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After all of the unusual twists and turns in the vineyards throughout the growing season, 2005 looks to be perhaps one of the great Oregon vintages of all time. The September weather, which always makes or breaks the quality of the year in Oregon, was virtually perfect. A seemingly endless string of sunny, warm days (75-80 highs) and dry cool nights (35-44 lows) have allowed the fruit to ripen fully and slowly, building layers of flavor while keeping the lovely acidity. Check in on our winemaker’s blog regularly for more details…
Welcome Winemaker Kelley Fox
You may recall the name of talented winemaker Kelley Fox, who worked part-time for us during the 2003 harvest. Kelley has made wine with Hamacher, Tori Mor, and Eyrie here in Oregon, and has experience at New Zealand’s Gibbston Valley as well. She is experienced, educated, talented, and crazy enough to join the Scott Paul team fulltime! Kelley & Scott will work together on the wines as a team, with Kelley in charge of all day-to-day cellar and winemaking operations. Her strong technical background and tremendous palate are a perfect complement to Scott’s purely hedonistic approach.
Crush Crew 2005
 We were blessed with an amazing crew again this year. With Kelley (at left) at the helm, we were also joined by Kiwi winemaker extraordinaire Jeremy Brown (seated next to Kelley) – who I previously had the pleasure of working with for the 2002 & 2003 vintages at Domaine Drouhin. Let me publicly state that I don’t ever want to make wine again without these two on our side – they are quite simply the best. Our special guest crush crew this year came via Atlanta’s premiere eatery - Restaurant Eugene - with Proprietress Gina Hopkins (right) and resident wine guru Emily Freiler (next to Gina) joining us for sorting and punch-down duties, vineyard sampling, and fabulous comraderie, not to mention way too much great wine! Cheers to all…
 The 2004 Wines
The Harvest
The 2004 growing season defied categorization. It was a year of yin and yang, with a lot of things happening at unusual times, and throughout the year we really never knew what to expect from one day to the next. Spring started a week to ten days later than average, and early on it appeared we were headed for an October harvest. Then ill-timed cool and damp weather hit right at flowering in June, knocking off nearly half of the potential crop. This was followed by a hotter than average July and August, and timing-wise it looked like we were headed for an early harvest with a tiny crop, maybe as soon as the first week of September.
 It cooled off a bit in early September, but some of the younger vines were ripe and ready pretty early. We picked the Shea young vines on Sept. 9 th and one block of Stoller on Sept. 10 th – but nothing else appeared anywhere near ready at that point. Then came the rain.
Nine consecutive days of rain, but most of them under a tenth of an inch per day. Mercifully this was just enough rain to help relieve some of the drought-stress pressure on the vines. The sun returned on the 20 th, and then we picked all of Ribbon Ridge and the rest of Stoller on the 25 th, Three Sisters on the 28 th, and Shea block 21 on the 29 th. All of the fruit was ripe and healthy, in the 24-24.5 Brix range, with good acidity and nice flavors. It wasn’t until the last of the fruit was in a fermenter that we realized how truly little fruit there was.
From acreage that would normally produce 34-36 tons, even under our normally miniscule 2-tons/acre pruning & thinning regime, we harvested a total of 19 tons. The wines are gorgeous, perhaps our best yet. There are simply not enough of them.
 These wines are scheduled for release in April 2006...
2004 La Paulée Pinot Noir – $38
832 6-packs produced
For La Paulée, we always look to create the blend that has the most potential for complexity, the wine that will be the most complete in the long run, a wine that is seductive in its youth but will also reward patient cellaring. Wine was selected barrel by barrel for this bottling, sourcing nine different lots from four separate vineyards. The final breakdown is 52% Shea (Block 21 and young vines), 28% Stoller (Blocks 21 and 32), 10% Three Sisters, and 10% Ribbon Ridge.
The wine is exceedingly well balanced – bright clear dark-ruby red with aromas of fresh raspberries and black cherries, lushly-textured ripe black raspberries on the palate, and a mouth-filling finish that lingers on longer than you suspect it might. The wine was aged for10 months in 10% new French Oak, 40% once-used and 50% twice-used French Oak, and was bottled on August 30 th, 2005.
2004 Audrey Pinot Noir – $50
264 6-packs produced
Six barrels were selected this year to proudly wear the title of Audrey – the silkiest, most seductive, purest representation of elegance and finesse of the vintage. Three barrels from Three Sisters Vineyard (own-rooted Pommard & Wadenswil clones planted in 1988), Two barrels from Stoller Vineyard Block 21 (1997 plantings of Pommard clone on 3309 rootstock) and one barrel of Shea Block 21 (own-rooted Pommard from 1989.)
The wine is sheer elegance – Grace Kelly in a slim velvet gown, set off by exquisite, understated diamonds of the finest quality. The perfume is seductive and intoxicating, the flavors are delineated and intense. Two of the six barrels were new. The wine was raised in our cellars for 10 months, and bottled on August 31 st, 2005.
Yes, we’re screwed!
The 2004 wines were all bottled under the Stelvin screw-cap closure, making us one of the first to use this closure 100% for our full line of ultra-premium wines. Why screw-caps? The simple answer – because it is clearly the best thing one can do for the wine, and for those consuming the wine. The most recent research concludes that this closure not only provides the most consistency from bottle to bottle, it allows the wine to become more complex, nuanced, and aromatically layered over many years in the bottle – which is truly the magic of authentic, pure, unmanipulated Pinot Noir. For the long answer – see our detailed discussion at the end of this newsletter…
 Our New Home!!!
In November, construction began for our new winery & tasting room. We have purchased two historic buildings in the town of Carlton – one a former grainery, the other an old hardware & feed store – both built circa 1915. By next year they will have (hopefully!) been magically transformed into a 6,000-case capacity winery and tasting room/office complex.
 After having made our wines over the years at Flowers, Laird Family Estate, Tandem, Domaine Drouhin, and the Carlton Winemakers Studio, it will be wonderful to finally have our own facility. Architect Ernie Munch (Domaine Drouhin, Domaine Serene & many others) has designed the facilities for us, and our intention is to open the tasting room for Memorial Day weekend 2006, and to be in the winery in time for harvest in September. Until then we remain happily entrenched at the Carlton Winemakers Studio, where you’re welcome in the tasting room 11-5 daily.
Screw This, part 2…
The following is cribbed directly from New Zealand’s Felton Road, an early proponent of the Stelvin closure, and one of the New World’s leading Pinot Noir producers. Here then, with their permission, a brief discussion…
Why put something used on Coca-cola onto fine wine?
The Screwcap on a wine bottle isn't the same as those used for other food and drink: it has been specially developed for protecting fine wine over an extended aging period in the bottle. Specifically, the part in contact with the wine, (made from a thin Teflon film covering pure tin) is designed to stay stable and flavor neutral for decades.
Why are they called STELVIN?
They were originally developed in Australia, but the screwcap we use is made for us by Pechiney in France. Pechiney is one of the world’s leading designers of wine bottle closures and they also make capsules for fine wine (they made all of the Scott Paul capsules previously.) Their brand name for the screwcap they make is Stelvin (vin as in wine and Stel as in…who knows?). They are also sometimes known as ROTP, or Roll On Tamper Proof.
Is cork taint that bad a problem?
In a word, Yes. All the serious research is coming up with about the same figure: i.e. at least 5% of wine closed in cork suffers from cork taint. It could be as high as 12%. Lower levels of cork taint are the most unpleasant in that they spoil the personality of the wine subtly, but it takes an expert to identify it as corked: most people just don’t think the wine is very nice. Badly corked wine is easy to spot, but somewhat rarer.
Why don't the cork manufacturers do something about it?
They’re trying and have been for many years now. The principle chemical causing the problem: 2-4-6 Trichloranisole, is almost unbelievably tasty: you would easily be able to taste one drop of it dissolved in 50,000 litres of water! So the amounts they are trying to eliminate are unimaginably low: they need to get under 2 parts per trillion (that’s a thousand million), before the problem is solved, and many people say they need to be below 1 part per trillion. There are new processes which appear to be successful in eliminating cork taint from compound wine corks made from cork flour, though it will take some years to get these processes into mass production.
If it happens, will you go back to corks?
That is very unlikely, because even without cork taint, screwcap wine tastes noticeably better. The first thing you notice if you compare the same aromatic wine in cork and screwcap bottles is that you can actually taste the cork in the wine! Aside from the cork taste, wines age more gracefully in screwcap, holding their aromatics while developing complexity. There have been a number of comparative tastings now, where distinguished tasting panels have compared the same wines in cork and screwcap at various points in their development, (there are library stocks of many wines in screwcaps going back more than 20 years).
In every single tasting, the majority vote has been heavily for screwcap.
Not for REDS surely?
A few months ago, in Bordeaux, a group of very senior tasters (people like Michel Rolland, the legendary Bordeaux winemaker), did comparative tastings of many reds in screwcap and cork. The oldest wine was a 1983 Kanonkop, from South Africa. Not a single red wine in the tasting was preferred by the tasting panel in its cork version. In most cases the preference for Stelvin wine was considerable.
Don't wines need a cork that "breathes" to age properly?
Quite how this myth has arisen is a mystery. Good, flawless corks do not breathe anyway, and the entry of oxygen into the bottle is unnecessary and potentially very harmful.
Quote Professor Emile Peynaud of Bordeaux: “it is the opposite of oxidation, a process of reduction, or asphyxia by which wine develops in the bottle” or Professor Pascal Ribéreau-Gayon: “Reactions that take place in bottled wine do not require oxygen”.
 Is this just a new world trend?
Not any more. Domaine Laroche in Chablis is using screwcaps to bottle some of their production of white Burgundy, right up to Grand Cru level. Paul Blanck in Alsace is doing the same. The highly esteemed Patrice Rion in Burgundy has also joined up.
This year will see some Bordeaux producers joining the trend, the first time the closures have been used in Bordeaux since 1969, when Chateau Haut Brion first tried them, (with some success, we understand).
The latest Reviews…
| Burghound.com |
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"...Burgundian style wines that celebrate the ripe fruit of Oregon yet maintain the balance and elegance of Pinot. These are lovely wines, indeed almost understated compared to many, and they complement food very well…”
Allen Meadows November 2005
2003 Audrey - 91pts (Highest score of the year)
2003 La Paulée - 90pts (2nd highest score of the year) |
| Wine Spectator |
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| 2003 La Paulée |
OUTSTANDING - 90 pts |
"Ripe, broad and open, with firm tannins around a generous core of peppery, earthy and smoky cherry and berry flavors..."
Harvey Steiman November, 2004 |
| 2003 Audrey |
OUTSTANDING - 90 pts |
“Open-textured and generous with its plum and currant flavors, layering lovely floral and spice notes around the fruit as the flavors persist on the finish.”
Harvey Steiman May 2005
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| Garagiste.com |
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“Scott Paul should be discovered and placed into the top rung of domestic Pinot Noir producers. The wine is better than most domestic examples at 2-3 times the price.”
Jon Rimmerman January 2005 |
Thanks for joining us on our amazing journey!
Cheers – Martha & Scott Wright, proprietors
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