The truth about Oregon's 2011 vintage

I'm just going to say what no one seems willing to admit. 2011 is going to go down as one of the greatest vintages for Oregon wine in history. A brief history, true, but the point is the same. And apparently controversial.

I think I can finally say this with a straight face because I have most of my 2011 wines sold. Don't accuse me of shilling to move wines from an allegedly substandard vintage. I finally feel like I can say what I really think, not that I haven't before. I can just do it without opening myself to accusations of only being positive about things because I have wines to sell. Happily that's not an issue.

The weather in 2011 was cold all spring and summer long. Then unusually dry, mild weather through October into November allowed for a historically late harvest under relatively nice conditions. The fruit in the winery was riper tasting than the sugar measurements might have suggested. The acidity was stellar, with terrific energy propelling the fruit flavors to a long aftertaste.

And yet the vintage immediately received bad press because of the late harvest, as if the summer couldn't possibly have yielded something worthwhile, much less anything made to last.

For producers who want to make big, rich wines, ok, the year was a challenge. You won't find goopy, top heavy wines full of dense fruit and lumber flavors in 2011. Likewise, you may find some underripe, hard, mean little wines that taste best in the rearview mirror, especially with the rich, opulent 2012s waiting in the wings.

Taste before you buy, but be open to what's truly special and exceptional about this year - the subtlety. What I think you will find are some of the most nervy, energetic and delicate wines I've ever had from this fair state. Wines of low alcohol, light color, intense perfume and lacy, fragile flavors with way more tensile strength than you might expect.

And that's the key. Great wine is not synonymous with ageworthy wine. But the most truly ageworthy wines are great, are what we most want from our wines, and I expect many top notch ageworthy wines will come from the 2011 vintage in Oregon.

Can I prove it? No. We won't know how things turn out until time passes. And yes, many wines from 2011 taste really shut down right now, essentially not generous in the way a cut flower doesn't smell as it will after a few days in a vase. These delicate things take time. They demand your patience.

What I do know is this - the beauty that has emerged from the roller coaster 2011 vintage is there. It's not always easy to see, certainly not what will be there over time. But the greatness is there, the beauty that will win out over time if it's not already apparent.

And I'm betting an extra large amount of library wines that this is the vintage to hold in the cellar. I want more of this vintage than any other to pour at future dinners and special events, to sell years later to customers who prize the delicacy of fine aged wine, and of course to share with my sweet at home. Our home.

Wine sales update

How about an update on how Vincent Wine Company wine sales are going? Not sure if anyone's too interested, but I once asked and some readers suggested yes, they wanted to hear about it here and there. And after all the detail of making wine in my garage and then transitioning to commercial production, vineyard visits, bottling days, etc., surely you want to know if and where all the wine goes, no?

The short story is this - things are going great. The wines are selling well, reaching more and more better and better places, and generally my issue right now isn't whether or not the wine will sell, but whether or now I'll run out too soon before the next vintage is ready. That's not a bad problem to have.

The longer story is a little more complicated.

I won't lie. The first year of sales - mostly my 2009 Vincent Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills - was a little daunting. That's in part because selling wine is hard, in part because things actually went much better than they might have, but still it was hard and the wine took time to sell. In retrospect, my feeling after selling through the 2009 vintage was like a tight rope walker who looks back after a successful crossing and gulps, realizing the peril s/he didn't notice en route. Things could have been much, much harder.

The sales year for the 2009s started well. My nascent mailing list purchased a healthy amount of the first wines. My first winery open house event with a friend and her label was a huge success (would that there were always such big crowds at our open house tastings...). And my first ventures into the local market selling my own wine began wonderfully - a nice shop downtown bought two cases right away. Another couple shops bought cases. I was off and rolling.

Then reality set in. I had a bit more than 200 cases and my early sales moved maybe 1/3 of it. Then I fell into the pattern of stores or restaurants buying some wine but never buying more. Suddenly I realized that instead of 20 accounts that might move a few cases of wine over the year, I needed many more accounts because they would likely just a bit and that would be it. The wine would sit on the shelf. I'd come in a month or two later and see how things were going but there were the same bottles, getting dusty. The owners would say, what can we do, you're new, no one's heard of you...to the point where I stopped asking. I'd see the bottles sitting there and duck out, hopefully without being noticed so there wouldn't be that weird conversation about how they were sure things would pick up.

Throughout the year, my sales days got harder and harder. Some places I really didn't want to be going to weren't so thrilled to see me either. I'd spend a precious day in the market and move barely a case of wine, inside worrying what I'd do it the wine wouldn't sell. A little voice would tell me though - be patient, be charming, know that you're making incredibly special wine and don't give in. And I didn't.

Sure enough, the wine from that first year sold, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I wanted to declare the vintage sold out months before I finally was able to. I'd actually released the 2010s before the 2009s were finally gone, a little out of frustration, a little out of the reality that people were ready for new wine, not so interested in trying that same old wine again. It's a cruel reality of the business, though hardly unique to wine.

By year two of sales, I noticed a few things. One - stores that greeted me skeptically tended to now take me more seriously. I got it - shops wanted to see if I was for real before going to long on my wines. Would I be back the next year? Would the wines be good in another vintage, or were my '09s just lucky starts? Sure enough, yes I was back and yes the wines were good again, and even though I made 40% more wine in the 2010 vintage, the wines sold in half the time.

That was a little problem. Where with the '09s I have wine available all year, with the '10s I was sold out seven months after release. How'd that happen? Mailing list growth, shops ordering and reordering more quickly, restaurant placements picking up, even a special deal with Whole Foods that go my wine throughout Oregon and Washington stores - that all added up to wine disappearing almost too fast. Oh, and I picked up distribution in New York and that definitely moved some wine. Nice.

I'd already planned for more production for 2011, and could have made more still but don't want to grow too fast. My 2011s came out last fall, all 400 cases or almost double what I made in 2009, and as of today I have about 80 cases left. And that's including wine allocated for a local restaurant glass pour list for this summer (20 cases?), as well as an expected order from my NY distributor. Otherwise the rest of the wine will go to the winery tasting room and a few important accounts around Portland that I want to make sure don't run out of wine.

In 2012 we upped production further to at least 550 cases, probably a bit more once everything settles out. We've picked up distribution in Rhode Island and, with the coming year, I'd love to add Los Angeles (my home town). If everything goes well, that organic growth should take care of the increased production, leaving me in position to monitor wine sales rather than push, push, push. Wouldn't that be nice.

Meanwhile, I still do push some to get the wine where I want it. And I hear that voice - be patient, be charming, believe in what you're doing. And I'll just say, again, thank you.

Tasting blind

I tweeted earlier today about an interesting experience last night.

I went over to the home of one of my growers to deliver some wine and a check toward grapes purchased last fall - it's not unusual to be paying for grapes from one harvest for many months forward (though I really want to finish things out for 2012!).

When I showed up, he had two wines waiting in bags, plus a plate of delicious orange chicken he cooked for his family in some crazy black chumba wumba pot, or something like that. I don't ask questions when the food's that good, and I'd already had dinner.

The wines could have been from anywhere, and given the slightly spicy chicken and rice, really the wines could have been white. But they were red. And the first was fairly dark in color. One sniff and it was obviously from the new world, meaning not Europe. That's the first base of blind wine tasting - old world or new? How does one distinguish? It's not easy, but you know it when you know it. A new world wine will smell like fruit, and old world wine will usually smell like soil.

So I said, new world, and it's Pinot Noir. And it's Oregon. There was just something about the wine that said Oregon, like a unfamiliar block in town that you know even if you don't necessarily know this part of town perfectly well. This was clearly Oregon, plain and simple.

Then I thought - volcanic soil or old ocean sediment? Clearly the latter. Why? Hard to say, but there's a dark fruit aspect to sedimentary soils in Oregon that, again, yuou know it when you see it. I even thought this might be from the grower's own vineyard on Ribbon Ridge, but I said it's either Ribbon Ridge or maybe the neighboring Yamhill-Carlton growing area.

I unveiled the wine and...it was my own 2006 Vincent Pinot Noir Wahle Vineyard, Yamhill-Carlton. How interesting. I sort of nailed what it was and where it was from, but didn't recognize it as my own. In my defense, I haven't had that wine in a while and, even when I knew what it was, I still didn't pick up the little hallmarks that I know, or think I know, from that wine. Perhaps it's just aging and changing, but at least it still seemed youthful and pretty good, even if not my favorite style. This 2006 is from a warm, ripe vintage, which I don't usually favor, but I didn't peg it as homebrew. I honestly thought it was "really good" wine from a producer more interested in larger-scaled wine. Ha!

So, on to bottle number two. This one was lighter in color, more translucent but a bit fruity smelling like I tend to find in new world wines. For a minute I wasn't sure. It had to be Pinot Noir, but was it from Oregon in 2011, a vintage of more restrained, French-style structure? The flavors said no, this was from Europe. We just don't get the acidity that this wine had, the element so many local wine lovers cite when they say they don't like European wines - they're too dry.

I found the wine expressive aromatically, flavorful if lighter bodied in the mouth and a touch short on the finish. I guessed Michael Ganoux Bourgogne, thinking it was from a recent vintage. The wine? 2007 Louis Jadot Savigny Les Beaune Les Dominode 1er Cru. Not a bad guess at all, though a much nicer terroir than simple Bourgogne. With time in the glass, the wine unfolded aromatically - beautiful - but remained tight on the finish. This won't ever be generous wine but I'm sure a few years will soften the finish. The rest is lovely.

And the point of all this? Not to brag on the parlor trick of blind tasting. I didn't nail these wines. I can't pick Burgundian vineyards, if that's what you're after. But we did talk a bit about how I think it's hard to pick out wines, not like picking out the silhouette of a loved one, the soft jaw line or the unique shape of one's ears or something like that. The way a person looks, their lovely uniqueness, that's hard to disguise or miss even in silhouette. Wine? Getting close is saying a lot, and though I didn't recognize one of my own children (essentially), I found it interesting to see what I did recognize - something true about each wine. Something you have to listen for, not speak. I love that about wine.

NV Valdespino Oloroso Don Gonzalo

After a little Sherry immersion recently, I was inspired to buy a half bottle of Valdespino Oloroso "Don Gonzalo" to see what I thought. This 20+ year solera of wines apparently going back up to 100 years represents one of the intellectual curiosities of Sherry, and Port and many other fortifieds - how the heck is wine this old and this good so relatively reasonably priced, much less available fairly commonly?

Peruse a good wine shop and it's not unusual to find table wines from the '90s, even '80s or earlier, from top producers. Pricing is usually steep though. If the current release of a given producer is $50, the 20 year old model might be $150 or more.

But in most fortified wines, prices for older wines are incredibly reasonable. Not cheap, but for $23 I purchased a half bottle of wine that's at least 20 years old and really a blend of wines going back decades, a solera where casks of old wine are partially bottled, topped up with newer wine and aged longer, bottled in part again and refilled, etc., so that over time the base wine might be several decades old and the youngest wine in the blend, in this case anyway, is at least 20 years old.

Did you follow that? Essentially, this is 20 year old wine with some elements going back perhaps a century, in a tidy little bottle for just over $20. That's cheaper than a bad seat at an NBA game. Sometimes my head spins thinking about things like how. How is it possible?

Well, fortified wines aren't exactly trendy, and even if the hipsters have found Sherry, I think people talk about drinking Sherry more than they actually drink Sherry. Supply, meet demand.

But if you're adventurous and interested in value, two things I happen to believe are true of me, here's a wine for you.

The Don Gonzalo is tawny in color, fitting many years of cask aging. The aroma is pungent of flor, the surface yeast that is a trademark of Sherry, covering the wine surface in not quite filled barrels and giving a signature aroma and flavor you need to experience to understand. There is also a wooden scent, spirity, not unlike cognac.

The flavors follow, with lots of roasted nuts, wood spice, caramel and other sweet notes balanced by a medium body, a notable lack of thick syrupy texture, a pronounced saltiness, and an acid spine that carries the flavors to a long finish but cuts the sense of sweetness from the aroma and first taste impression.

In sum, the wine is complex and delicious, exotic and a little rancid (in a good way), caramel sweet but almost electrified with acidity that cuts a precise point in the center the wine. It ends up not being that sweet, so you might have this for dessert but pair it carefully with something a bit savory to accentuate the tension in the wine. Or you might just have it on its own after dinner to sip. It's that good.

Regardless, try a wine like this. It's like traveling to darkest Spain without leaving your dining room table. It's come all this way and waited so long for this moment, how can you resist?

Valdespino Sherry

Sherry is all the rage these days with wine hipsters. It's a funny thing though - so much Sherry is essentially industrially made wine with huge bodegas cranking out oceans of wine, much of it only decent. Hardly the set up you'd think the hipster crowd would gravitate towards.

In the US, most Sherry that you can find is Lustau, so that the category is almost synonymous with this one producer. Lustau has some incredible bottlings, but much of their range is pretty standard stuff that fails to excite.

The line up

Lately I've been learning about another not small but high quality producer, Valdespino. Without even knowing it, I'd enjoyed a Cream Sherry from them many years ago, the El Candado Cream Sherry, complete with a small lock o
n the T-top cork. I remember enjoying it but the kitchy lock suggested more than anything in the bottle that this wasn't special stuff.

This past month, Sherry maven Peter Liem visited Portland and led a number of sessions around town about Sherry. Sadly I missed out on all of them but took it upon myself to try a flight of lovely Valdespino sherries that we have at the SE Wine Collective. These are all 100% Palomino grape wines with varying levels of fortification, as well as solera aging where older casks are topped with newer wines over time to preserve character year to year.

First, the Fino Inocente, full of flor character, flor being the film yeast that defines so much sherry. Casks of wine are intentionally left partially full, so that the flor grows thick in the wine surface, simultaneously affecting the wine and yet preserving it as a barrier to undesirable characters. Fino is bone dry wine, this one with a pale color and a pleasant nutty pear aroma. The flavors are clean, salty, with a finish like hard cheese, earthy and a bit fruity, crisp. 15% alcohol by volume.

Tio Diego

Next, the Amontillado Tio Diego, aged apparently for eight years under the flor, and more time beyond that so that there's tawny color. The wine smells rich, even sweet, with a touch of rancio mixed in with the yeasty flor, altogether a penetrating aroma. Rich in the mouth, starts a bit barrel sweet but turns dry with strong, focused acidity, nutty with a long finish. Wow. 18%.

Finally, the Palo Cortado Viejo Calle Ponce, richer still with a dark color from 8 years under flor and eight more years of standard barrel aging. Aromas of bananas and butter, not unlike a dessert wine. Intense flavors, rich but dry with more fresh nuts and lots of them, a warm finish from the fortification, very long. My only question is - when to drink something as intense as this? It's dry but like a dessert wine, so maybe with the right after meal pairing, or perhaps as an aperitif. For drinking, I prefer the Tio Diego, but this is obviously the class of the flight. 20%.

Later I bought a half bottle of Valdespino Oloroso Don Gonzalo VOS, that I'll enjoy soon and over time. One practical thing I love about sherry is that the wines are so stable in an open bottle, so there's no special rush to consume them quickly once opened, though a Fino to my taste is best as fresh as you can get it.

Epistolary wine

There are many stories about how I came to make wine. Sometimes I'm not sure which ones are real and which are fiction, not in a lie sense but perhaps wishful thinking. The epiphany bottle. The childhood scent memory of a barrel cellar. The book of tasting notes I've kept all this time. They all happened but maybe they weren't as singularly pivotal as they seem at times.

The story I've come to understand is most true, however unlikely, is the muse of strangely beautiful music, in this case Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet's now 20 years gone recording The Juliet Letters. For many Costello fans it seems the record is best forgotten, a one-off dalliance of a rock and roller posturing with classical music. It's hardly surprising given the vitiriol some Costello devotees save for anything not from the first several albums with his groundbreaking band the Attractions. It's as if anything since then is a slap in the face of that greatness.

I guess I see things differently. All that earlier music is wonderful, but the recording I keep going back to is The Juliet Letters (even more than King of America, which now seems oddly dated - maybe it's the hollow remaster from Rykodisc, whatever). The Juliet Letters is the most true to me, and my simple approach to wine. Even why I make Pinot Noir is best expressed in terms of this record. Lyrical. Acoustic. Quiet. Pure. Heartbreaking. Epistolary.

As is the case with so many significant things in a life, the recording came at the right time for me. It was something reflective I needed in that moment. I didn't love it at first and maybe that's where most listeners left off. The difference for me might have been my lucky attendance at Elvis and the Brodskys' performance at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus near my childhood home. Royce Hall to that point was a site of horror for me, the place my parents sent my brother and me for interminable theater performances for children. I've blocked out what we actually saw. I just remember any trip to Royce Hall would gladly have been traded for a few cavity fillings at the dentist.

Image stolen from www.elviscostello.info/wiki

A dear old friend and Elvis fanatic was in grad school at UCLA and got us two student tickets right on the floor, maybe 20 rows back. We walked in, the horror of Royce Hall immediately exorcised when we sat down and I noticed the familiar, incredibly beautiful neck of Jamie Lee Curtis right in front of me. We'd all received pens from the ushers when we walked in and I mused out loud, why the pens? Jamie Lee turned around and answered - The Juliet Letters. Get it?

Uh, yeah. By the way, I love you.

Happily I didn't actually say that. She just smiled, I felt stupid and said, of course, and she turned around. In the moment I thought - wait, I knew your half-brother Nick, he was a childhood friend and he had recently passed away. I wanted to say something but obviously this wasn't the place. The show was about to start. I still think about him though, and when the curtain went up I was in a heightened place emotionally.

This concert was the best performance I've ever seen. The music, even Elvis' imperfect but incredibly committed vocals, blew me away. In the current vernacular, he owned it, dog. And I wasn't alone in the rapture. I've never heard an audience applaud like we all did that night, to the point where, after several encores, we pleaded for even more and the performers were visibly taken aback, saying they simply didn't have any more material.

They'd performed the whole record in two movements, then played a few of old Costello gems, Tom Waits' More Than Rain, and what was that, were they teasing us with The Beach Boys' God One Knows? Yes, they wound around into it, giving perhaps the most perfect song I've ever heard and maybe ever will. The crowd could not be silenced until the performers decided they'd sort of messed up one of the initial numbers and asked, in lieu of having anything else, could they play it again? Yes, of course.

I walked out of Royce Hall that night changed in a way I didn't understand at the time. I still don't, quite. I just heard the violin that night in a way I've never forgotten. My parents had taken me to see Pearlman at the Hollywood Bowl a couple times. I knew the instrument was singular. It's just this night it slugged me in the gut and hasn't ever gone away.

You see, Pinot Noir is the violin. It's the one. It's one note, long, singular, incredibly pure. It's a small chord, the growl of assertive bowing, weightless with finesse and muscular in strength. It's often overwhelmed in the rock and roll of new world terroir. It will change your life before you know what's happened.

It did for me. Not immediately, but I was searching for that sound in some part of my life, that incredibly beautiful tone, the lyric. I already had a passion for wine and it wasn't really until years later that Pinot emerged in me. But it did, and I moved to Oregon, to me the most exciting place for wine in the new world, even if so much of the wine world overlooks it in favor of the canonical classics. I'm not provinical. I love the world of wine. But this place is the one where I'm writing from.

And so, epistolary wine. We learned in college literature classes that epistolary novels are those typically written in letters. Les Liaisons dangereuses is a classic example and well worth reading. Likewise, The Juliet Letters is epistolary music, each song a letter, the concept apparently inspired by letters so many people around the world have apparently written to the mythic Juliet and mailed to somewhere in Verona. Searching for something.

Only some of the lyrics actually refer to Juliet or Romeo. Instead there are letters of all kinds, letters of suspicion, letters of lost love, a suicide note, even a letter that gets to the heart of the matter, admitting in the song "I Thought I'd Write to Juliet' - I don't know why I'm writing to you.

We don't always know why we write, but I know now why I make wine. Each one is an epistle, a letter home from the time and place, the year of the wine and ofmy life. These bottles are where I'm coming from, something I need you to know, written in the single note or powerful chord of a grape, so that twenty years later it's still there, ringing true, compelling, crying it hurts of its story so bad.

That's why I'm writing to you.

Farewell Bob Wood

Just a quick note tonight to remember my long time friend Bob Wood, who died this past week here in Portland. Bob was a wine lover and huge supporter of Oregon wine, and good wines of the world. He even followed this little blog and commented occasionally over the years. He was a crusty, no bullshit guy who loved his kids, loved golf, and hated all kinds of random things from cargo shorts, Crocs and Bieber to bad grammar and ostentatious wineries that I will leave nameless here (sorry Bob, but I like buying their used barrels).

Underneath all the crust Bob was a sweet man, even if he didn't let you see it too much. Our last communication a couple weeks ago was about another thing that drove him nuts - signs that state the obvious. This one, a picture Bob had just taken, means more now, though we emailed back and forth then about how our kids loved Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends. I didn't think anything more about it at the time, but now it's all the more painful to again say goodbye to someone without being able to say goodbye. They won't ever quite know what they meant and mean to you. I find that feeling impossible to reconcile, heartbreaking.

Sadly, the sidewalk ends this time somewhere in SW Portland. Farewell Bob. We'll keep up the fight while you're away, and keep making shitty Oregon Pinot in your memory.

Celebration

Some of you may remember that, in addition to making wine as Vincent Wine Company and being a partner in another wine business called Guild Winemakers,  I have a day job in higher education. I know, how does all that work? Sometimes I wonder myself.

I'm committed to my career in higher ed and after a long, far too long time, I'm leaving my current job at a local public university to take a nice position at another local university, smaller and private. I couldn't be more excited. It certainly is something to celebrate.

Let's be clear - bubbles are not just for celebrations. It's a shame that Champagne and the world of sparkling wines are so often saved only to celebrate. Those of us who know better know that bubbles go tremendously well with all kinds of food, and honestly, short of some nasty cheap, sweet "champagne" out there, is there a wine category with more to offer at the lower end than sparkling wine?

Sparkling wines at reasonable prices from Italy, Spain, France, California, Oregon, even the state of New Mexico (Gruet!), abound on shelves across the US. I honestly don't know why I don't drink more of them myself.

Perhaps I too am guilty, and with the new job, what did I do? I went out and bought a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.

I didn't spend a ton, paying about $23, but it's true I didn't exactly cheap out. Still, the NV Clotilde Davenne Cremant de Bourgogne Brut Extra is astonishingly good bubbly worthy of celebration and even a simple dinner at home. It's excellent wine for some money but hardly too much.

This producer is located in the Chablis region, where the chalky soils suggest the unique terroirs of nearby Champagne. I knew nothing of the wine when I bought it. I just trusted a favorite retailer - Division Wines in SE Portland - and it's what they had in the cold box. I didn't expect it to be bad, I just had no idea how good this would be.

Pale in color with a lovely texture of bubbles and bright acidity, the middle palate was the key. A burst of energy in the mouth took this from pleasant sparkler to near Champagne in quality, and I don't say that lightly. The finish was pretty long and graceful, and the bottle disappeared rather quickly. This was irresistible wine.

The lesson? Bubbles are indeed great for celebrations. But when you can get a wine of this quality at this kind of price, a wine that puts a smile on your face so effortlessly, why on earth wouldn't you drink it more often? There's always something to celebrate, no?

In defense of the tasting note

It's become fashionable in wine geek circles to bash the tasting note. It seems the venerable note has gotten mixed up in the fight over scoring wines on the 100 point scale, so that "flavor descriptors" and other hallmarks of most tasting notes are about as stylish as wine ratings.

You'll get no love from me over rating wines with points. What's a "94" versus a "95?" Points suggest a false constancy about wine. They are objective about a medium judged by subjective instruments, our noses and mouths. Really, they are just guesses, and I'd rather read a more prosaic, possibly even poetic, estimation of a wine.

I love a good tasting note. And I love this book, my first  book on the subject of wine, the one, something I'll carry with me always. Yes, always.

It's not a chapter book. It doesn't recount the history of wine and wine culture. There are no sordid tales of wine industry intrigue and despair, no polemics about biodynamics or terroir or anything we usually see in print these days.

Nope, it's just a book full of tasting notes, from the master himself, legendary Christie's wine auctioneer Michael Broadbent. And if you like tasting notes, this is a book for you, even though it's 20 years old.

You won't find tasting notes on recent vintages (though there is a more recent update of this book). You won't find a section on "orange" wines or a vertical tasting of some obscure Jura producer that's hip today. I don't think there is even a tasting not from any wine from the Jura region of France. However, you will find notes on wines going back two centuries, notes that tell a history of wine through the spare prose of Broadbent's notebooks.

Broadbent's position as head auctioneer allowed him to vet cellars full of all kinds of treasures and taste incredibly rare wines prior to auction to ensure provenance and quality. He was also regularly invited to high profile tastings of famous bottles. That a few of those tastings were later found to based on forgeries - and how do you authenticate wines you've maybe never tasted before, or once or twice over decades? - should not affect our view of the man or his great work.

Yes, tasting and writing notes about wine is great work. I may never have become a winemaker were it not for this book. I certainly wouldn't appreciate the tasting note so much, nor have learned so much reading about wines I'll certainly never have the chance to try.

Broadbent's prose is generally plain. I swear that somewhere in this book there's an eyebrow raising allusion to a wine smelling like, and I try to quote from memory, a clean, well-scrubbed youth after exercise.

Mostly though, it's full of nondescript phrases and flourishes like "A delicate, charming wine, soft, scented, with good length." Yet these words are tremendously meaningful to me. Who doesn't want to be charming? Who doesn't love wine that's delicate?

It's all the more interesting that this note is on the 1847 Ch. Rauzan. Yes, 18. This book is full of both the simple and then profound, much like great wine.

Yes, the notorious forger Hardy Rodenstock's tastings account for a portion of some of the more famous wines. Broadbent has been pilloried for his alleged complicity in accepting fakes as genuine, and while I'm sure there are decisions he regrets, how can we hold Broadbent to task too much when he was often tasting wines for the first time?

Or better yet, what if we let his notes speak for themselves? About the 1928 Ch. Petrus tasted at a Rodenstock event in the mid-'80s, "Extraordinarily rich, high-toned bouquet, sweet, hammy, reminiscent of a late-harvest Zindandel." Perhaps that's exactly what it was, assuming this was one of the fakes.

It's true that I don't refer much to this book these days, though I have had fun diving into it again in preparation for this post. And the torn dust jacket, the broken spine, those don't change my feelings for this book. It's incredibly special to me, more so than it probably should be and certainly more so than might make sense to anyone else. Some things just don't make sense, but there they are.

And here's this book, still.

Perfect wine for crab

With the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl today, I had to have Dungeness crab and good white wine while enjoying the game.

For a long time I found myself drinking white Burgundy with crab. Then a friend commented innocently, white Burg? Oaky chardonnay?

He had a point. Minerally and older oak aged white Burgundy can be a lovely match for the sweet flavors of cracked crab. But anything with newer oak showing in the flavor profile can overwhelm the delicate nature of good crab.

So today I thought - why not something from the south of France, where white wine and seafood may both have been invented. But should I have something rich and fancy? No.

How about a simply Vin des Pays des Bouches du Rhone from Ch. de Roquefort? Perfect. This bottle was the 2011 Petit Sale de Villeneuve, which sells for around $10 and comes from organically grown Clairette grapes (one of the common white grapes of the southern Rhone).

There's nothing terribly remarkable about this wine. Except that it is simply perfect, to my taste anyway, for crab or other shellfish.

The wine is pale in color and fresh smelling with an unmistakable lemony aroma and flavor. The finish is not long or profound. It's just delicious.


There's even a little note on the back label of the wine from the owner of Juveniles in Paris to say this isn't "serious" wine. It isn't for oohing and ahhing over. Just drinking. Perhaps in large amounts.

I couldn't agree more. And even though my 49ers didn't pull off a miracle comeback in a tortuously long game, the wine delivered. Look for it if you love good wine and want a great pairing for seafood. I found this at Storyteller in Portland and it's a Thomas Calder Selection, imported by Triage in Seattle.

Tempier at St. Jack

A week ago, friends were visiting from San Diego and we all went to dinner at St. Jack, a lovely French restaurant in SE Portland. What a meal. To start, pours of a Cremant du Bourgogne of some portion Aligote. Delicious, thirst quenching but more interesting than that. Salad Lyonaisse for me, full of tangy and smoky bacon. Then steak frites with '08 Domaine Tempier Bandol, showing well the modern turn of recent years in this cellar. Still, if I produced wine like this I would be more than thrilled. It's deep, aromatic, just hinting at what's to come in a few years as it softens. It's richly fruity, with a more purple color than I remember any Tempier wine from the '90s and earlier. And it's delicious, especially with good steak frites.

Incidentally, St. Jack is also a cafe and patiessiere in one part of the restaurant each morning, with some of the best baked goods available in Portland. The canale alone are worth a long drive. Perhaps the best I've ever had. The bad picture doesn't do them justice. Trust me and go there if you are in town.

Frascati from Conte Jacopo

After my last post about the dearth of serious Italian white wine, I of course thought of other examples I'd neglected. Take Soave for example. The best of this region near Verona may not be landmark wine like Mosel Riesling or White Burgundy. They are however worth noting. So there you are.

This past weekend, we had friends over to watch the San Francisco 49ers crush (in my mind anyway) the Atlanta Falcons and earn a berth in the Super Bowl. I mentioned my post, without saying  to a wine geek guest and mentioned Frascati as the white wine I'd tackle next. His telling comment? What about Orvieto?

I guess he doesn't read the blog.

Anyhow, his point was astute. Areas like Orvieto and Frascati (remember that in most of Europe wines are named for the region, not the grape), these are known only because of the vast amounts of swill they've produced, that is sold to charmed tourists and is ubiquitous on Italian restaurant lists in the heartland. You know, where there isn't much if any choice.

(Strange why conservative "red" states in the US have so little choice in things, but it's the commie "blue" states where the free market really seems to work and you can buy, with hard earned money even, almost anything you want. But that's another story.)

The point is, Orvieto and Frascati have well earned bad reputations, because so much of the wine is lousy. And the point is, as I wrote about Orvieto, with a good importer or decent restaurateur or wine shop, you can find lovely if not life-changing Italian white wine for a song. I suppose that a big caveat - you do need to know a few things. But I think it's worth your time and will add to your meals and your life.

So, Frascati. I first heard of the wine in 1989 when I was a student in London. A friend's father came to visit and we cooked fish and he bought Frascati. I believe it was in a fiasco, the squat bottle wrapped in straw that you know from Chianti and the unfortunate belief that they make good candle holders once the wine is gone. If not, it might as well have been. Fiasci are notorious for holding awful, touristy wine. And Frascati is at the head of the pack of notoriously bad Italian white wine.

But as you might expect, not all Frascati is bad and certainly not all comes in a fiasco. (such a great word, the fiasco). And wouldn't you know it, I picked up the 2011 Conte Jacopo Frascati Superiore to see how a seemingly trustworthy bottle would taste. Why trustworthy? I bought it at a shop I trust, and the local Estelle Imports brings it in to Portland. They're great, so anything they bring in is at least worth a look.

Sure enough, I loved this little wine. My wife found it a bit tart, but I would call it bracing. Think of it as the Muscadet of Italy, a zippy, minerally white wine for shellfish and, to finish things off tonight, a light pasta dish with pine nuts, ricotta salata and broccoli. The cheese is dried and salted ricotta, matching the briny sense in the wine. The lemony acidity washes the palate clean before the next bite of pasta, and repeat.

Should one cellar this Frascati? No. It seems best as fresh as you can get it, and while the 2012 may be in town by the summer if not sooner, the 2011 is still perfectly lovely. Warm weather wine for sure, but in Portland's unusually cold (and dry) January, this is like a breath of summer. And the sea.

Who doesn't want that?

2011 Rocca di Tufo Orvieto - Italian white wine rediscovered

The obvious dawned on me a few years ago with respect to Italian wine. For all the great Italian red wine, there's not so much Italian great white wine.

It's almost weird, though I suppose Germany isn't exactly known for red wine. I'd just never really thought about it. There are the great Piedmontese reds of Barolo and Barbaresco. The Brunello and Chianti, of Tuscany, also reds. The Amarone of the Veneto. Even the noble. Aglianico of the south. All red.

But whites? Not so much. Arneis is a modern white from Piedmont, but it's made in small quantities. And I understand its really only been bottled on its own in very recent times. It's a lovely starter to a Piedmontese dinner though I wouldn't imagine sticking with it too long when the food gets more serious.

Yes, there's Friulano of the northeast. Delicious. Of course the great sparkling wines of Fanciacorta. Ok, that's great Italian white wine. And sure, the esoteric but occasionally brilliant yellow (intentionally oxidized white) wines of Fruili near the Slovenian border - Radikon and friends - can be magical. Not to mention the occasionally incredible Trebbiano d'Abruzzo like the Valentini I wrote about recently.

But exceptions prove the rule. When it comes to Italian whites, you're mostly looking at things from touristy areas like the Vernaccia di San Gimignano in Tuscany or the Frascati from just outside Rome. The south has some interesting things like Lacryma di Christo del Vesuvio, but they're mostly after thoughts in the world of wine.

Some of the best examples are overlooked gems. Are most great wines? Reference point wines capable of aging and improving with time like the best reds? No, not really.

That strikes me as a little weird. I guess it's part of learning about wine, even when you think you know a few things. Italian whites can be and so often are delicious. They just don't capture the imagination like the great reds of Italy. They certainly haven't made the name of Italian wine, not even close.

So what do we do with them? Drink them, because Italy is full of inexpensive, tasty whites mostly from grapes the world hasn't ever heard of. But with a little knowledge and perhaps some experience visiting the regions these little wines come from, you'll never think twice in an Italian restaurant about what to order.

Take Orvieto. Sure, there's innocuous wine produced in the region, but what region doesn't have that? In most decent restaurants, as well as good wine shops, Orvieto is a great DOC (region) to look for if you want authentic taste at a very reasonable price. Many cost around $10-$15 in shops, so they'll often be served by the glass or listed near the top (cheap zone) of a wine list.

Best of all, you're not getting the same grapes grown all over the world. You're getting something authentically Italian. Producer is important, though so is importer here in the states. Have some favorite Italian reds? Find who imports them and see if they import an Orvieto. That's a great way to start finding good wines in any region you don't know well. The importer will often have done the hard work for you, selecting something worth your time above many other offerings in the region.

Take the 2011 Rocca di Tufo Orvieto. I didn't recognize the importer in this case - WorldWide Cellars Imports - but one of my favorite local shops in Portland, Storyteller Wine Company, had the wine on the shelf. That's another great (though maybe more obvious) way to find new wines. Try something you don't know from a shop you know and trust.

In this case, the method worked and the wine was just what I was hoping for. Nothing fancy, nothing great, but for $12 or so, this was a lemony, yellow fruited wine with a slight mineral edge, just round enough to enjoy on its own and crisp enough to stand up to food. I can't honestly say if the wine was typical of the grapes involved - Procanico and Grechetto - but it reminded me of other nice Orvieto wines I've had in the past. The flavors were fresh and bright, with a seashell edge that maybe comes from limestone in the area that worked with a variety of foods over several days.

And that's another secret - this wine lasted for a week in the fridge, a glass at a time in a screwcapped bottle, with no gassing or fancy vacuum stoppers to keep it fresh. It stayed lovely the whole time, something I find is true of many white wines, Italian whites included. People who just want a glass here or there, take note. Maybe it's due to the cold temps in our fridges, maybe it's the generally higher acidity of white wines, I'm not sure. I do know that some reds will last well for a few days on the counter, but whites, they can last and last.

I got so excited about this wine I bought a few other Italian whites to try in the coming weeks. Next, a Frascati. Don't laugh, because this not well thought of region can deliver its own lovely little wine for next to no money, no matter its lowly reputation as a touristy wine that had a few years of minor fame decades ago.

Italian white wine. It isn't fancy, but if you're adventurous, don't miss out.

Sea level, with California wine

A big sky at sea level

I was lucky enough to grow up by the sea in Los Angeles and spend much of my adolescence, in the water. At sea level.

It was only years later after I'd moved away that I realized what sea level really means to me. I was sitting on the shore of an island in the Puget Sound, surprised I could see the whole of Mt. Rainier, all the way to its peak nearly three miles in the sky. You don't get to see the whole of a mountain very often.

But here I was at sea level, and the thought struck me that there  isn't really another place where I can see things, even the largest things, with such clarity. And I thought of growing up, being in the sea, floating on the water on a surfboard, waiting, which surfing is so much about. It gives you time to think, time to try to see things more clearly.

In the end, the thought wasn't so literal. I live in Portland, essentially at sea level, but that's not what this is about. These days, I can find myself at sea level in many places - the vineyard and winery among them. Maybe it's with a person. But there's no place for me like the ocean where I grew up.

On a recent visit to LA I took my usual trips down to the water, into the water, where everything slows down for me. Complicated things, surprises, make more sense here. I always want to stay longer than I can and I promise myself I'll return sooner than I might. It had been a year and a half since the last visit, too long.

Maybe it was the influence of all that, but I did manage some new clarity on the wine front this past visit. My wine loving friend of the Valentini Trebbiano and Chave Hermitage Blanc gifted me a pair of California bottles he said I had to try, wines that don't taste like so much of what's made California's reputation in recent years.

I'd heard a lot about both producers, Anthill Farms and Arnot-Roberts, but hadn't had the chance to try either. Wow, sometimes things really do live up to the hype.

First, the 2010 Anthill Farms Pinot Noir Campbell Ranch Sonoma Coast. This is Pinot noir more in common with Oregon than most of what I know of California.

The wine was medium ruby in color with an expressive aroma of cranberry, raspberry, light toast, old wood, all pleasantly herbal and very Pinot. The flavors followed, with piquant cranberry and raspberry notes, green peppercorn, earthy and savory with a worsted tannin texture and bright acidity, quite good if needing time to become more complex. The wine did seem a touch fizzy but showed no real unclean flavors, definitely a little sauvage tasting though. California Pinot really worth paying attention to. I'm the last to find out, but still, it's clear to me now.

A few nights later we opened the 2011 Arnot-Roberts Syrah North Coast, listed at 12.9% alcohol by volume. What a beautiful crimson color with an incredible perfume of peppery green olive, raspberry and rose aromas, very complete and expressive. More of that nice worsted tannin texture, quite a bit of tannin but not too much, with lots of whole cluster herbal character, raspberry, mineral, old wood, lovely texture but needing time to resolve. This was delicious California Syrah, impressive without trying to be, if that makes sense. Again, wine that's transparent, that brings clarity. This is what California can really be about.

Barrel tasting the 2012s

I will admit it. Amid all the hype over Oregon's 2012 vintage, I've been more than a little nervous about the wines I made this past fall. Let me explain.

In 2012, we had yet another cold, wet spring, which gets the growing season off to a slow start that very likely turns into a late, possibly rainy harvest. In 2010 and 2011 harvest dates were two to four weeks later than usual, meaning early October picking turned into late October, even November harvesting in 2011. If you know western Oregon, you don't plan outdoor activities that time of year. And yet, both years saw exceptionally dry and mild weather as long as we needed to harvest ripe, delicious fruit. We got lucky and the wines show it.

After more cold and wet spring weather in 2012, it looked like we were in for another late harvest. Yet summer came on stronger than it has in years and by September we were maybe just a week behind "normal." We didn't have extreme heat. Instead, we had record dry weather and what seemed like perfect weather for growing grapes. Nice long days, cool nights, little disease pressure in the vineyards. Maybe it would have been nice to get some rain in there to water the vines a bit, but we had lots of ground water and the vineyard everywhere looked great.

Then came the wind. Late September saw days that reminded me of warm winter days growing up in LA. Dry, warm winds not unlike a Santa Ana capped off our growing season. The only problem is, that kind of weather dries out the grapes, raising sugar levels and degrading acidity. What seemed like a really nice growing season suddenly seemed to be overheating at the end. Think of cooking a nice dinner, only to find your child has accidentally turned up the oven right before everything is perfectly done.

Happily, the grapes came in healthy - in fact I've never seen such clean fruit. There were absolutely no rotten clusters or anything but some leaves to sort out before crushing and fermenting the fruit. I was just a little worried that sugar levels were a bit high, meaning higher alcohol levels that I'm looking for. And the flavors in the new wines were so fruity. Maybe even a bit frooty, if you know what I mean.

Wine is a cured product, meaning we age it in barrels to allow it to change from something raw to something refined, naturally so. Think of fatty meats or cheese, to which age brings a depth and nuance that only time can give.

Let's just say, as lovely as the fruit looked coming into the winery and as well as the fermentations went, I put the new wines in barrel with a lot of hope that the curing process of barrel aging would take jarringly raw, frooty wine and give the lace and elegance I look for in finished wine.

The new wines aren't finished yet - they still have a long way to go in barrel. But tasting them today with a friend, I can finally say it - I'm excited.

The Chardonnay is green tinted with aromas and flavors of green apple, pear and pineapple. I'm really excited about my first commercial white wine.

Then a variety of Pinots from Armstrong vineyard. The 115 clone had a bit of whole clusters in the otherwise destemmed fruit and was picked a few days before the rest of the vineyard. This wine seems dense but gaining elegance, with good length. The Pommard, with a bit of 667 clone co-fermented, is earthy and a touch reduced. And the pure 667 is the most snappy and taut, though these will all be larger, more generous wines than the past two vintages. Tasting a blend of these different vineyard blocks in the press wine gives a nice look at what blending should achieve. There's a dullness typically of press wine, but a broader range of flavors that really excited me.

Next we moved on to the three Eola-Amity Hills vineyards that I work with. As with Armstrong vineyard, these wines are all Pinot noir. This is my first year working with Crowley Station, a mix of 114 and 115 clones, planted in the late 1990s on its own roots. Being new to me, I'm wondering if the wine will merit bottling on its own as a single vineyard. Today it tastes lovely, full and dense as the vintage has given but floral with an emerging delicacy, a pepperiness, that I'm excited to see evolve with more time in barrel.

Next is Zenith vineyard, all Pommard clone and a bit tannic at this point, nicely so with a firmness that balances the fruit and suggests a long life in the cellar. Then there's the Bjornson vineyard, higher in the Eola Hills on very red soils, mostly Pommard clone with a bit of Wadenswil. All my 2012 reds are saturated in color, but this wine is jet black. I'm not looking for such color and during fermentation I punch down fermenters only a handful of times total. But that's the 2012 vintage, dark and rich, and this wine is a bit of a bruiser. Experience with this site suggests it will calm down with further aging, but what I'm looking for here I found - a sense of vinosity emerging so that the wine isn't all about primary fruit.

Finally we tasted the press wine, a mix of the three Eola-Amity vineyards. A touch lighter in color than the others, given that press wine has more solids (extra cloudy after pressing) and all that matter strips out a bit of the density as the wine settles out. I like press wine for its almost leavening quality in wine, taking the denser free run juice and airing it out a bit. Note, this is just the opposite thing I learned as a wine geek, free run wine being delicate and press wine heavy and dense. Free run wine is what come out of the fermenter without pressing, and it's about 80% of one's yield. If wine can be burly and dense, and it very much can be, that's free run wine talking. The press wine is usually lower in acid and lighter in color, frankly more suited on its own for simply quaffing wine. But blended in judicious amounts, I really like its lifting effect in a finished wine.

In all, these young 2012s are powerful and impressive wines. My only worries have been if they reflect the style I'm carving out, of more delicate though no less flavory and delicious wine. What I'm seeing even after a few months in barrel is a positive lightening of the wines, so they lift and fly a bit in your mouth, not plod and thud in a graceless way. And after tasting through things today, I can finally say I'm excited that the power these wines will be known for will continue to develop more and more nuance and grace with more barrel time.

Note, I use older barrels so these wines are not and will not become very oak marked. And these wines are in various stages of malolactic fermentation, meaning my impressions are snapshots, and certainly impressions that will continue to change. The important part, and why I've written all this, is that the wines are finally being wine-like, vinuous. And I'm simply thrilled about that. I really wish you could taste what I'm talking about, but perhaps in time.

Back to the beach

I grew up by the beach in Southern California, and from time to time I get to come back home for a visit. To see family, old friends, old places, to swim in the ocean and surf, maybe just to watch the sun set over the water.

This view from my family's condo on the beach is one of my favorites. When this what I'm seeing, when this is where I'm coming from, all is well.

On our most recent visit, we reconnected again with some dear  friends from San Francisco who happen to have incredibly good taste in wine. We talked on the beach and watched the surf while our kids played, then ordered in local pizza and enjoyed a simple dinner with exceptional wines. Wines worth writing about.

To start, the 2002 Clouet Brut Champagne, a producer I love though I rarely get to try, much less drink, any vintage bottlings. I probably say it too much, but for anyone who questions the existence of terroir, I give you Champagne. Even as a wine blended from multiple sites, Champagne is simply like no other sparkling wine. The gout de terroir is unmistakable. Here, chalk with maturing sherry and yeast notes, carried by energetic lemon and strawberry flavors, with good length and delicacy. Lovely, lovely wine.

Next, an interlude of sorts, a simple young Chenin blanc from Olga Raffault, the 2009 Raffault Chinon Champ-Chinon. Pale as you can see, young, lemony with a lovely beeswax quality and just a hint of the bergamot I love in Loire Chenin. Bergamot. The flavor deserves its own post, the orange blossom quality you would know from Earl Grey tea but maybe not anywhere else. I smell bergamot and am transported somewhere incredibly good, beyond reason, where are I can do is breathe it in and exhale, reflecting. There should be a bergamot perfume. Anyone with impeccable taste would wear it, no?

I picked up the Raffault earlier this year in New York, seeing it at Chambers Street and wishing we could find such a wine again in Portland. Perhaps it's available but years ago the 2002 version of this wine was remarkably easy to find locally. I remember having it for lunch with my parents at South Park restaurant, my dad a Chenin fan though not so familiar with Loire versions of the grape. Seeing it again made me think of him, of South Park, of the chance of smelling bergamot again. Perhaps it will emerge more here with time, but for now this wine was delicious if young and simple.

Then came a pair of exceptional,wines, in quality as well as rarity, both from the 1998 vintage. First the 1998 Chave Hermitage Blanc, surprising for its toasty rich oaky aromas and flavors (did Chave buy new barrels this year?), with a body and presence more like good aged white Burgundy than I expect from northern Rhone blanc. At first this wine showed a mature note that made me think of another friend who, upon tasting the '02 Chave Blanc earlier this year with me, suggested he thought it was quite mature and more than ready. To my taste, that wine was no where near mature but it was showing  a bit of age, as you would expect a ten year old wine. This 14-year-old wine showed considerably more age, not in a bad way but enough to make me think again - is Keith right to want these wines younger? No, not for my taste anyway. I prize the mature, sherried and marzipan notes of old white Hermitage. This bottle however was definitely showing more age than I expected. I loved it nonetheless and, based on experience with older Chave, it's just hitting it's stride and will stay around this plateau for a decade or more.

In comparison, the 1998 Valentini Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, from a village near my San Francisco friend's family home in the old country. He brought this wine back with him years ago when Valentini wasn't imported. This wine isn't something you'd expect to find in many places anyway, but when the wine wasn't even imported to the US, you have to figure this is pretty rare stuff. How was it? The wine of the night. Unusual and exotic smelling, bright yellow in color with an oxidized and hard to describe aroma, spicy, yellow fruited. The flavors followed and the length was exceptional. Many of these wines had leftovers to try on day two, but this one my friend smartly took with him. I may have finished it all the first night. Wow. This note does little to capture the experience. Let's just say, if you have a chance to try Valentini, don't miss out.

Don't we drink red wines? Yes, but with whites like these, who needs red. I wanted my friends to try something from Oregon other than my wine, so why not the 2007 Crowley Pinot Noir Gehrts Vineyard. I've found this to be one of the best wines from Oregon in 2007 that I've tried and tonight was no exception. Good richness for the vintage though perhaps lightening a touch in that last two years. Medium ruby in color with piquant strawberry and raspberry fruit, leafy sassparilla notes and pleasantly toothsome tannin, finishing a bit hard with enough density so that I think this wine will age and unwind very nicely for several more years. I've been on record saying the 2007s are lovely wines but not as ageworthy, generally speaking, as the vintage's fans sometimes suggest. Too many of the wines are so pretty at this point I'm not sure what more they'll give with time. This wine is an exception, and though maker Tyson Crowley is a friend, I think it's being fair to say this exceptional quality Oregon wine that you should try, regardless of vintage. Tyson's making really good stuff.

What to finish with? How about a birth year wine for one of our visiting friends, a 1970 Cantina Sociale di Sizzano e Ghemme Ghemme. This old nebbiolo from the Ghemme DOC was another purchase from Chambers Street a year ago in a nice offer of obscure old neb that I couldn't resist. And why not? The wines I bought were almost impossible to research, so I wanted to write about them, assuming they were worth it. So far, so good. Every wine has been enjoyable if not exceptional. This one was very good, freshening with airtime as old wines so often do, paradoxically. What is the science behind old wine seeming younger with exposure to air? Soy and bouillon aromas at first, then some fruit, mushrooms, bottle sweetness (a caramelized note), roses, and then gentle flavors with some fine tannin still gripping on the finish. Lovely and full of life while certainly somewhat decayed, in a good sense. Wine from a special year, this evening one with special friends who we don't see nearly enough.

No, we didn't finish all of these wines, not even close. And I don't have such a deep cellar as to open bottles like this regularly. But for this night, with these friends and with the thoughts wines like this provoke, all was just lovely and nearly perfect. We left swearing again it would happen again sooner than the last time. I hope so.

Giving thanks

It's been a while since Thanksgiving, but the wines we enjoyed have stayed in my mind. Thanksgiving is such a food and people centered holiday. I'm on record saying that I don't think Thanksgiving is great for your most special wines. Save those for their own days. If any day is simply about delicious wine, and perhaps a few experiments, Thanksgiving is it. This year we again did pretty well.

To start, the 2008 Rollin Pernand-Vergelesses was everything I'd been told (convinced?) when encouraged by a friend who sells the wine to buy it. He was right. This is serious white Burgundy, crystaline and so lemony, I can't stop thinking about this wine weeks later. The chardonnay I am making this year will be nothing like this wine, yet I can't help but be inspired by such expressive and refined chard.

After sampling a bottle of one of my own 2011 single vineyard Pinots, I opened two more wines to have with dinner. The first was this lowly, old Nebbiolo, something I wasn't at all sure would be worth drinking. I purchased this bottle last year from Chambers Street Wines, a throw in only because it's from my birth year. The 1969 Berteletti Nebbiolo is probably the lowest level  bottling of a not great vintage, not very old, from a not well known producer in a region good for this grape but no Barolo or Barbaresco. And the wine? I was shocked. I was more than alive. It was lovely. A touch of beef bouillon but still a little fruit and intact flavors. This is why we age wine, or purchased reliably sourced aged wine. With each bottle I purchased last year, I get more interested to open the rest. No duds so far.

The second dinner wine was an old Thanksgiving favorite, the 1994 Ch. Grand Mayne St. Emilion. This bottle came with us from California, the last of a purchased from the Wine House in San Francisco back in the late '90s. I remember opening one with Thanksgiving then, and again in our first year in Portland with my brother and another old friend visiting. I lost track of the others but knew the last bottle would fall on Thanksgiving. Mature, gravelly red fruit, gently oaky, delicious claret and an easy match yet again with the range of flavors on our table. What a lovely last taste of this wine.

Thanksgiving is a time for the classics, so we had Sauternes for dessert. Here, the second wine of Suduiraut, the 2005 Castelnaut Sauternes. I love this label for good value. The wine tasted golden, with sweet but balanced flavors, lots of figgy botrytis notes and good length. Sometimes lesser Sauternes are too bitter or sweet. Not this. Must find more.

A guest posted a picture of a few of these bottles on the table, quipping something to the effect of must be a winemaker's house. What can I say. This is all my way of showing thanks.

Night

I'm a night owl. It's surely from my mother. These days she retires early but in her prime she would be up well past my father's old 9:30ish bedtime. It's the same with me and this harvest it all sort of hit me at once how much I want and need the night.

For little kids, the night is essentially off limits. It's dark. It's late. It's many things and it seems none of them are much good for kids. I never liked that when I was young, like staring out a window on a rainy day thinking...someday.

Of course, there's Halloween, which might be my favorite night. Not for the costumes, though I admire a crafty costume maker. I'm just not a dress up guy (dealbreaker?). And not for the candy, which is great of course and my kids love the newspaper's candy bowl feature each October. Sure, it's crazy good to have perfect strangers give you free candy all night long. But kids can find candy any time. At least I could.

No, for me I now realize it was all about the night, as if day were simple land but night something different, under the sea, an unknown world beginning to reveal itself. I loved it, roaming with friends, seeing all the common places without the color of day or people or cars or everything else that should have been there. Should, if all you knew was the day time.

As I got older, regular day activities took on new life at night. My friends and I liked to night hike in the local hills, letting our eyes adjust to the dark and walking in moonlight like we were characters in fantasy books we loved.

Then I read about night surfing, how you could have just enough light from pier lights to surf after dark. It was cool, though the light was good only on the pier side and the rest of the ocean was creepy and dark. Just what I was looking for at 17, not so much now to be honest.

The dark forced you to pay closer attention, to slow down a bit or see things in shadows that you might ordinarily miss. And I loved it all, the quiet, the solitude, like our night adventures were extra time that no one was counting or waiting on, time that was all mine.

Those night adventures continued. There was the trip to Manhattan many years back roaming the streets all night before a far-too-early flight. Or rambles through European cities late at night when the trains had stopped running and I had no money for a cab. I'd just walk and end up seeing things you never see during the day, even if it was nothing at all. Think of the novelty of being able to lie down in an empty street, what during the day was a busy road. At night all the rules were different, as if words suddenly all had different meanings.

It's funny, just as you don't see little kids out at night much, you don't see older people. You don't see much of anyone, sure, but if you do see people, they're typically younger adults. Older people are home, in bed, too cold and tired to go out at night.

That better not be me, or at least it better take a while yet before I have to give up the night. Yet there aren't the opportunities to go out at night like there used to be. Not to clubs or like that. Just for a walk, a bike ride, a hike maybe, anything, just to be out long after the town is asleep. There's something special in that.

But what do I have? Harvest, where there's a ton of work to do in a relatively short time, where I'm in a facility full of other people wanting to use the same space and equipment as I do, where I have a day job, and where I just sometimes want some quiet to listen to music that won't make it over the din of winery compressors and other machinery.

I did plenty of work during the days and evenings, and my colleagues in the new winery are terrific. But I I found myself working especially late this harvest, watching my colleagues peeling away through the night as the city itself turned out the lights, leaving me alone. Alone to slow down, to pay closer attention, to listen and, as you might imagine, to think. There's so much happening during harvest and everything to think about, yet we often don't have the time to think. There's too much to do.

In the night, I did my punch downs, cleaned barrels, drained fermenters, washed out dirty fermenters, squeegeed the floor, you name it, I did it. I listened to my music, looking for a harvest soundtrack, my night music. There were some old favorites like Elvis and the Brodskys, but newer things too, like Robert Francis, especially his song Tunnels. Or Wilco's last record, The Whole Love, which absolutely destroys me, especially Black Moon. It's so good. And Birdy's cover of 1901, turning what might be a love song into an elegy, appropriately.

Somewhere between 1 and 3am I'd wrap things up. This wasn't every night of course, but several through the harvest. The winery dark and silent, alarm on and door locked, pushing me out into the emptiness of Division Street (in my memory it's always raining). Then maybe I'd go to Potato Champion for a long past midnight snack, or just home through the deserted streets, thinking of all so many things, what I have and what I want, need. What is and what probably will never be.

I have many, many things. But this harvest I got back something I missed and never understood so well. I have the night.

Come taste wine at our Urban Thanksgiving this weekend

If you're in Portland this weekend, come taste my new Vincent Wine Company wines at the SE Wine Collective.

All four of us in the facility - Vincent, Division, Helioterra and Bow and Arrow - are pouring and selling our newest wines. We're calling it Urban Thanksgiving.

Come taste, enjoy yourself and buy some wine for the holidays before you go. We'll have everything for sale.

Urban Thanksgiving details:
SE Wine Collective, 2425 SE 35th Place at Division in Potland
Saturday and Sunday, November 18 and 19, noon-5pm each day

Tasting fee $15

Harvest wrap

November's here and with it the end of the grape harvest. This year we brought in more than nine tons of mostly Pinot Noir grapes from five different vineyards. Now all the juice from that fruit is fermented into wine and safely in barrel, where it will age over the coming year.

Never mind the two barrels of Chardonnay - our first white - that aren't anywhere close to being done fermenting. That's just fine. With reds, we crush the grapes and let things ferment for a few weeks. Then it's time to drain off the new wine, press the skins to get every last drop and put everything in barrel. But with whites, we press the grapes right away and ferment the juice by itself in barrels, ideally over several weeks and even months. With reds, fermentation is relatively quick. With whites, it can (and should) take time. So we'll let that Chard go for a while and see what we get. Think art, science and luck.

Everyone always asks - how was this year? And I'm delighted to say that several people have already heard this was a great year, nearly perfect even. No, that was last year. Nothing we want to go through again, with a very late harvest in unexpectedly dry and mild conditions, but one for the ages. One you can never take for granted. One I trust will reveal itself in time, the wines still so young but so full of potential.

Of course, years like 2011 produce wines I love. Lithe, bright, full of energy, life giving. Years like 2012, with a historically dry growing season and harvest time heat and wind, make lithe, bright and energetic a bit challenging. The silver lining - more people still seem to like richer, fuller wines. If that's you, 2012 should be stellar.

In 2012, my goal as a winemaker was opulence mitigation (stealing a line from a friend). That meant grapes picked while they still had good amounts of acidity to give the wines life. Or fermentations drawn out over a three weeks to produce a broad range of aromas and flavors. And infrequent punch downs to make sure we don't overwork the wines, overmixing things like kneading a dough too much and making tough bread. Riper years like 2012 provide lots of flavor and color in the wines. My goal has been to not push things further still, to preserve the elegance of Pinot Noir while knowing confidently that everything the grapes have will make it into the wine, even with a very gentle touch in the winery.

Sure enough, I have stacks of barrels full of deeply colored, rich but structured wines ready for a winter hibernation. And shouldn't we all be? Harvest is a maddeningly hectic time of decisions and second guessing, organization and luck, hard work and moments of sheer joy. Now that it's done, I want to go somewhere remote and sleep. And sleep. All the way until spring.

The dog days of harvest

We're three weeks into harvest and it feels like summer in August. I don't mean it's warm, no, autumn is clearly here. It's just that some things are incredibly good. Some things are getting a bit old. And some things are sweeter as the season's days slowly start drawing to a close. Just like that August feeling, when you're mixed on the passing of time.

All the fruit for my winery is in for the season. I figure I'll have around 20 barrels of Pinot Noir in addition to the two barrels of Chardonnay, which incidentally was actively fermenting on its own in barrel as well as in a couple glass carboys of extra wine that I have. Nice to see foam on the surface of the juice. Smells clean and fresh. I can't wait to have my first commercially available white wine.

Meanwhile, my six fermentors of red wine have been similarly native and active. I don't add yeast to the grapes, instead letting fermentation spontaneously occur. It's never failed. This year the ferments have been a little too vigorous. I found it interesting to hear a colleague suggest the ferments are faster with higher pHs in the juice, meaning the yeast are happier in a lower acid solution. Makes sense. One fermentor of Armstrong Vineyard is done but I'm letting it hang around for a few days while two others from Armstrong finish up. I'll press them together.

The three others are at or just past the peak of fermentation. After we mostly destem the grapes, we let them sit untouched for several days until the native yeasts build in number. Then once the fermentor is putting off enough carbon dioxide to really notice, we punch down the fermentors once a day, twice if the temperature gets a little high. Punching down meaning mixing the grapes skins and juice around to release CO2 and heat and keep the top of the mixture fresh and clean.

I'm cautiously optmistic for the wines from 2012. It's too early to say how they will be, but the first finished fermentor is nice, with good density to the flavors and nice texture from the skins. I do know that I'll be really glad to drain and press all these fermentors, then clean and fill all my barrels in the following few days. At that point, I'll be done with harvest. And that's going to be in about ten days.

I love harvest, but that's something that has taken time to set in with me. I can't wait until it's done each year, but I'm working like a dog and I've found I enjoy it.