| Willamette
Valley's Wineries
Map of North Willamette
Valley
When
to Visit the Valley
Joel
Palmer House
Truffle hunting
The menu at the Joel
Palmer House
Ken Wright Cellars
Oregon’s geology
Panther Creek Cellars
Domaine Drouhin Oregon
Clones
Phylloxera
Patricia Green Cellars
Community of winemakers
Patricia Green Cellars
15225 NE North Valley Road
Newberg, OR 97132
503-554-0821 Fax: 503-538-3681
e-mail: winery@patriciagreencellars.com
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(This
is Part II of my trip to Oregon’s Willamette Valley; click
here to read Part I, which includes
visits to a number of wineries including Ponzi Vineyards and Archery
Summit)
Working for my Supper: Truffles
After leaving Josh Bergström
to continue his work around the winery I was off to the Joel
Palmer House, a historical building
in the small town of Dayton. Joel Palmer (1810-1881) was one of
Oregon’s original pioneers, discovering the Barlow Pass in
1845 and settling in the area in 1849 after a slight digression
caused by the California Gold rush. He served the Oregon Territory
and later the State in many capacities, most notably as a supervisor
of Indian Affairs and in the State Legislature (He was actually
removed from the former position for being too sympathetic to the
Native Americans.). His Victorian house remains a historical landmark,
which Jack and Heidi Czarnecki bought in 1996.
They came to Oregon driven by a love for two things:
wild mushrooms and fine wine. Jack had built up his reputation as
a chef over many years in Reading, Pennsylvania; together with Heidi
they had made the family restaurant Joe’s into a nationally
recognized destination for fine-dining, especially noted for their
use of wild mushrooms. After multiple honors from the James Beard
Foundation and appearances on TV and in print, the Czarneckis decided
it was time for a change and headed west.
Jack and I had arranged to meet at the restaurant
so he could take me out truffle hunting.
Oregon white truffles are a less-familiar cousin to the white truffles
found in Tuscany; available in spring and autumn, they are sometimes
looked down on, but if they seem of lower quality, this is often
because they are mistreated. I changed into my boots and piled into
the car with Jack and some friends, and we drove out…well,
I’m not allowed to say where, exactly (They even discussed
blindfolding me.). I am only permitted to say that the Oregon truffle
favors groves of Douglas Firs (the State Tree).
We parked by our selected grove, put the leashes
on the pigs, and…okay, so we were pig-less. And dog-less,
for that matter. Neither animal has been trained for truffle-hunting
in Oregon, so what I imagine to be a more labor-intensive approach
is used. The truffles grow a few inches under the loose, decomposing
topsoil and pine needles, near the root-systems of the trees. Armed
with a rake, we scraped at the ground, keeping our eyes out for
glimpses of white. I put my beginner’s luck to good use and
found a sizeable truffle quite quickly; it was almost the size of
a racquetball. I threw it into a decapitated milk jug tied to my
hip and raked on. Over the course of an hour-and-a-half we uncovered
quite a few of the smelly things, ranging in size from a marble
to my early surprise. There were many false-calls; supposed truffles
turned out to be merely the husk of a filbert or some-such. I got
the impression that it was a fairly successful expedition overall.
Did we head back to the restaurant to prepare
some dishes with our new-found delicacies? Not exactly. Because
they are found by digging them up, rather than by odor (i.e. via
the sensitive schnozz of a dog or pig), Oregon truffles are rarely
ripe when discovered. The sale of and immediate use of these unripe
truffles actually damaged the reputation of Oregon truffles for
a while, but now most people know better. They are easy to ripen:
wrap the truffles in a plastic bag and let them sit in the fridge
for a few days. The truffles will darken from their off-white color,
eventually attaining a medium brown. At the same time the truffle
softens, and the odor deepens into a very pronounced musty, earthy
aroma. The inside of the truffle darkens as well, except for a network
of spidery veins. Then the truffle is ready to eat.
Jack and his sous chef Shawn Snyder prepared
a number of dishes for me which featured truffles and other wild
mushrooms that they had gathered, ranging from the traditional –
truffles shaved over rissotto – to “fusion” to
odd-but-wonderful. A three-mushroom tart, mushroom soup, and a “faux
gras” paté of mushrooms are standard features of the
menu at the Joel Palmer House. The standout item for me
was a timbal of Asian greens and lump crabmeat, topped with shaved
truffles. I was also astounded by a candy cap mushroom ice cream.
Candy cap mushrooms have a strong maple syrup aroma; Jack opened
a bag of dried candy caps under my nose, and I felt like I was back
in upstate New York, helping my grandfather boil down maple sap.
The ice cream was a delicious, unlikely cousin to maple pecan. The
restaurant’s menu isn’t all mushrooms, and includes
a variety of other Oregonian products, changing often to accommodate
the seasons. They also feature a prix-fixe Mushroom Madness menu,
wherein you choose your entrée and Jack develops a series
of wild mushroom courses around it.
But it wasn’t just the mushrooms that brought
Jack to Oregon, it was the right wines to accompany them. He’s
become very knowledgeable about Oregon’s wines, and friendly
with many of the region’s producers. In fact, his house wines
– Riesling, Pinot Gris, and Pinot Noir – are made for
him by Amity Vineyards, Willamette Valley Vineyards, and Peter Rosback,
respectively. Near the end of our meal he opened a wonderful bottle
of Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Noir 1994, which demonstrated that Oregon’s
best wines are capable of aging as profoundly and gracefully as
those of Burgundy. Jack also advised me to talk to the folks at
Ken Wright Cellars if I really wanted to get the lowdown on what
was happening in the soils of Oregon’s vineyards. Fortunately,
they were my first stop the following day.
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Ken Wright Cellars
 However,
a sub-standard map, faulty aid from a gas station attendant, and
a poor sense of direction all conspired to make me miss my appointment
in Carlton. I did enjoy the ride northwest, up into the hills and
pine forest, but only until I developed a nagging doubt that the
logging road ahead of me was a likely location for a winery. Eventually
I turned around and decided to hightail it back into civilization,
finally finding my way to Ken Wright Cellars in the center of Carlton.
Despite my extreme tardiness, I got a friendly welcome from Dale
West, who handles in-state wine and marketing for the winery. As
Jack Czarnecki had promised, Dale was ready to take apart the Willamette
Valley’s geology for me.
There are three primary events that have provided
the building blocks of Oregon’s
geology. The meeting of the Juan de Fuca plate and the
continental plate brought up large amounts of sedimentary soil from
the ocean floor; through time these sediments have become compressed
into siltstone and sandstone, and this is the basic layer of material
over which future changes would be wrought. Then – 20 million
years ago – volcanic activity in Central Oregon deposited
a mantel of basalt, much of which has since eroded, leaving behind
the hills of the region. Finally, 12 to 15 thousand years ago, the
Great Missoula Floods drastically change the landscape of what is
now the Pacific Northwest, carving out the Columbia Gorge and scattering
assorted debris from Montana and Canada across the Willamette Valley.
Today this has left two main soil types for Willamette
Valley winegrowers to consider, each with assorted subtypes. The
older soil is the Willakenzie; this sedimentary soil still shows
traces of its oceanic origin, with sea fossils and sandstone scattered
through its composition. Willakenzie soils are not typically very
nutrient-rich; this, combined with good drainage, puts tough demands
on the grapevine. But less-fertile soils generally make for better,
more concentrated wines. Wines made from Willakenzie-grown grapes
tend to exhibit darker fruit aromas and an earthy character, often
with more pronounced tannins.
The Dundee Hills stand as the most famous example
of the Valley’s other main soil type, Jory, often called Red
Jory Clay. This mix of volcanic basalt and clay, which reaches fairly
deep into the soil before reaching bedrock, strikes a balance in
water-retention: the clay tends to hold on to it, whereas the slopes
and basalt encourage drainage. The resulting wines lean more toward
red fruits and a smooth, rich mouthfeel. The Eola Hills to the south
feature a variant of Jory called Nekia, which is shallower and has
less clay. As the soils tend to dry out sooner, the grapes ripen
earlier and with higher acidity levels that elsewhere in the valley.
Ken Wright Cellars has contracts with about a
dozen different vineyards, scattered through four regions of the
Willamette Valley: Dundee Hills, Eola Hills, Yamhill-Carlton District,
and the Coastal Range. The former two have primarily volcanic soils,
the latter sedimentary. In the late ‘80s the winery pioneered
a new way of working together with their winegrowers. Previously
vineyards were contracted by the total tonnage of fruit they supplied;
the unfortunate side effect was to encourage growers to grow grapes
as prolifically as possible, diffusing the concentration of flavor
that Ken knew was essential for producing quality wine. Ken offered
to buy the output of a specific amount of acreage, regardless of
volume. By introducing contracts based on acreage rather than output,
winemaker and winegrower were both free to concentrate on growing
high-quality, ripe fruit, instead of being locked in a quality-versus-quantity
battle.
With this new cooperation the winery was able
to experiment more in the vineyard and developed some new approaches
in canopy management that further enhanced their grapes’ ripeness
and flavors. Dale West spoke casually about how much a difference
it made for a leaf to be directly exposed to sunlight versus being
shaded by one of its brothers, which bunch of grapes on a vine would
ripen first, or what spacing of spurs of the main vine would allow
maximum exposure to Oregon’s long summer sun. I felt like
I was taking a crash course in advanced vine pruning.
Dale backed up all his explanations with extensive
barrel tastings of the 2003 vintage. I’ll refrain from providing
tasting notes as these wines were not ready for the market, but
they already showed what a difference all these attentions in the
vineyard made in the wine. In addition to the 12 Single-Vineyard
Pinot Noirs, be sure to keep an eye out for their Freedom Hill Pinot
Blanc and their two Chardonnays from Celilo and Carabella Vineyard.
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Panther Creek Cellars
 Back
on schedule, my next stop was Panther Creek Cellars in McMinnville.
Jack Rovics Jr. showed me around the winery while winemaker Michael
Stevenson sat talking with Dick Shea of Shea Vineyards. Wines from
this vineyard were a recurring theme of my trip; it’s a 200-acre
site, and a great many winemakers are keen to work with Dick Shea
because of his great understanding of what winemakers are looking
for.
Like Ken Wright, Panther Creek doesn’t
own its own vineyards, but contracts acreage in several different
sites around the Willamette Valley; each taste was accompanied by
a look at a map to pinpoint the source of the grapes (again these
were barrel tastings, so I will omit my tasting notes). The single-vineyard
wines demonstrate again Pinot Noir’s capacity to reflect its
terroir in great detail. Panther Creek also makes a Chardonnay,
a Pinot Gris, and a Winemaker’ Cuvée Pinot Noir, which
blends grapes from the Willamette and Umpqua Valleys; the latter
is farther south in Oregon and provides brighter fruit flavors to
match the richness and structure of the Willamette Valley fruit.
The joker in their deck is a white wine made
from the Melón grape. This varietal is not only unusual for
Oregon, but for the U.S. in general. While there are a few plantings
in California, its home is the mouth of the Loire, where it is used
to make France’s classic seafood wine, Muscadet. The DePonte
Vineyard in the Red Hills grows the grapes for this wine; it’s
a fruitier manifestation than one typically finds in Muscadet, but
still makes a great match with white fish, oysters, or other shellfish.
When to Visit the Valley
Many of the smaller Willamette Valley wineries
– Panther Creek, for example, which only releases about 7,500
cases of wine annually – are not well set up for receiving
visitors. Panther Creek mostly accepts visitors by appointment,
with the exception of open tastings the second Saturday of each
month. A great way to experience a wider range of producers is to
visit over Memorial Day Weekend or Thanksgiving Weekend. These have
become the traditional open house days for Willamette Valley wineries,
and many wineries that don’t normally receive visitors open
to introduce new releases and unusual library wines. The town of
McMinnville is also home to the International Pinot Noir Celebration,
held each July at Linfield College. Originally conceived of as a
competition, the decision to instead opt for a festive, inclusive
atmosphere reflects the cooperative, sharing character of the Valley’s
winemakers. Wines and chefs converge on the town from all around
the world to share in Pinot Noir’s diversity. The Celebration
is truly international, and a great opportunity to see experience
the variety of ways Pinot Noir can grow in different locations around
the world.
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Domaine Drouhin Oregon
 Domaine
Drouhin Oregon, my next stop, represents international Pinot Noir
coming home to roost. In 1988 Robert Drouhin, of Maison Joseph Drouhin,
decided to set up shop in Oregon with his daughter Veronique Drouhin-Boss
as winemaker. Maison Joseph Drouinh was and is a well-established
producer based in Beaune, in the heart of Burgundy. He had been
keeping an eye on the area for two decades before investing, building
relationships with the Valley’s wine pioneers like David Lett
and David Adelsheim. It was the latter who recommended a 225-acre
site in the Red Hills of Dundee to Robert and Veronique in 1987;
the two didn’t wait long before making a go of it.
Even when plantings had just begun on the property,
Veronique began making wine, using grapes bought from local growers
and renting space at the Veritas winery. However, it was the plantings
– both the what and the how of the plantings – that
made people sit up and pay attention.
Until that time, two clones
of Pinot Noir had dominated Oregon’s vineyards, Pommard and
Wädenswil. Veronique quickly introduced several newer, Dijon
clones which she obtained from Oregon State University. Clonal variety
aids winemaking in a number of ways. Different clones suit different
sites – some favor cooler sites, some wetter sites, some denser
soils. Additionally, by blending wine from a variety of clones,
a winemaker can play one off the other to create a more complex,
multifaceted end-product. Rethinking clones is an ongoing part of
planting and replanting in Oregon; most winegrowers seem interested
in Pommard and a mix of Dijon clones, while Wädenswil seems
to be losing its fan base.
Clonal research goes far beyond Pinot Noir; one
of the most obvious clone-related improvements to my taste buds
has been in Oregon Chardonnay. Many of the earlier plantings used
clones from California that didn’t take to the cooler climate,
whereas newer clones introduced from France have proven able to
ripen more fully, thereby producing richer, more complex wines.
Meanwhile the introduction of more appropriate clones has been a
boon to winegrowers in even cooler climates like New York and Rhode
Island.
Oregon in the late ‘80s was one of the few
winemaking regions of the world that remained untouched by phylloxera,
a louse which destroys vines by eating away their roots; the cool
climate and the distance between individual vineyards slowed the
pest’s progress enough that winegrowers didn’t feel
a need to protect themselves against it. Robert Drouhin realized
that the louse was a very real threat and grafted their new clones
onto resistant rootstocks. When phylloxera materialized as a very
real presence in the 1990s, neighboring vineyards realized why Drouhin
had gone to the extra effort, and many vineyards in the area are
gradually replanting with grafted vines.
Arron Bell, the winery’s hospitality director,
led myself and a pair of other visitors on a tour through the state-of-the-art,
gravity-flow winery (No pumps are used; the grapes and must are
moved purely by the more gentle force of gravity). The winery has
a small staff, most of whom seem intent on making their own wine
someday. Most of the winery’s production goes into the Willamette
Valley Classique Pinot Noir, with individual barrels set aside for
the more exclusive Lauréne and Louise bottlings (named for
Veronique’s daughters). The 2000 Classique was ready to drink,
with notes of mushroom, earth, and raspberry topped by aromas of
rose petal. Some cherry also emerged on the palate, and the tannins
were light and silky. The 2001 I tasted would profit from more time
in the bottle; raspberry and beet aromas dominated, with some earth
and a spicy finish. It was still quite enjoyable, but I’m
certain that when the tannins settle down greater complexities will
emerge.
 The
2002 Arthur Chardonnay was a revelation; a rich blend of peach,
mineral, citrus, and vanilla aromas were complemented on the palate
by great acidity and a touch of smoke. The wine was medium-bodied
and very food friendly. Given the ubiquity of the grape, many people
are reluctant to get excited about new Chardonnay producers or regions,
but quite a few of the Chardonnay’s I tasted on my trip were
remarkable, most notably those of Drouhin, Ponzi, and Rex Hill.
They offer a sense of identity that is neither
Californian nor Burgundian, and stand well beside Oregon’s
signature white, Pinot Gris.
(for
more information on Domaine Drouhin Oregon, please see our StarVintner
feature on the winery)
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Patricia Green Cellars
I raced off to my last stop before catching my
flight back to New York. Patricia Green Cellars is another small,
plain operation like her nearby neighbors Bergström and Sineann.
Patty herself, however, was the most exuberant, enthusiastic, and
funny winemaker I met on my trip; no one could ever doubt that she
was having a great time making wine.
Patty led me through the winery, tasting from
different barrels; each barrel had an accompanying anecdote or joke,
sometimes relevant to the wine and sometimes not. Her summary of
the 2003 vintage was memorable and telling: “A big, voluptuous
Mardi Gras broad, decked out to party and letting it all hang out.”
She laughed as she described the wide-eyed, beaming face of a visiting
representative from the Cadus cooperage; while most wineries use
barrels from a number of different cooperages, Patty decided that
she liked what Cadus’ barrels did for her wine, so why mess
with anything else?
In addition to the barrel tastings we opened a
few of her current releases as well. The 2003 Sauvignon Blanc had
the cleansing, racy acidity one expects from the grape, with aromas
of mineral and peach. The 2002 Estate Pinot Noir was one of the
fruitier wines I had tasted on my trip, with lots of blackberry
and cherry backed by a light touch of earth and spice as well as
some white pepper on the finish. I especially liked the 2002 Quail
Hill Pinot Noir. The dark fruit flavors here were wrapped in rich
smoke and earth, and the wine had a rich, luscious roundness.
Patty had a sinister grin on her face as she opened
our last wine, a 2002 Hirsch Vineyard Pinot Noir. Just to see what
she could do with it, Patty arranged to buy some grapes from the
well-known Sonoma Coast vineyard; it is clearly a California wine.
She grinned as she recalled serving it blind at a tasting of her
wines; everyone knew it was somehow different from the rest of her
portfolio, but the brave soul who came out and mentioned the state
south of Oregon was booed down by their companions. Despite the
joke, it’s certainly a serious wine, lighter-bodied than her
Oregon wines with gamy aromas and notes of birch, black cherry,
and grilled sausage. I enjoyed it very much, although it did seem
strange to end my trip to Oregon with a Californian wine.
Patty seemed to personally know everyone I had
met on my trip, and talking with her brought home what a tight community
of winemakers this is. I realized I had been very lucky
to meet such a cross-section of winemakers during my trip. I had
visited Ponzi Vineyards, which stands alongside Adelsheim and Eyrie
Vineyards as one of the pioneers of the valley. These were the first
to show to the world how well suited the Willamette Valley was for
growing Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, and especially the notoriously difficult
Pinot Noir. Then, in the late 1980s, Domaine Drouhin Oregon and
Ken Wright Cellars arrived as part of the next generation. These
two, along with several other producers, shook up and rethought
the approach and techniques of the region’s wineries and especially
the vineyards.
Drouhin’s arrival in particular seems to
have been the catalyst for great improvements in quality and consistency
as winemakers gained a renewed insight into ripeness and concentration
of flavors. Finally a new wave of winemakers like Patty Green, Josh
Bergström, and Peter Rosback have taken advantage of Oregon’s
recent string of good vintages (’98 – ’03) to
strike out on their own. With them comes another change in the vineyards;
winemakers throughout the valley are looking at the big picture
and trying to ensure that not only will they be able to produce
great wines, but their children will be able to do so as well. What’s
more, it’s a beautiful countryside, and the growing interest
in sustainable viticulture definitely goes beyond preserving the
vines to preserving the environment as well.
I look forward to seeing the Willamette
Valley’s 2003s in the bottle; its big bones and high alcohol
stretch the typicity of Oregon Pinot Noir, but will certainly offer
an enjoyable side-trip. We can also look forward to an even deeper
understanding of the areas’s terroir; already in motion are
plans to subdivide the valley into several sub-appellations that
take into account the subtleties of the area’s soils and growing
conditions in more detail. The wines are already showing these differences,
so the time is ripe for more appellations to become official as
a useful guide for consumers. And if all that activity starts to
overwhelm, you can still take a break from it all with a pair of
Oregon’s famed microbrews and some roasted filberts, just
as I did to ease myself to sleep on my red-eye flight back home.
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Map of North Willamette
Valley
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