I am always amazed, more than anything else, that our wines get good scores from the critics. Not that I don’t think our wines are good – of course I most certainly do. It’s just that they are not made in a style that tends to garner top scores. The Scott Paul wines don’t scream or shout, rather they tend to be more understated and speak softly. The bigger, bolder wines, the ones that are more in-your-face, are the usual suspects at the top of the charts. The majority of wine writing in recent decades has tended to favor the louder end of the spectrum over balance and restraint. And I have no problem with that, it’s just the way it is. But it does make it all the more gratifying when our little wines sneak through the noise and pop up in the upper tier.

For a number of years in a row now, every one of our wines has scored 90 or above from every national critic that’s reviewed them, and our streak continues with the advance word we received yesterday from Wine Enthusiast. Our 2010 Audrey, Les Gourmandises and La Paulée will be rated 92, 91 & 90 respectively in Paul Gregutt’s reviews in the August issue. Getting a good score here or there is one thing, but doing it year after year, in challenging vintages and easy ones, makes me proud and happy. Proud of winemaker Kelley Fox, happy that our quest for elegance and balance is finding success on a consistent basis.

Thank you for supporting us throughout the years. I can’t believe we’re headed for our 15th harvest this fall! It’s been a tremendous ride so far – cant wait to see what the next 15 bring. Hang on…

***

Meanwhile in Burgundy and Champagne, our friends are having a very ‘Oregonian” springtime in the vineyards. Cold and wet. And late. Domaine Buisson-Charles in Meursault reports steady rain for 3+ weeks.  (They just launched an excellent new blog, btw.) Domaine Violot-Guillemard in Pommard emailed this morning to ask how we handled our cold, wet, late spring in 2010 & 2011. All of our producers in Champagne are lamenting the cold, the rain, and the slow start to the season. They’re about 3-4 weeks behind at this point, but of course we’ll likely see many twists and turns before the grapes are ready this fall. Maybe this year we’ll be early in Oregon and they’ll be late in Burgundy for a change.

Burgundy's Clos Vougeot in the morning fog...

What we need to cross our fingers and pray for is a normal-sized crop in Burgundy this year. After the three low-yielding years of 2010, 2011 & 2012, another small vintage could be the crippling blow for a number of producers who might not have the financial strength to survive. None of the producers in our portfolio are in jeopardy, but a number of their neighbors are, and I don’t want to see that happen to anyone. The life of a vigneron is tough enough even in the good times. Please join me in sending some dry, warm, sunny days to Burgundy and Champagne asap.

I leave for Burgundy in three weeks, and I’m getting excited for the annual Insider’s Tour that I lead for a group of our customers, as well as seeing all of our producers and catching up on the 2012s in barrel. Oh yeah, and the food. And a week of full-on hedonism with Le Pigeon Chef Gabe Rucker. Watch this space for all the stories, pictures, and incriminating evidence to come!

It would not be fair to say that our 2012 wines are better than expected, because we knew they were especially good from the moment the fruit arrived at the winery. Kelley Fox and I tasted through every lot in the cellar yesterday to get our first serious look at how the wines have evolved post-malolactic fermentation, and they are as excellent as expected, if not a notch even more exciting, if that’s possible. To say that we are jubilant would be an understatement!

From day one we’ve thought that the 2012s will be among the best Oregon has ever produced, possibly the best yet. It should certainly rank up there with 2008 and 2002 as the best vintages we’ve ever experienced. The wines are beautifully balanced, with alcohol levels in the mid-13s, rich mid-palate fruit that is just flat-out delicious, and they have the concentration and structure to age nicely for 10+ years yet they should drink beautifully on release. It just doesn’t get much better than that!

Each block of each of our vineyards performed very well in the tastings yesterday, with the standouts for me being Block 12 from Maresh and our new estate site Azana Vineyard, which shows a distinct mineral streak that absolutely thrilled me.

My best guess at this point is that we’ll arrive at four different cuvées for the 2012s – there will certainly be an Audrey, a La Paulée, and probably a single-vineyard bottling from Azana and another from Nysa. We’ll make the final decisions and blends in about three weeks, just before I leave for my next trip to  Burgundy. We’ll bottle these lovelies in August, and may release the first of them in the spring of 2014, a year or so from now. So now that I’ve got you all excited about them, please forget about them for a year or so. Thank-you!

Azana Vineyard, on the south slopes of Chehalem Mountain

Meanwhile, the 2013 season is off to a nice start here in Oregon, with this dry and warmer than usual spring pushing nice early growth in the vineyards, and everything is looking healthy and strong at this point. We could frankly use some rain over the next few weeks – our January through April this year has been the driest in a long time, and it appears we have a warm and dry summer headed our way. Flowering should be happening around June 15th-20th this year, putting us on schedule for a “normal” season, which would mean harvest around September 25th or thereabouts (all subject to change a few dozen times over the course of the season, bien sûr!). In Burgundy and Champagne, they’re having a very wet and cool spring, and things are running later than usual, at least 2-3 weeks behind at this point…

More here as it happens. And don’t forget to join us this weekend  - bring a friend Friday night to Scott Paul PDX for 2-for-1 tasting flights and a great introduction to the world of Scott Paul, and then Saturday here in Carlton it’s our annual pre-Memorial Day weekend Champagne extravaganza – yum!

The first of the 2011 red Burgundies have arrived, and they are just plain yummy. “Seductively delicious” to be exact, in the words of leading Burgundy authority Allen Meadows, aka Burghound.

Thierry Violot-Guillemard, harvest 2010 in Pommard

Several bottlings from two of our faves – Thierry Violot-Guillemard in Pommard and Domaine Huber-Verdereau in Volnay are here now and in stock, with the caveat that they are even more limited in supply than usual due to the low yields in 2011. We’ll be pouring some of these new goodies on Friday night in Portland and on Saturday in Carlton – don’t miss your chance to taste and stock up on these very accessible and amazingly affordable red Burgs this weekend…

The man, the myth, the legend - Thiébault Huber

Kudos to our friend Gabe Rucker of Portland’s Le Pigeon, winner of the James Beard Award yesterday as Best Chef Northwest! This is Gabe’s second Beard award – he won the prize for America’s Best Young Chef two years ago. Gabe is coming to rock Burgundy with us next month – stay tuned for all the decadent details and incriminating photos from our excursions in France…

The fridge from heaven...

I am still pumped from the great night we had at our Grower Champagne Master Class last Saturday night. We rocked it hard, with a dozen great bottles of farmer fizz – running the gamut from single-variety wines (100% Pinot Noir, 100% Pinot Meunier & 100% Chardonnay), to an exploration of the differences between the Marne and the Aube, to a study in dosage levels, to the two different methods of making Rosé Champagne, to the effects of malolactic fermentation, to a study of barrel-fermented base wines vs tank-fermented base wines, and an exploration of top vintages of the 2000s – a very good time was had by all. The next time you see us announce one of these intimate evenings, jump on it -we will, we will, rock you!

On the restaurant tip, we had a great dinner at Ava Genes in Portland last night – all the buzz is most definitely justified. Killer, fresh, creative, authentic Italian – we will definitely be back…

Beets, ricotta, walnuts at Ava Genes

In Vino Veritas – In Wine, the Truth. More specifically, in Pinot Veritas – because Pinot Noir, more than any other wine grape, does indeed tell the truth.

There’s a quote incorrectly attributed to me in Jordan Mackay’s book “Passion for Pinot” that says “Pinot Noir, more than anything, should tell the truth. And it does that very well. But you have to take a risk in order to hear the truth, and then you might not always get what you expect.” Our winemaker Kelley Fox actually said those words of wisdom, and truer words have never been spoken.

Pinot Noir tells the truth because it offers nowhere to hide. It will always tell you where it was grown, how it was grown, and how it was made into wine. It is the most transparent of all grape varieties, meaning that it shows its origins more distinctly and with greater precision than other grapes. Not only transparent in regard to origin, or terroir, Pinot also tells you what was done to it after the grapes arrived at the winery.

The truth, one cluster at a time...

In my experience, the best wines made from Pinot Noir tend to be the ones that have had the least “winemaking” imposed upon them, having had just enough human intervention and guidance to let the wine take its own natural course, to leave it to its own devices, so to speak. Sure, you can manipulate the hell out of it if you choose to (and many do, I’m sad to say). You can add doses of mega-purple or opti-red or gum arabic (actual products in common use in some wineries these days), you can bring in expensive high-tech machinery to do must concentration, reverse osmosis or cross-flow filtration and assorted other crimes against nature – but the finished product in your glass will tell you all about it if you care to listen closely. The Pinot Noir that seems impossibly dark, incredibly viscous and polished to a sheen like heavily lacquered furniture has stories to tell, for sure.

You can’t mask anything with Pinot Noir. Anything that is done to it shows. Basically, Pinot Noir does not let you get away with any bullshit. Maybe that’s why I’ve taken to the sport of running so passionately in the last few years. I’ve learned a lot on my journey to becoming a dedicated marathoner. For one thing, I’ve learned that running and Pinot Noir have a lot in common.

I’ll be at the starting line on Sunday for the Eugene Marathon, ready to crank out 26.2 miles along the streets of Eugene in my quest for a personal best. Over the course of my last few races, one thing has become abundantly clear – in the marathon, there’s nowhere to hide either. Your training, your fitness, and your mental preparation all show up very clearly and in no uncertain terms. You cannot bullshit the marathon – the truth will always reveal itself over the course of the 26.2.

In the marathon, as with Pinot Noir, you never really know what you’re going to get. You can have all the best-made plans and intentions, but ultimately the marathon, or the grape, has the final word. I would love to say that every year I’m going to make elegant and floral Pinot Noir at 12.9% alcohol with perfectly balanced acidity and fruit richness – but nature of course often has a different plan in mind. This I have learned over the past 14 vintages, seeing very clearly that what our idealistic goals are will not always be aligned with the reality of the given vintage. All we can do is try to capture the best of what nature brings us. It’s the same on the roads. It’s easy to say that I want to run “X” pace per mile and finish under a certain time limit – but that may not be the reality on the given day.

Whatever I end up running on Sunday will be the truth of what I was capable of running on Sunday. I know I am well prepared and ready to give it my best, but I’m not wed to any particular outcome. Making Pinot Noir since 1999 has made it very clear to me that any sense of “control” is strictly an illusion. May the universe align to bring us great growing conditions this summer, and to make my run light and joyful on Sunday. In Pinot, in the Marathon, Veritas.

In the past, a difficult and demanding season in the Burgundian vineyards used to lead to a lot of spotty wines. More and more that is no longer the case. The viticultural vigilance of the new generation of vignerons, sorting tables now in use nearly everywhere, and temperature-controlled fermentations now being the norm are leading to excellent wines from the more challenging vintages.

Case in point the lovely 2011s, the first of which are hitting our shores in the next few weeks. Here’s leading Burgundy authority Allen Meadows in the just released Burghound:

“The 2011s are not as classic as the 2010s but they are seductively delicious… Moreover, there is more than enough underlying terroir expression to satisfy even the most demanding burg geeks.”

I was very happily surprised and impressed with my tastings of over 300 2011s during my last tasting trip in November (as I reported on here last fall), and I concur with Allen. These are seductive, charming, utterly delicious Burgundies to enjoy over the medium term. I will be stashing a bunch in my cellar to drink at home.

As noted previously, 2011 was another vintage with significantly reduced quantities – so if you see something you want for your cellar I suggest you grab ‘em while you can. In most cases, there will not be additional quantities available. Watch this space for details on all the incoming 2011s as they arrive…

I am a runner, and I am a husband and a father. Tears well up in my eyes and a sick feeling churns in my stomach with every thought of the senseless tragedy in Boston yesterday. I think of the rush of joy I get in knowing that my family will be there along the course to cheer me on, and knowing that they’ll be waiting for me at the end. And then to think of a father nearing the finish of his herculean 26.2 mile effort, his family waiting at the finish line… In one instant, his 8-year old son dead, his daughter dismembered, his wife critically injured. It is simply too awful to imagine the reality. So much suffering, pain and agony for so many people. Lives and hearts that will surely never be the same.

My heart and prayers go out to everyone affected by this cruel and inhuman attack. I dedicated my run this morning to all the victims and their families. In 12 days I’ll be running the Eugene Marathon, with every stride I make dedicated to everyone in Boston. I am wearing my Portland Marathon finisher shirt at work today, in solidarity with all runners everywhere, as we join together in support.

We can’t let the bastards get us down. We must live each day fully, we must run on.

Ahh, spring, when a vintner’s thoughts turn to bud-break – and all of the things that could go wrong between now and flowering!

We’ve been having a warm-ish start to spring here in the Willamette Valley, with a couple of days in the 70s last week. People were out in their shorts and flip-flops all over Portland on Easter weekend, but of course it looks like we’re headed back to a run of rainy days in the 50s for a while. These warm days have definitely jump-started some life in the vines already. We could be headed for a semi “normal” bud-break in the vicinity of April 15th or so – which would be quite welcome after the mid-May bud-breaks we’ve seen way too much of in recent years.

Blue skies over Ribbon Ridge Vyd.

But then of course with bud-break in mid-April we’re exposed to a lot of possible rain, wind and cool weather up through flowering in mid-June, so it could all still hit the fan at any time! Welcome to the world of the vigneron, where potential disaster looms around every new day, it seems.

I gave up worrying about things beyond my control a while ago, but I do sometimes wonder why we subject ourselves to the vagaries of a global climate gone nuts. At the end of the day, we’re still in one of the two best places on the planet to grow Pinot Noir and there’s nowhere else I’d really want to be. (OK, maybe a nice stone farmhouse in the Burgundy hills, but we digress…)

I’m way stoked to have the first shipment in from the two newest additions to our portfolio – Champagne Laherte Frères, and Caroline Parent in Burgundy. I love these wines, love these people, and can’t wait to share them all with you. Our Burgundy and Champagne Club members will have first shot to taste these new treats at the upcoming club pick-up parties. These tastings are open to all even if you’re not yet a member of the clubs – so please plan to join us for some stellar new Burgs and Bubbles.

The Champagne affair happens first – Friday April 12th in Portland from 5-8p, and Saturday April 13th in Carlton from 12n-5p. Then the following weekend it’s the Burgundy extravaganza – Friday April 19th in Portland from 5-8p, and Saturday April 20th in Carlton 12n-5p.

And then I’ll be in my final week of training for the Eugene Marathon on April 28th. I’ve got one more week of heavy mileage before I start to taper and give the body a chance to restore and build up its energy stores before the 26.2 mile challenge. In my last few, I’ve found that the marathon is largely a mental issue. After 20 miles, it’s really just a matter of how much one is willing to suffer, or how badly do you really want it. Training has been going really well this season – wish me luck!

Inspiration - for running, and for life...

Back from a quick trip to Champagne, and happy to report that everything I tasted over the last week from our producers was more than to my liking. When you work with diligent, focused, quality-oriented producers – the results are amazingly consistent. What blows my mind is the huge disparity between the good and the less-than-good. At a couple of bistros and wine bars last week the choices were limited to negociant or cooperative brands, or some of the lesser growers – and the gulf in quality between these wines and those of the top producers is night and day.

I remind folks all the time – there are 7,500 small growers in Champagne, and maybe 2-3% of them are really rockin’ it. The other 97-98% are all over the map, running the gamut from OK to downright dismal. Fortunately, most of those wines never make their way into the US, but as the Grower Champagne market continues to grow here, I expect more of the “lesser” wines will start to show up.

I am over-the-moon excited to introduce you to the fabulous wines of Champagne Laherte Frères, one of the rising rock stars of Grower Champagne. Thierry Laherte and his son Aurélien are my pick to be the next producers to be anointed with greatness in Champagne. They, like nearly every one of my producers I spoke with last week, credit Anselme Selosse of Champagne Jacques Selosse for pioneering the quality revolution in Grower Champagne nearly 30 years ago, and showing the world that Champagne could indeed be a wine of terroir – not just the generic blended wine that has been championed by the industrial negociant houses for the last 200+ years.

With Selosse clearly the 800-lb. gorilla in the Grower Champagne game, a number of his students and disciples have gone on to notoriety of their own, with Cédric Bouchard perhaps the most prominent in terms of recognition and notoriety. After him, the field is wide open – and I fully expect that Laherte Frères will soon occupy the next slot in the firmament of superstar growers. Lest you think this is blatant commerciality, let me say that I kind of hope that these wines don’t sell too quickly, as I will happily drink them all myself!

Caroline Parent

We are also welcoming another new producer to the Scott Paul portfolio – Burgundy’s own Caroline Parent. Caroline is Burgundian royalty of sorts – the daughter of two star vignerons – her mom is Anne-Françoise Gros of Vosne-Romanée, and her dad is François Parent of Pommard. Caroline’s own new label is just rolling out, and the wines are just plain yummy. Watch this space and your email for info on upcoming tastings and your chance to check these beauties out…

Huge congrats to our star Portland chefs who just nabbed the James Beard nominations for this year’s Best Chef Northwest – Gabe Rucker at Le Pigeon, Naomi Pommeroy at Beast, and Cathy Whims at Nostrana. Bravo! And kudos to Ken Forkish of Ken’s Artisan Bakery on his nomination as best pastry chef US, and for his cookbook Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast. I’m so proud to live here and be a part of one of America’s most vibrant food and wine cultures!

Culinary rock star Gabe Rucker, the baddest bird in the kitchen...

I’m writing from an airport hotel at Charles de Gaulle in Paris, as I have a 7am flight out in the morning. Man am I glad I arrived here when I did this afternoon at 6pm – I just went downstairs to get a bottle of water and saw a line of about 250 unhappy people snaking through the lobby waiting to check in. It looked like a line for the Space Mountain ride at Disneyworld. I don’t know if it was a cancelled flight that plunked them all here in the lobby at the same time, but what a mess…

Entry to the restaurant at Le Marius in Les Riceys (which I don't recommend, btw)

I wrapped up this quick trip with a great visit to Jérôme Coessens in Ville-sur-Arce this morning – just a few villages away from Les Riceys where I spent last night, and one of the most exciting parts of the Aube in terms of the wines that are being produced here.

Especially chez Coessens. From his 5.5 single-vineyard parcel he is making extraordinary wines. He is on the same terroir as Grand Cru Chablis, but he’s growing Pinot Noir for sparkilng wine. Fascinating stuff. As with all serious Grower Champagne producers, he thinks of them as wines, first and foremost. Complex and fascinating wines that just happen to have bubbles. There were three new cuvées to taste since my last visit – an intensely delicious Brut Nature based on the 2009 harvest and disgorged just weeks ago on February 12th. It was powerful, long and captivating, and will be released in a few months.

His 2006 Millésime (Jérôme’s first vintage) is an Extra-Brut, with a dosage of 4.5 grams. I loved the raspberry and cocoa notes – it’s a rich wine, but one that carries itself with great elegance. Yum. And then his new Rosé, also from 2009 fruit, redolent of wild strawberries, black cherries and cassis – an intense rosé that begs for roast chicken with morels and truffles…

We also tasted a few of his vins clairs from the 2012 harvest – two very different examples. The one from his 1975 plantings was very floral and ethereal, while the base wine from the 1970 vines was way at the other end of the scale, bigger and richer with more weight and power and density. It will be fascinating to see what these do when combined for future bottlings…

It’s a small world here in Champagne. There are some 7,500 small producers, but there often seem to be connections and links. Jérôme Coessens did his internship at Pierre Brigandat, whose son Bertrand Brigandat went to viti-vini school with Nicolas Chaauvet from Marc Chauvet. And they have the same importer in Italy, it seems. Le monde est petit…

Serious home-cooking in Champagne...

Jérôme and his wife Valérie kindly invited me to their home in the village of Fouchères for lunch, where I was treated to a fabulous multi-course meal that blew away my restaurant dinner from the night before. The highlight was the roasted veal medallion with seared foie gras and morels. Absolutely delicious stuff.

This, then, is my final dispatch from this side of the pond. I’m off to Amsterdam in the morning to grab the direct flight back to Portland, and look forward to seeing you at the winery in Carlton or our tasting room in Portland soon. Cheers!

Dinner with the Lahertes last night was at Hostellerie La Briqueterie in Vinay, a tiny hamlet just at the bottom the hill from Chavot. It’s a Relais & Chateaux resort, very elegant and top-of-the-line across the board. They have 1 Michelin star for the restaurant, and it is well deserved. I purposely left the camera in my coat pocket so as not to be the ugly American shooting pictures of each dish, but I really wish I had taken some pics – each plate was a stunning presentation, and the flavors were complex and flat-out delicious. My favorite dish was the pan-roasted venison loin, with mushroom crust, avocado puree prepared like a polenta, and redcurrant jus. Yum indeed.

Shortly into dinner I realized that noted importer Terry Thiese was dining at the next table with one of his producers. Terry was the first to ever import Grower Champagne to the US, and has worked tirelessly for many years to develop the market, so it is certainly thanks to M. Thiese that I’m here doing what I do. Donc, merci Terry! (He’ll be in Oregon at IPNC this summer, heading up one of the main seminars at this year’s event.)

Snow in the vines on the Chavot hillside

Getting back up the hill to Chavot after dinner was quite an adventure. At one point we thought we’d have to get out and walk, or perhaps just slide back down the icy hill and stay at the hotel – but Thiery Laherte masterfully guided his Renault up the steep and slippery slope and got us all home in one piece.

This morning I hit the Autoroute and headed south to the Aube – the southernmost part of Champagne, and a full two hour drive from Epernay. I pulled into the village of Gyé-sur-Seine at 11 and into the driveway of Champagne Vincent Couche, one of the most exciting and dynamic young vignerons in all of France. He’s one of the handful practicing biodynamic viticulture in Champagne – where nay-sayers have always said it can’t be done. Too cold, too wet, too hard – it doesn’t seem to stop Vincent, who is focused and driven like few people I’ve ever seen. He lives his passion 110% every minute of the day, and it shows in his wines.

Over lunch in his little tasting salon we tasted through eight different Champagnes in bottle, including the new cuvée Chloé, his first certified biodynamic wine, which will be released this summer. Chloé is 66% Pinot Noir & 34% Chardonnay, 50% of the wine was barrel fermented, and it’s a Brut Nature – zero sugar was added at disgorgement last fall. Also, no sulfur was ever added to the wine throughout the process. In other words –  it’s everything they say that can’t be done in Champagne – and he’s done it in stellar fashion. It’s a rich and vinous Champagne, deep and long and complex, and I can’t wait to get our hands on some. I’d put it up there with the wines of Georges Laval in Cumières, it’s that good. Wow.

Then it was on to the even tinier hamlet of Channes, the furthest outpost of Champagne (the Chablis appellation basically starts just down the road), to visit Bertrand Brigandat, one of my favorite characters in Champagne. He took over Champagne Pierre Brigandat from his father in 2001, and has being developing his talent and the wines year after year. We tasted his four new cuvées, the NV Brut (100% Pinot Noir, based on the 2010 harvest), the Dentelles & Crinolines (an Extra-Brut Pinot-Chard blend that is essentially his showcase wine) -  only 1.6 grams per liter of dosage, and it is a rich, pure, powerful Champagne that totally blew my mind.

Then it was his 2005 Millésime – he rarely makes a vintage wine, but this bottle, disgorged in September with the same 1.6 gram dosage, was a revelation. Peaches, apricots, red pinot berry fruit – just plain delicious. His new cuvée of the Rosé was also strong – deeper in color than the previous version, it’s 1005 Pinot Noir that he let macerate for about 3 days. I want this wine with a medium-rare veal chop and morel mushrooms. Oh, man…

I then scooted over to the village of Les Riceys, where I am now settled in to a cozy little hotel in an old stone building next to the church, catching up on email and this blog, and getting ready for what promises to be a nice but simple dinner in the restaurant in the cellar here. Remind me to run a an extra kilometer or two tomorrow…