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From Cool Oregon Air...

Oregon Wine Country was amazing. Not just because of the its beautiful mountains and valleys, but because of the new experiences and found knowledge I brought back.

Oregon is different, it's not the same as its shared Pacific coast friends of California and Washington State, and that's what makes its wines unique. The culmination of soil, climate, vintage and winemaker together make Oregon wines particularly Pinot Noir different from wines in any other area, although it does share some similarities to France. Oregon's northern region, the Willamette Valley, is the largest Pinot Noir producing area within the state - 90% of the Pinot Noir plantings are in Willamette Valley. Pinot is also grown in other areas, particularly the Rogue Valley, where Foris Vineyards is located.

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**Courtesy of winesnw.com**

Compared to counterparts in Napa and France's Burgundy region, Oregon's Willamette Valley has a longer, but cooler growing season, more sunshine hours and low amounts of rainfall during the crucial growing season of July and August. Willamette Valley grapes are also picked later than those in Burgundy, France and Napa. Generally, because of these factors, along with winemaker influences, Pinot Noir from here is quite different from Pinot anywhere else in the world.

In the Willamette Valley most plantings are on hillsides, not in the valley, and require manual picking and checking and are then usually hand sorted, not by machine. Organic, sustainable and biodynamic farming are common practices with Oregon vineyards, not an exception. Most are family owned with multiple generations working in the vineyard and winery. Compared to other wine growing regions, Oregon's producers prefer to remain small with control over the land and winemaking.

Winemaking and the Wines

So what about winemaking? Like other regions, winemakers have just as much influence on the wine as does the land, climate and vintage. So when we talk about fair or not so fair vintages, a good winemaker can compensate, to an extent, for what may be lacking or over in the vineyard. One of the exercises during my time in Oregon was to blindly compare the same vintage Pinot Noir (2007) from various wine makers. The takeaway was that only a few Pinot Noirs had vintage similarities. It was evident the final product had as much to do with the winemaker influence and creativity as the vintage. We also tasted 2 vintages (2007 & 2008) from the same and various producers, and there were some differences between vintages.

Following are general attributes as to what is unique in Oregon Pinot Noir:

Pinot plantings at Sokol Blosser
On the freshness scale, Oregon Pinots are likely to be fresher than their generally jammier California counterparts.
On intensity, Oregon Pinots are generally more fruity than those from Burgundy.
On acidity, Oregon Pinots seem to have more acidity than California Pinots.
On tannins, Oregon Pinots are generally between the less tannic Burgundy and more tannic California Pinots.
On richness, Oregon Pinots have a similar position between Burgundy and California.

As I mentioned in last week's intro, we blindly tasted a Pinot Noir from the same vintage (2001) and from the same producer, but one closed with a screw cap and closed with a cork. The result was amazing and unanimous. The one closed with cork aged faster than the one with screwcap. And most of us liked the wine better that was closed with a screw cap. The one with screw cap would likely last another 5 years while the Pinot with cork was at the end of its life. As the wine world continues to move toward screw cap closures, even for high end wines, this exercise revealed the positive ageability of a wine closed with a screw cap.

Although Oregon has some history, it was only in 1965 when David Lett of Eyrie Vineyards planted the first Pinot Noir grapes in the Willamette Valley. Luckily, I tasted the Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Noir, one that is fantastic, among many others. Compared to other wine regions, Oregon is young but it's the 3rd in number of wineries and the 4th largest in wine volume in the US, which is pretty stunning because Oregon's producers only average 5,000 cases per year, a relatively small number.

To say my 4-day, 10-hour long days were a once in a lifetime experience is not an overstatement. To work with the winemakers & vineyard owners so intensely for this amount of time gave me a different appreciation and understanding for Oregon wines, particularly Pinot Noir.