty fruit.
2015: Good, structured vintage that needs more time.
2014: Another vintage I like a lot, but more misses than in 2016. Drink or hold.
2013: Thinner than I like, with poor balance early on. But now they are more balanced.
2012: Great vintage that will outlive me. Fortunately, most have entered their “plateau of maturity”.
2011: Yuch. Too light and acidic. Whites were good, though.
2010: Decent vintage; even better when blended with the fruitier 2009.
2010: Decent vintage; even better when blended with the less fruitier 2010.
2008: Outstanding vintage. All are mature, but will last a long time.
2007: Too light and acidic. Fortunately, I have finished mine.
2006: Wish I had more. I have only a couple of bottles left of SI 7 Springs.
2005: Wish I had more. I have only a few left, all from St Innocent.
2004: Some of the greatest Oregen PN I have drunk were 2004s.
2002: Also some great PN, but this was before I bought much Oregon wine.

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I’ve had a few 2023’s. Mostly side-by-side with the same 2022. The wines have been consistently different, but damned if I can characterize exactly how. I’ll keep trying. Both are very good.

I agree with others that 2019 hits my buttons better than any other recent vintage. Definitely less juicy, but still fully ripe with good acidity. Unlike others, I’m having trouble keeping my hands off of them.

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I will say that in both 2022 and 2023 I think producer really matters. I’ve had a few over-ripe Cali Pinots from Oregon. I won’t name names, but they aren’t board darlings.

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Well the frost was indeed variable but I know that also some low elevation vineyards or vineyards in other areas with low airflow were hit by frost (at various elevations). After the freeze, we had very cool and wet weather in May and June. This delayed flowering to mid-July for us in the Eola-Amity Hills for example. For the two vineyards I source from, we had low to moderate frost damage, but secondaries did indeed grow. Normally this would not help much because they would be so far behind the primaries that did survive the frost. But since the primaries were also delayed, in our case they synced up (how rare is that?) – so we suddenly had a normal to light crop depending on the block/Pinot Noir clone. When I sampled the Pinot Noir vineyard in late Sept., I didn’t think we would have a red wine crop at all given the lack of maturity. But we had a (miraculous) record breaking warm and sunny October that shattered all the records!

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That’s an excellent run down of the 2014-2023 vintages, cross referenced with Bill’s readers should get a very good idea of the vintages.

Just fyi-whole cluster wines can still be wound up at 10 years in. In 2009 I went to dinner at Cristom where they poured 1999, 2000, and 2001 Reserve and all three were still tight and ungiving.

Hoping to add a little, rather than repeat everything posted already:

2024-seems to be a very pretty vintage with excellent fruit, good structure, and modest/low alcohol (every winemaker I have spoken to since harvest has really liked the wines and also commented on how smoothly ferments went). Vineyard delineation is excellent, and my feeling is this is a vintage along the lines of 2017 or perhaps 2019 with touch more density. White wines are gorgeous, leaning to enchanting more than intense.

2023-very pretty vintage with good tannic structure, lower aclohols if you picked earlier and higher alcohols if you picked later. I find acids to be excellent. Whites are superb and ageable. Reds will mostly have good early windows, and the best wines should be superlative.

2022-love the 2022 reds, whites are very good but I find myself preferring 2021 and 2023 just a bit more.

To Bill’s comment about the freeze: we worked with both Temperance Hill and Whistling Ridge in 2022. Old vines in the Eola-Amity Hills budded out post freeze and our yields at Temperance Hill were normal/generous. Whistling Ridge was hammered by the freeze and working from secondary and tertiary buds, we saw .6 tons per acre across much of the vineyard with one section getting up to 1.2 tons per acre. I couldn’t define a difference in wuality between the two, both produced superlative wines. I just have enough Temperance Hill to help make ends meet.

Beyond that:

Most surprising: 2014 white wines are remarkably good. Especially considering the warmth of the year they tend to be quite pure and focused.

Back open for business: 2010s. Pretty in youth, these went quiet for awhile but in the past year seem to be waking up.

Under appreciated: 2004 and 2001, both of which produced some fabulous wines.

We had another shty 07 Pinot Noir a week ago and it was still perfectly shty…glad I have a few more.

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Just as a data point:

We source from Temperance Hill, where the cold event in 2022 had zero impact on our blocks, and Whistling Ridge, where the loss of primary buds was close to 100%.

I can’t determine any qualitative difference between the resulting wines from the two vineyards and critical review yielded a relatively similar set of scores (for lack of another impartial comparison).

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2024 may be right up my alley if it has some semblance to 2019. Loved that vintage and have been trying to keep my hands off those bottles.

I agree re: preference to 2021 and 2023 (of the few I tried) for whites compared to 2022. Was very impressed with Kelley Fox’s 2023 Weber Chardonnay and Stater Vineyard Pinot Blanc. It was hard to pick favorites from the 2023 Walter Scott reds and whites I tried during the barrel tasting, but they all carried a vivacity and purity of fruit that I loved. I enjoyed many of the 2022 reds when tasting this past summer, moreso than the whites, but I get a sense the 2021 reds have more aging potential.

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I think 2024 will have more density than 2019, nights were cooler this year but daytime highs had a bit more oomph to them. Acids are great, and potential alcohol is quite modest (speaking specifically to Goodfellow) so the wines (very early) are a nice combination of transparency and quality.

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