Join us in Carlton on Saturday November 5th from Noon-5pm, for your first chance to taste and order Futures of our 2010 Audrey Pinot Noir.

The wine we call Audrey is simply our selection of the best-of-the-best of the vintage – our favorite few barrels from our oldest vines in the Dundee Hills. From the 2010 vintage we selected seven barrels, and bottled a total of just 171 cases. Audrey has been among Oregon’s highest scoring wines year after year, and the 2010 version stands with best we’ve made.

2010 was a year of extremely low yields in the vineyards – nature provided us with a very small crop due to cool temperatures and windy conditions during flowering that spring. Then, a change in the jet-stream over Alaska changed the migratory patterns of birds in the fall, bringing unprecedented numbers of hungry birds to the Willamette Valley just as our tiny crop was reaching ripeness. The birds attacked the vines and gobbled up a good portion of the small crop, leaving us with less than half of what we would typically produce.

That said, it was a lovely vintage in terms of wine quality, and the wines are pure, precise and concentrated. Above all, it’s a vintage of great elegance and finesse, the hallmarks of everything we believe great Oregon Pinot Noir can and should be.

Only 100 6-packs of the 2010 Audrey are available for sale as Futures. Futures are sold in 6-bottle increments only, at the discounted price of $49 per bottle. Pricing reverts to the regular retail price of $69 upon release, which is scheduled for April 2012.

Futures orders will be accepted throughout the month of November, and the 2010 Audrey will be open for tasting every Saturday in November here in our tasting room in Carlton. We look forward to seeing you here!

Well, it was the ultimate rollercoaster ride. When the ride was over, it turned out to one hell of a great ride after all, as scary as some of the steep hills and blind corners may have been at times.

2011 was truly the most bizarre growing season we’ve ever witnessed. Bud-break and flowering were over four weeks late due to a record cool and wet “spring”, if you can call it that. “Summer” didn’t arrive until late July. I remember leaving for France on June 14th and it being grey, cool, rainy, and 55 degrees. We returned on July 11th, and it was still grey, cool, rainy, and 55 degrees. What passed for summer lasted about 3-4 weeks at most, with only a handful of days over 90 degrees in all.

We were still four weeks behind when it started looking very much like fall in early September. This was not good, as we knew we still needed 7-8 weeks to get the grapes ripe, and that would put us at the end of October for harvest. Everybody knows that the rains hit Oregon in October, and that sometimes when they start they never stop. The prognosis was not good.

Early September - still plenty of green berries...

In late September it started to rain. To put it delicately, Oh shit. But then it stopped. Oh yes! During the rain I was convinced that our goose was cooked. When it stopped, I started to believe that we just might pull this one off after all.

And we did. Our butt was ultimately saved by three weeks of cool but dry days in October, allowing the grapes time to ripen up enough to make some beautiful wines. It was not quite the miracle of 2008, but miraculous enough. We managed to eek out just enough sunlight and warmth to get the grapes in shape, and we managed to avoid the bulk of the rot and mildew issues that plagued some sites here in the valley. We clearly dodged a major bullet.

Fermentation underway - the "Cherry Mousse" stage...

Harvest began for us on October 23rd, our latest start ever, with 10 lovely tons from our blocks of Ribbon Ridge Vyd. Ripeness here, as at all of our other sites, was in a nice state, allowing us to make wines that will finish up at around 12.5% alcohol – a beautiful level for our style of Pinot Noir. NOTE – this will not be a vintage for those who prefer Pinot Noir that masquerades as Syrah. This will be a pure, terroir-driven PINOT vintage – which makes us very happy indeed.

We continued on with Azana – our new estate vineyard, on the 26th. As reported here previously, the birds had a more successful harvest there than we did. The 1.3 tons we did manage to keep out of their beaks was in good shape and tasted delicious. In the fermenter now it is perfumed and flat-out intoxicating. Unfortunately we cannot bottle it on its own this year – we’d have to charge about $150 a bottle to break even, I’m afraid. But it will likely go into the 2011 La Paulée bottling – we’ll know for sure in about a year from now…

Maresh Block 12, happily fermenting

Next up was our three acres of Nysa Vyd. in the Dundee Hills on the 28th. The fruit was really clean and healthy, and the flavors delightfully bright. Last to ripen up, as always, were are blocks of Maresh Vyd., where we picked our old-vine acreage in two passes on the 31st and then on Nov. 2nd. We have never picked in the month of November. Based on my deeply frozen fingers on the sorting line the night of the 2nd, I hope never to again!

All that said, Kelley and I feel that this may end up as one of our better vintages, which we never would have predicted even weeks ago. Tasting through each of the lots shows, already at this early stage, a precision of flavors and a bright but underlying minerality. If we continue to luck out, we’re going to have some beauties to bottle in a year’s time.

It’s worth noting that this has been a hard one in the winery on terms of logistics, with the bulk of the fruit coming in in just a few days – and working in arctic conditions these past few days. Grateful appreciation and kudos to winemaker extraordinaire Kelley Fox and her crew on a job exceedingly well done.

*****

On another matter entirely, all the work and stress pays off when the wines get some nice national attention! We are honored to have received another round of top scores from Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate. We don’t make wines for scores, and in fact our understated style tends to run counter to what often gets the big scores these days. We are always rather surprised and certainly thrilled when we do get nice reviews from the major critics.

Our 2009s were lauded across the board:

91 Pts for the La Paulée “Velvety textured, elegant, impeccably balanced…” (to be released in spring 2012)

93 Pts for the Dix “Round, rich, nicely proportioned, already complex and suave…” ( $40 – AVAILABLE NOW)

94 Pts for the Audrey “Sexy, exotic, floral, satin-like texture, succulent flavors, exceptional length. Will evoke moans of ecstasy over the next 8-10 years. One of the stars of the vintage.” (SOLD-OUT. However, the equally stunning 2010 is available as FUTURES now!)

Our thanks to Dr. Jay Miller, who reviews Oregon Wines for The Wine Advocate – we’re glad he likes our stuff. Most importantly, we make the wines for you, our customers, and we thank you immensely for your continued support!

Do you ever think about the fact that, once you pop the cork on a bottle of Champagne, you could serve it along with a piece of buttered toast and it would still be the height of elegance?  This is but one of the charms of Champagne.  While time-intensive and capital-intensive for its producers, it is EASY for the rest of us.  Here’s the best part…it’s ready to drink — always!  If the producer released it, it is perfectly ready to drink now.  No guesswork or cellaring required.  Easy.

I want Champagne with my turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving.  I want to sip Champagne and clink glasses while we trim the tree and listen to Harry Connick Jr’s and Rebirth Brass Band’s Christmas albums.  I don’t know how you could celebrate the return of light (Solstice) without “liquid light in a glass” — Champagne!  We’ll be drinking Champagne when we ring in the New Year and when we toast the Superbowl winners.  We’ll be drinking Champagne alongside a meal of my mother-in-law’s Swedish Meatballs, or a bowl of clam chowder.

I feel blessed when I get to pour a flight of grower Champagne for visitors in our tasting room because it makes people happy…I mean…really happy.  Grower Champagnes are made in small quantities by small family producers, all from their own vineyards, most often organic vineyards, resulting in personality-driven, terroir-driven, unique Champagnes.  And they cost less than most mass-produced big house Champagnes!

When we want to give a gift that is thoroughly unique AND will delight, it’s hard to think of something that better fits the bill than grower Champagne.  That’s EASY.  Here are recipes for Cheese Puffs and Smoked Trout Spread that I like to serve with Champagne.  Or try the simple buttered toast idea!  Cheers!