Oregon Vintage 2006: The Challenge of Change

Forty years ago this spring, David Lett went against the best advice of his UC Davis professors and put Oregon’s first Pinot Noir plants into the hilly red earth outside Dundee, just southwest of Portland. Vintage 2006 marks the 40th anniversary of the birth of Oregon’s Pinot Noir industry. And yet the occasion passed with relatively little notice as winemakers went about harvesting their grapes.

A few years before Lett arrived, another offbeat pioneer had planted Riesling in what he considered to be an optimal site outside of Roseburg, in the warmer climate of Southern Oregon. Richard Sommer was the founder of Oregon’s fine wine industry, yet today his name is little more than an historical footnote, and Riesling has been relegated to an eccentric, niche status.

Perhaps the breakneck growth of today’s Oregon wine industry has simply overwhelmed any collective sense of history here, or maybe the opportunities are simply so great that people would rather look forward than backward. Yet it is the history of Oregon’s wine industry that provides the frame for a canvas of new challenges facing the state’s wine growers and producers. With the 2006 harvest, Oregon’s wine industry finds itself 40 years old, and in a condition of transition that is both painful and exhilarating.

On the one hand, Oregon’s vintners are experiencing more success and respect than ever before. After a long history of struggling for market success, economic good times, great quality wines, and expanding demand means that Oregon’s wineries are selling out their wines with unprecedented speed -- and with easy support for premium prices. Good vintages and more experienced growing and winemaking is resulting in more reliable wine quality, which in turn is bringing higher critical wine scores and unprecedented market attention.

These are good times for Oregon.

On the other hand, the industry is struggling to deal with the less savory effects of its own success. An explosive growth in new wineries and premium labels has introduced a new level of variability that could risk Oregon’s reputation for quality. Not every new label deserves a $45 price tag. An influx of new money and development visions are creating polarizing views of how to best use the state’s wine country resources. Do you embrace resort development or not? And many wonder whether the Oregon wine industry’s distinctive culture of cooperation, craft, and community will be able to survive in the face of economic growth and success.

These are challenging times for Oregon.

And you can add to this potentially volatile mix, the natural changing of generations as the founding pioneers of Oregon’s wine community begin to retire, sell their businesses, or transition ownership to their children. Change may be inevitable, but it is rarely easy.

Defining Oregon Pinot

Oregon is best known for its Pinot Noirs. One important point of change for the state’s industry is in the ongoing evolution of a distinctly Willamette Valley-style of Pinot Noir. Is there an Oregon-specific Pinot Noir style?

I attended a recent trade tasting, where a flight of 2002 Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs was presented to a knowledgeable group of distributors. The color of the wines was fairly uniform, but for one obvious exception. One wine was distinctly wan-colored, slightly brickish, and lacked hue intensity. “Must be an old vintage,” ventured one attendee, as they pondered the anomalous wine.

The paler Pinot was not an older vintage; it was the current product of The Eyrie Vineyards, David Lett’s founding Pinot Noir winery. It stood out because Lett makes Oregon Pinot Noir in the same style in which he has always made it: fully organic winegrowing, hand-picking at maximum flavor ripeness, native fermentation, gravity-fed wine movement, minimal oak. Eyrie Pinot Noirs are almost always lighter colored than the average for the area.

The Eyrie Pinot stood out because the predominant style of Oregon Pinot noir has shifted over the years away from Lett’s style. Here is how he describes it:

“I’ve been frustrated for the last decade, by the wine press which has promoted, and in effect created, an international-style Pinot Noir whose varietal characteristics seem to be high alcohol, lots of oak, deep color, and plummy-jammy flavors. This to my mind means artificially manipulated wines made from over-ripe grapes that could come from anywhere!”

In more recent years -- partly due to warm vintages that produced high sugars and heavy wines, and partly due to a winemaking style that emphasizes highly extracted Pinots that seem to win high scores -- the more typical Willamette Valley Pinot Noir has had deep coloration, alcohol levels at 14% or more, heavy oak influence, and weighty, substantial tannins and texture.

Which of these styles is the “proper” Oregon Pinot Noir? Indeed, is there even a “typical” Oregon Pinot Noir?

In Lett’s opinion, there is a proper Oregon style . . . and it is not today’s trend (though he has hope . . .):

“The pinnacle that a wine maker can reach is to preserve the varietal characteristic of a grape grown in a proper climate (which is the only place you can get that varietal characteristic) and translate that into wine. I’m glad to see the glimmering of a new trend for Pinot Noir, away from the score-driven excesses of the 90s, and more towards what Oregon can do better than almost anywhere else on earth: produce Pinot Noir that tastes like Pinot Noir. That’s why I came to the Willamette Valley!”

Many new Oregon Pinot producers aren’t paying a great deal of attention to “style” and are making wines in a manner that they believe will sell well. Look down a lineup of current releases of Willamette Valley Pinot and you’ll see high alcohol, deep colors, jammy flavors and big wood. You’ll also see big scores and hefty prices.

Yet, talk to the winemakers and you detect a desire to identify an indigenous character that is more a reflection of the Willamette Valley’s broad terroir, than a winemaker’s stylistic stamp.

“I think the hallmarks of Oregon Pinot are fruit and intensity,” says Laurent Montalieu, who makes wine for a variety of labels, as well as his own Soléna brand in Carlton. “For me, Oregon Pinots are characterized by great intensity -- particularly red fruits -- and though there are differences among the AVAs, they all have lots of brightness and liveliness in the mouth, and good fresh aromatics.”

Alex Sokol Blosser, vice president at Sokol Blosser winery, agrees. “I think Oregon’s Pinots are driven primarily by forward fruit and also by structure, particularly the acidity.”

Lett probably wouldn’t disagree with these qualities. Yet it still seems that today’s “typical” Oregon Pinots don’t easily fit these descriptions -- yet they get the critical accolades and sell out quickly.

So as more and more wineries establish themselves in the Willamette Valley, more and more imitative Pinots seem to be produced. If you know the style of wine that sells well, the rationale goes, then you want to make the style of wine that sells well.

But does the dominant style really define the appellation’s typicité?

As you go around the Valley, you can almost line up the Pinot producers on either side of the style line. Scott Paul here (lithe and elegant), Archery Summit there (big and powerful). Anne Amie here (rich and fruity) St. Innocent there (refined and structured). What then becomes of appellation integrity if, as Lett perceives, the dominant style is “international” and no longer speaks of place?

This is one of the key challenges confronting Oregon’s wine industry in this new century: how will we honor the style of Pinot that has brought us prominence, while still making wines that will meet the market’s desire?

Defining Southern Oregon

A similar challenge faces the winegrowers of Southern Oregon -- except their quest is to define a region, not a style.

People beyond Oregon don’t often think beyond Oregon Pinot Noir. This has rankled the growers and producers of Southern Oregon -- a vast area of diverse terroirs -- for about as long as wine has been grown in the state. The wine industry began here, but the wine industry grew elsewhere. Until recently, that is.

Southern Oregon is now home to an increasing body of winegrowers who are struggling to establish a separate-but-equal identity for their region. Veteran wineries like Henry Estates, Valley View , Bridgeview, and Girardet have spent years forging a market and brand identity for their wines. Local consumption has generally been all that was required for local wineries to sell out their inventory.

But beginning in the late 1990s, a new band of wineries began to establish themselves, which had broader market aspirations, and it is this group that have helped the veterans to change the identity of the region.

Earl and Hilda Jones at Abacela planted the first Tempranillo , and now this is one of the fastest growing varietals in the region. Don and Traute Moore at Griffin Creek planted new varieties as well, and created one of the first premium-priced labels with national distribution from the area. Del Rio Vineyards was planted outside of Medford, and brought a new scale of winegrowing that attracted winemakers even from the Willamette Valley. And young, creative winemakers like the late Sarah Powell, Gus Janeway, and the husband and wife team of Kara Olmo and Greg Paneitz have brought a new level of energy as well as schooled knowledge.

Suddenly, Southern Oregon has become hot. It even created its own uber-AVA (containing the older, smaller Umpqua Valley , Applegate Valley, and Rogue Valley appellations), a vital step to defining its “whole self” as a different growing region from the Willamette Valley.

Here in the southern part of the state, the topography is different from the north, the climate is warmer, and rather than growing the Burgundian grapes so famous up north, they raise Bordeaux and Rhone-style varietals with ease.

And yet this very strength is part of the region’s challenge. Unlike the Pinot-centric north, Southern Oregon has yet to establish any signature varietals that can help identify their appellation’s character for consumers.

“People are still growing Cabernet Sauvignon,” says Gus Janeway, winemaker for RoxyAnn winery in Medford. “I think with the exception of a very few specific sites, this isn’t a great place to be growing Cabernet. I think we should be emphasizing our strong suits -- elegance and complexity and character -- over power. We need to be brave enough to emphasize varietals that maybe don’t have a lot of widespread cachet, like Cabernet Franc and Malbec -- and Syrah, I’d put Syrah in there too.”

So far, there is no signature red grape for Southern Oregon and experimentation in whites is equally broad. Pinot Gris, and Chardonnay predominate today (though they are also widely grown in the Willamette Valley), but successful Southern Oregon Viognier wines and small plantings of Albarino, and Grüner Veltliner show promise as well.

Although there is a longer history of grapegrowing in Southern Oregon than in the north, there is still a lot to be learned about site selection and varietal matching. Southern Oregon is generally less developed in this area than the Willamette Valley. Irregular quality has also tended to be a problem, though this is changing rapidly as more capital comes into the area, and more viticultural and oenological expertise accumulates there.

Then there is the market problem. Without a major population center (though Medford is well on its way to becoming a large-ish city), market access can be a challenge for smaller producers -- especially if all they offer is “another” Merlot.

Sandwiched between the behemoth of California to the south, the fame of the Willamette Valley to the north, and the power of Washington’s warm climate also to the north, Southern Oregon faces a challenge to set its own identity soon. Growing great Bordeaux-style wines may not be enough when consumers can get more volume, lower prices, and wider selection from California and Washington wines.

Outside of a desire to support a local industry, a more distinctive identity to Southern Oregon wines will be needed in order to compete successfully in a crowded market. Carving out some different varietal niches -- like Abacela has done with Tempranillo -- will be key to the region’s future. They must develop, as well, a heightened sense of marketing and a commitment to consistent wine quality. Southern Oregon must show consumers the same kind of quality delivery and identifiable character which the public has come to expect from northern Oregon.

Bright Future

The good news is that Oregon is rapidly evolving to meet the challenges posed by its success. Talk to winemakers up and down the state and it is clear that no one is satisfied to sit on their laurels, and everyone believes there is a tremendous future for Oregon wine of all kinds and styles. Just how that future will be realized -- and exactly what it ends up looking like -- will vary across the state. The journey will be fun to watch . . . and taste! Stay tuned . . .

~ Cole Danhower, Regional Correspondent – Southern Oregon


To comment on Cole Danehower’s writings and thoughts, contact him at c.danehower@appellationamerica.com