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 The
first seeds for Scott Paul Wines were sown at my family dinner table
in Chicago one night in 1969. A bottle of '59 La Tache and a '61
Krug were involved, as I recall. Somehow at the age of fifteen I
was struck that these wines were transcendentally divine, and I
knew somewhere in the back of my mind that I wanted to be a part
of the magic and alchemy that could produce such wondrous things.
I got sidetracked (for about thirty years or so) by a career in broadcasting and the music industry. I finally came to my senses in late 1998, left the record business and L.A. behind, and convinced my wife Martha to move our life to northern California to pursue the dream.
It was Martha who came up with the name "Scott Paul" for the label (also credit to my parents - Scott and Paul are my first and middle names.) We settled in Yountville in the Napa Valley at the beginning of 1999, and somehow by harvest that year we had grapes and a place to make them into wine. With encouragement and invaluable assistance from winemaking guru Greg LaFollette, we crushed a few tons of fruit and made a few hundred cases of wine that year, and Scott Paul was born.
We were thrilled. The wines were really quite nice. We had sourced some amazing fruit from the famed Pisoni Vineyard in Monterey Country and the Kent Ritchie Vineyard in the Russian River Valley, and had managed to not screw it up too bad.
Even more amazingly, we started to get some good word of mouth, some high profile restaurant placements around the country, and people actually bought our wines! Wow, this was really working.
Only one problem - we were Pinot people living in Cabernet country. Our neighbors were Screaming Eagle, Colgin and Harlan, but our mind-set was Romanée-Conti, LeRoy, and Lafon. At the same time, the '98 Pinot Noirs from Oregon were seductively calling out to me like an ancient siren, luring me with their incredible elegance, finesse, and beautifully complex flavors and aromas. It was a call I ultimately found irresistible.
So, we de-camped one more time (with the understanding that if I ever wanted to move again I'd be moving alone) - this time with baby Pirrie in tow - who was all of seven months when we took off for Oregon in March of 2001.
I have spent the last two and a half years relentlessly sourcing the best Pinot Noir fruit in the Willamette Valley (not to mention taking over the post of General Manager at Domaine Drouhin Oregon just five months after we got here.) It's been a busy and amazingly productive time. At times it seemed as if the Oregon incarnation of Scott Paul was taking on a life of its own. Vineyard contracts began falling into place that we had never thought would have been possible. The opportunity to move into the Carlton Winemakers Studio materialized. A brilliant young enologist named Kelley Fox was available to join our team as our secret weapon in the cellar. In short, some things are simply meant to be, and you can't stand in their way…
So, it was not an easy decision to give up the Pisoni and Ritchie fruit. However, the decision really seemed to make itself. As of the 2002 harvest, Scott Paul became a 100% Oregon Pinot Noir winery, and shall remain as such for the rest of its natural life. (Although we wouldn't pass on the opportunity to make some Musigny or Chambolle "Les Amoureuses", should the opportunity ever arise! We won't be holding our breath…)
 Our
vineyards are a winemaker's dream
come true. Shea. Stoller.
Archery Summit. Ribbon
Ridge. Others that contractually we're not allowed to name.
A true who's who of the top vineyard sites in the Willamette Valley.
We've locked up blocks that we're excited about working with for
many years to come. We have total control of the viticultural practices
in each of our vineyards. We control yields, and keep them microscopically
low. We'll ultimately add more vineyards when fruit that fits becomes
available. And we may even plant that magical/mythical "perfect"
5-acre plot one of these years…
It has been our intention from day one to always stay small enough that I can keep my nose in every barrel and truly handcraft our wines. Every winemaker has a different idea of where that production level is, but for us it will still be tiny - maybe 3,000 cases when we complete our growth. Rather than focus on single-vineyard wines, we have decided to produce two separate cuvées of Pinot Noir from the 2002 vintage, which yielded a total of just under 750 cases…
La Paulée
A selection of the best lots each vintage,
La Paulée will be made in very limited quantities.
 Every
year in the cellar there are certain lots of wine that simply jump
out at you with their intensity of flavors, multiple layers of complexity,
and superior length. These are the lots that will comprise the La
Paulée bottling. Rather than pre-determine which vineyards
or blocks this wine will come from year-to-year, we would rather
select the best of what the vintage has given us, and craft the
best wine we possibly can. (I know this is counter to the concept
of "terroir" - which is a concept that I truly believe
in. I do not believe, however, that we can say we know much about
terroir yet here in Oregon, with most of the vineyards being less
than 15 years old. Give us another 25 years and we can start to
talk about it. Perhaps then a vineyard designation will really mean
something. For now, I don't believe so…)
$30.
bottle - 175 cases produced. (For more information on
the history of "La Paulée" in Burgundy, click
here.)
Cuvée
Martha Pirrie
A wine meant for drinking over the first five years -
fruit-forward, silky, pure Pinot Noir.
Named after our daughter (Martha Pirrie Wright - she goes by "Pirrie".) Our goal is for this wine to be the best $20 Pinot Noir in the New World. An assemblage of wines from multiple vineyard sites, this wine comes from a combination of young and older vines in the Red Hills district of the Willamette Valley. Clonal selections are also diverse, ranging from own-rooted Pommard to several different Dijon-clones on assorted rootstocks.
What the world really needs (besides peace, love, and understanding) is a great $20 Pinot Noir. Most wine drinkers don't discover the joys of Pinot until many years into their journey with wine - or perhaps they never do - simply because there is not a reliably good Pinot Noir under $30 to be had. The joys of great Pinot Noir are most often found at price points north of $35 or $40. However, the vast majority of wine drinkers never spend that much for a bottle of wine.
We are on a mission to spread the complex, ethereal, satin-textured joys of Pinot (once you go Pinot, you never go back!) You shouldn't have to wait until your disposable income exceeds the net worth of a small nation to enjoy the delights of Pinot Noir. Cuvée Martha Pirrie is a wine that delivers the seductive, sexy side of Pinot, at a price that fits. (If you've been buying this wine for the past two vintages, you'll notice that the price has gone down $5 - because we finally have more than 50 cases to sell!)
The 2002 cuvée Martha Pirrie is available now, at$20 per bottle (we thought that would be a good price for a great $20 Pinot!) 545 cases produced.
Just before harvest 2003, we settled in to our
new home at the Carlton
Winemakers Studio, where we have a contract to remain through
2008 and beyond. The Studio is simply an amazing facility. It is
the first certified "green" winery in the U.S. built from
the ground up, using recycled materials, extremely efficient energy
and water use - everything is eco-friendly and low-impact. On top
of which, it's a brilliantly designed facility, specifically built
for small-lot artisanal Pinot Noir winemaking. We're proud to share
the Studio with a number of Oregon's  premier
producers, including Hamacher Wines, Penner-Ash, and Andrew Rich.
Another added benefit to being part of the
Studio community is that for the first time ever, Scott Paul has
a tasting room. The tasting room is open seven days a week from
Noon to 5, and wines from Scott Paul and many other resident wineries
are available for tasting and purchase. (Private tours are available
by appointment - please call well in advance if you'd like to schedule
a tour ((503) 274-4700.)
 Please
plan to join us for our Open House celebration - May 29, 30 &
31, details to come later in the spring… We'll be pouring the
2002 cuvée Martha Pirrie, and the 2002 La Paulée.
We're located at the Carlton Winemakers Studio at 801
N. Scott St. in beautiful downtown Carlton, Oregon. Call (503) 852-6100
for directions and more information.
 Nature has handed us what looks to be the sixth excellent vintage in a row in Oregon, going back to 1998. 2003 started off cold and wet, then it got hot and dry - thus giving the vines a little yin-yang treatment the first half of the growing season. From Mid August through September temperatures were higher than normal, and a warm East wind appeared in September that combined with the heat to push the grapes to ripeness rather quickly toward the end.
Harvest began about a week earlier than the average start date - we picked a block of 777 clone from Stoller Vineyard on the morning of September 20th, and crush was underway. We finished just one week later, bringing in an old-vine block of Stoller Pommard on the 27th. The seven days in between are really just one large blur. All I really remember is that we were constantly tired, but incredibly happy!
Our 2003s are now all in barrel, and early on they are showing ripe, voluptuous Pinot flavors and excellent length. To compare to previous vintages, it seems that we will have something quite like the Oregon 1994s - attractive, rich wines that will be lovely to drink over the first five to seven years.
We will produce nearly 2,000 cases from the 2003 vintage, with increased availability of cuvée Martha Pirrie and La Paulée, as well as the introduction of a yet-to-be-named third cuvée which will be a barrel selection of the "crème de la crème" in our cellar. Watch your e-mail for all the details!
Thanks so much for joining us on our journey. We make the wines to give pleasure - to be enjoyed with family and friends over food and conversation - and we're honored that our wines can be a tiny part of your enjoyment of a day.
Cheers!
Martha and Scott Wright, proprietors
"La
Paulée" is the French term for the traditional dinner
given for the vineyard and winery crew the last day fruit is harvested.
Historically the pickers and staff were the winemaker's extended
family - cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, multiple
generations of family and friends gathered together to celebrate
the harvest with great food and wines from the estate's cellars.
Then, the entire village of Meursault came up with the idea of doing
a joint Paulée for all of the estates in the village, and
the famous "La Paulée de Meursault" was born. It
has now grown to include all of the top winemakers and growers from
all of Burgundy, and takes place in Meursault each November as part
of the Hospices de Beaune auction weekend.
The Meursault event is reputed to be perhaps
the best wine party on the planet each year, and having had the
good fortune to attend this year's event in Burgundy (thanks to
Véronique Drouhin and family) I can happily verify that the
reputation is well deserved. There cannot be another party on the
planet where people are dumping '61 Montrachet out of their glasses,
to make room for that '59 La Tache that's making its way to your
table… I lost track after 63 amazing Grand Cru Burgundies,
and my notes deteriorate rapidly after the first dozen or so wines…
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