In general but certainly I’m more concerned about our wines than other wineries’ wines.
I had a chance to try three top-tier PGC wines this weekend.
The 2023 Balcome 1B and 2024 Shafer Pinot Noir were both stellar wines. I don’t have the wherewithal to comment on the merits of the vintages or different AVAs/soil types other than that the wines were “perfect.” One warning I would give is that if you open either one of these, expect to drink the entire bottle. Resistance is futile. Hats off to @Terry_H_a_r_r_i_s - if you don’t want to wait 10+ years for your PGC PN to come out of hibernation, drink them immediately after release and wallow in the bliss.
I also want to give a special mention also to the 2023 Estate Chardonnay. I’ve always been a fan of Jim’s Chardonnay going back to the 2016 Durant. This is the second vintage of the Estate. It is a given that every aspect of the farming and winemaking is the same top level as the Pinots. I quite liked the 2021, but this one is really on the next level. How good was it? This was on the table with a Bouchard Roses de Jeanne Champagne, but the Chardonnay was the group favorite. The next night, we had a 2023 Henri Boillot Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru, but I found myself thinking back on how good the PGC was. Note that this is made in a non-reductive, mildly oaked style. Personally, I appreciate that.
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Chiming in only to note that I’ve had the 2019 Estate and a handful of 2017s that are chalked full of that bliss . . . . 
So, there is that . . . . 
The specificity of your drinkability chart is really helpful.
Are there any vintage charts for Willamette Valley Pinot Noir that you consider worthwhile? Is the concept too much of a generalization to be useful?
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Refresh my memory - aren’t you the one who eats gravel for breakfast?
I’ll have to check back in on these. I had a 2016 Old Vine Estate a year or two ago that was still pretty burly.
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Yep, nothing more hearty than some grilled fresh roadkill on a bed of gravel to start the day!!
It’s a Wyoming thing, dating back to the days of mountain men and fur trappers (although, those days, the “gravel” was mostly those tiny pebbles and sands scraped out of the stream beds . . . . )
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I’m sure The Wine Spectator has one. I don’t subscribe nor do we submit samples any longer so I’m not sure or familiar with what they have.
The Willamette Valley is HUGE. South Eugene is in the Willamette Valley and so is the northern most parts of Portland. They’re 100+ miles apart. I think one for the AVAs in the Salem area to Hillsboro/Sherwood would be fine but I don’t know if such a thing exists.
I’m working on updating the vintage chart right now.
I figured there might be too many variations within Willamette to make a one-size-fits-all rating very useful, but was interested in your take.
Looking forward to the vintage/drinkability chart update.
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Just entering the new wines and making sure everything is correct is enough of an effort (noticed that we don’t have the Wind Ridge bottling on there despite it being produced in 21 and 22 (let alone 23 and 24 which is what I’m putting in now!)
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Totally get that. The chart of your own wines is a big undertaking. Serves you right for producing so many different bottlings LOL.
BTW, the last 1/3 of the ‘06 Old Vine Estate is still going strong after a night in the fridge. I’m impressed and pleasantly surprised.
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Is there a particular reason why PBC no longer submits samples to Wine Spectator? I noticed the absence, and now we know that you no longer send samples.
There is a very specific reason. Do y’all want the story?
There’s a fairly massive email chain. It’s all cordial so it’s not some glitzy thing where tea is spilled and all but it’s not about reviewing style or anything of that nature either.
No one wants to be subjected to the email chain. If you want to know I can nutshell the whole thing. As best as can be done.
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In what ways? I’ve had very few lately, but to me, it seemed like such a good vintage in the early years. Eyrie Estate PN has aged really well. I have skme others that I’ll get to in the next couple of years.
I would like the nutshell. I’m not saying that WS is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it’s nice to hear what they think.
It was a difficult and late vintage replete with mass flocks of birds eating grapes at a never-before and never-since level. Extremely stressful. The wines have been good. I’ve just never been a big fan but I know it’s an okay vintage.
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And what was the reason for suspending submissions to WineSpectator?
In the 11/30/20 edition of The Wine Spectator our 2018 Estate Vineyard, Etzel Block Pinot Noir was reviewed. Obviously the vast majority of reviews in the back of the magazine are a score, the wine name, a 2-3 sentence review and that’s pretty much it. In this instance they included a picture and identified them as Patricia Green Cellars’ Winemaker. Unfortunately, the person named and pictured was Cody Wright (actual owner/winemaker of Purple Hands as well as being Ken Wright’s son).
We contacted the magazine about this obvious error and a Senior Editor/Tasting Coordinator replied, apologized and said that they would run a something in the “corrections” part of the magazine at the earliest possible time.
I wrote back:
"Thank you for your reply to our inquiry regarding the publishing error.
I do appreciate that the WS will be publishing a correction at some point in some place in the a future issue. Thank you.
For the foreseeable future I think it will be our decision to decline submitting our wines to the WS. This is not simply an editorial failure, albeit a fairly basic one, but a failure of knowing and caring about a region and its wines. Had someone from the WS visited this region recently beyond a cursory pass through, mistaking the son of one of Oregon’s most famous winemakers as the owner and winemaker of a winery started by one of Oregon’s most famous woman winemakers likely never would have occurred.
Would the WS have run an issue where Alan Ramey was misidentified as the winemaker at Colgin? No. Most certainly not.
If we cannot trust that you can get the most basics of things correct even through what must be a maze of editors and fact checkers how can we trust that the reviewing process is accurate and that Oregon wines are not willy-nilly confused for other producers’ wines?
The world of wine is vast and it is a lot for one publication to cover an ever increasing industry. That is clear. Other publications have folks that have made a larger, longer and deeper attempt to understand, know and accurately publish information and reviews about Oregon’s wines. Perhaps the WS someday will make that choice and commitment.
Until that time comes we will no longer be submitting our wines for reviews. I hope this email is received in good faith and that the spirit of it is merely a response to what seems to be the approach to our part of the wine world. Please feel free to pass this along to whichever person(s) or departments seem relevant.
Sincerely,
Jim Anderson"
As I recall no further contact occurred. Until early 2023 we were contacted by a different editor asking us to, again, submit samples.
Part of my response was:
"Oregon is already replete with “consulting winemakers” willy-nilly gobbling up evermore new clients to make whatever new brand of wine that is out there. Cody Wright is far from the worst offender in this sector of the industry that I don’t exactly (obviously) have a ton of respect for. Still, I’m sure you can see how being associated with a hired gun, particularly after Patty passing away, even by mistake both is irritating and makes us feel that there is a trust issue that we are on the wrong side of. This goes beyond something that a sentence or two that may or may not have been posted in a later issue is going to undo.
On top of this we run, without question, the most confusing Pinot Noir program outside of a handful of wineries in Burgundy. In 2019 we bottled 30 individual Pinot Noirs. In 2021 it was 36 (there was only 1 in 2020 for obvious reasons). We struggle with our offsite warehouse sending distributors the correct wine sometimes as we have 6 bottlings from Freedom Hill Vineyard and up to 6 from our Estate. We have 2 people pack boxes when we ship wine so someone is always double checking the work of another. Because even internally it can be easy to make a mistake. We’re just not at a point where we feel comfortable sending off however many samples to the WS and trusting that it will all come out straight in the end.
The reviewers we have primarily dealt with over the past 10-12 years have been Josh Reynolds, Paul Gregutt, David Schildnicht and John Gilman. They’re all people that have/had put serious time in coming to Oregon in general and the winery in specific. They have sometimes come to taste at the winery, they have all come though to see and put some context to what is happening here. I feel that it’s a two way street with the relationship between wineries and reviewing publications. There have been any range of reviews of the wine from the above mentioned individuals, mostly very positive I am proud to say, but the point is that I felt like I had a level of trust with those people."
He wrote back and was nice enough about things but that was ultimately the end of it. At least for the time being. I haven’t heard from anyone there in closing in on 3 years. I haven’t seen the WS in quite some time so I have no idea if their coverage is more or less the same than it was in the past which was basically 1 issue with an article and reviews as per normal.
I don’t have a beef with them and I am not mad or anything. I think the mistake was really egregious especially considering the situation. We DEFINITELY had people call us about what was going on. So, that’s where it stands. We have settled in with Eric Guido (Vinous), Audrey Frick (Jeb Dunnuck), Paul Gregutt (formerly at WE but now in semi-retirement with a Substack publication) and Erin Brooks (Wine Advocate). John Gilman has had health problems and has not traveled at all (as far as I know) in the past 4-5 years but I would love to show him the wines again. That’s plenty for a winery of our nature. Those are publications that are currently really trying and working in Oregon. They send people here and they get to know the places and people. The Wine Spectator by their own admission to me did/does not have the budget to give Oregon that sort of time and effort.
So, that’s where we are at. Not against them but also not interested in shipping cases of wine off to a massive venue where I have no idea if things are being done in a way where the editing can be trusted because, from my perspective, if you can’t get the basics right it’s really hard to get the story correct.
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Ive enjoyed them as well recently, but it sounds like a stressful vintage to farm.
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2000 PGC Balcombe 1B. So damn delicious.
Has been standing up in the cellar for a few weeks now. Gave it a decant and back into the cellar for a little over two hours. Wonderful stuff.
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