An Oregon Redemption: Willamette Valley Vineyards Tualatin Estate Pinot Noir

Man, I'm excited to write this post. I've had a kind of lame ass run of Oregon Pinot Noir lately. I was even beginning to doubt that my excitement around the region and its fabulous Goldilocks nature of being somewhere between the minerality, barnyard, and crazy spice of a Burgundy, and the ridiculous fruitiness of many California Pinots was completely unfounded.

The good news is that I was wrong. The bad news: I guess now is the time that I call my own bluff. I'm a firm believer/espouser of the notion that you don't have to spend more than $20 to get great wine...but I think with this experience (which is a replica of a few I've had lately), I've confirmed that's decidedly not the case with most Pinot Noir. Unlike most other grapes where you can get good deals, with Pinot you've gotta spend the cash to get the quality. And in Oregon this is certainly the case.

It makes sense from a business standpoint. I mean, this grape, which I've touted in podcasts and posts as the most pain in the butt grape to grow and the one that requires Herculean effort to tame, master, and create good wine, makes mediocre, watery, nothing-doing ick when it's mass produced. The plain fact is that it just costs a lot of money to maintain vineyards of Pinot and to make wine out of a grape that is so high maintenance and those costs get passed on in the price of the wine.

This begs the question: Why is Pinot more of a pain? Well, for starters, we're not the only ones that love Pinot -- birds, pests, fungus, and Mother Nature in the form of hail, wind, and rain adore removing every last vestige of amazing grapes from their vines. When you lose a bunch of your crop and when, to begin with, the grape requires cooler climates and specific soils and sites, and mutates like it had a personality disorder, this makes it a problem child in the grape kingdom. Pinot isn't a hearty grape like Syrah -- if you're planning to grow this grape, you better be ready for some serious hand-holding and potential heartbreak if the weather doesn't cooperate with you. It's a bit of a fool's folly to grow this stuff (but if it works it's awesome).

So I give serious credit to those making a go of it in the Willamette Valley (will-AM-it) of Oregon. This is as good a place to tame Pinot as any. It's 150 miles long and 60 miles wide (pretty huge) and it's sandwiched between the Oregon Coastal Range and the Cascade Mountains, making it cool but warm enough to ripen grapes. The wet winters, and warm, dry summers and the virtual lack of rain in the growing season fatten chances for the growers that they can provide a very nice, accommodating environment for the picky Pinot....at least so says the 200+ wineries there, including some French producers who came looking for sites similar to Burgundy and found the Willamette to be closest to home.

If you aren't familiar with Oregon, it's a great region for Pinot Noir but it's super new in the wine world. The Willamette Valley became a place for wine only after 1965, when four dudes who graduated from UC Davis, which has an awesome program for winemakers and wine farmers (viticulturists) decided to move to the Valley and plant Pinot Noir. David Lett of Eyrie Vineyards, Dick Erath of Erath and Charles Coury of the Charles Coury Winery and Dick Ponzi of Ponzi Vineyards took a risk and it paid off. Others followed.

One of those was Jim Bernau, who set up Willamette Valley Vineyards in 1983. Concentrating mainly on Pinot Noir, WVV grew. Today it's one of Oregon's bigger and more commercial wineries, producing a little over 121,000 cases in 2009 (according to their annual report). This isn't just some small boutique winery -- it's a relatively big business.

And big businesses have a PR and marketing effort. A few months ago they sent me 4 bottles of wine (there's my full disclosure -- the stuff was free, but that doesn't mean I'm going to lie about it!). I've reviewed the Pinot Gris (it was ok). Then I tried their $20 whole cluster fermented Pinot Noir and really disliked it. It tasted like alcoholic cherry juice and reminded me of Beaujolais Nouveau -- totally a powder puff wine with nothing of interest to me. The tannins were lame, the acid weak and it was just too simple and boring for me. Another discouraging Pinot at the affordable end of Willamette Valley choices. So with that experience, I had a lot of trepidation about trying the other Pinot that was sent, the Willamette Valley Vineyards Tualatin Estate Vineyard Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.

I was not convinced that this was going to be dramatically better. Thankfully I was wrong. The wine was more than double the price and it's from a much smaller vineyard that has complex soils and a bunch of different clones of Pinot Noir that each add a little nuance to the recipe. Whereas I'd avoid the affordable Willamette Valley Vineyards Whole Cluster Fermented Pinot and drink a Cosmo instead, I could drink this wine all day long -- it was extraordinarily delicious.

Here are the deets:

The Wine: Willamette Valley Vineyards Tualatin Estate Pinot Noir
Where It's From: Willamette Valley, Oregon
The Grapes: 100% Pinot Noir
Vintage: 2007
Price: $45.00

Color: Pale ruby red -- the color I think Pinot should be (not dark -- that screams out that the grape has either been blended with something else OR that it's been hanging on a vine WAY too long and won't taste like the grape rather like Welsh's grape juice). It was a slight concern that the wine had a ton of bubbles in it -- that usually happens when the winemaker juices up the wine with CO2 to keep it fresh. That's ok in a German Riesling, not the best in a Pinot.

Smell: Really complex -- the smells kept coming and coming with each little sniff. I was encouraged. Typical Pinot can smell like tart cherries, dried cranberry, and wet rocks or minerals. Check. Check. Check. There was an unripe raspberry and a blood orange smell (like a grapefruit and an orange mated) that was unique and yummy. The earthy/mineral smell also reminded me of a rocky beach in the summer -- like hot rocks. There was a floral essence going on too. All super delicious and nothing like the overwhelming cherry juice smell of the lower tier of this wine. This was a different league.

Taste: Tart cherry at first with mouthwatering acid and a hit of alcohol (my only criticism of the wine -- it's a little hot and high in alcohol at 13.4%). Then the wine completely mellows in your mouth --it was like cinnamon toast, rhubarb pie, or berry cobbler with a crumb topping. There was clove on the finish too. The texture of the wine was amazing -- the tannins were super mild (just a little mouth drying) and the acid balanced the fruit and baking spice flavor amazingly well. Everything was balanced. Yum.

Food: You need an medium weight food -- like pork, lamb, swordfish, or certain types of mushrooms, beets, or earthy veggies-- but the rubber is going to hit the road on this pairing when you some sort of savory spice or herb sauce or rub goes on the food. The wine's already tasty profile will only be enhanced by the savory herbs or spice (I think the best option would be with starchy potatoes or some other earthy vegetables, which would combine to make those clove and fruit pie flavors into an earthy, fruity, spicy sea of deliciousness). We had it with hard cheese -- Parmesan. It was unbelievable with that too.

Drink or Down the Sink?: Drink. There were only about 325 cases of this wine made, so it may be hard to get, but it's worth trying (order online or ask your wine shop to order it for you if you're interested). I'm thoroughly impressed with this wine...but on the other hand I have such a hard time reconciling that it's so drastically different from the lower tier.

So I return to my original discovery -- in Pinot, I think you get what you pay for. And you've got to pay to get the good stuff.

Please let me know what you think! Leave your questions and comments below, or join the conversation on the Wine For Normal People Facebook page.