adv. off the usual or desired tracks

My first order of business after relocating from BDX (Bordeaux) to PDX (Portland) via BOS (Boston), was to attend the Oregon Wine Symposium in Eugene this week.  Below I offer you some interesting tidbits while sparing you the gory details.

Technical Tasting: Ageable Oregon Whites

In this session we were treated with 11 aged white wines from Oregon and 2 aged wines from Germany as a comparison.  My 2 favorite wines of the bunch were the 2001 Argyle Chardonnay and the 1992 Zilliken Saarburger Rausch Riesling Spatlese (Germany) followed closely by the 2004 King Estate Signature Pinot Gris.  I disagreed with the panel’s positive endorsement of the 2002 Amity Gewurtztraminer and 2005 Watermill Viogner and found the Rieslings a bit lacking in the company of the German samples.

Bottom line, I would certainly endorse Oregon’s ability to produce age-worthy white wines.  Chardonnay may be the varietal of choice for aged wines in the future if one is to believe a comment by a viticulturist from another session stating that Pinot Gris is not ‘particularly economically viable’ to grow.

Consumers and Their Purchase Drivers

Of the plethora of mind numbing statistics and PowerPoint Eye-Charts, nothing ground-breaking was reported.  It was encouraging to learn of Oregon’s 2010 growth rate (~18% volume and value).   Other information was obvious to New/Social Media saavy folks like ‘most wine buyers are getting most of their information from Facebook, Twitter or Blogs’.  I left the session muttering the words of Benjamin Disraeli, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  These statistics are important for business plans and bankers, but at the end of the day, we winemakers must make the very best product we can and make a real, personal connection with our consumers.  I probable could have skipped this session and gone to the bar to network.

Harvest Parameters and Differing Conditions

The most interesting information was given by Russ Smithyman from Château Saint Michelle in Washington.  Their use of remote (aerial) sensing using leaf reflectance to delineate intra-parcel maturity/selection was fascinating.  I was reminded of my friends at Force-A who have developed optical devices to measure photoflorescense in developing grape bunches to evaluate phenolic maturity.  Cool (geeky) stuff.

Drawing Perspective: Three Views on Distribution

This was fun to watch.  What started as a series of factual presentations from a winery, distributor and an outsource sales and marketing company turned into a mild bashing of distributors and enthusiasm for direct-to-consumer.  To Alex Krobin of Thirst Wine Merchants’ credit and from all accounts, he seemed like a standup guy and maintained the middle ground on the debate and basically took the position that “there is room for all of us”.  Adding value to the marketplace versus violation of the commerce clause is what’s at issue.  Only time will tell.  As a producer, determining your raison d’être and go to market strategy early on is paramount.

The Many Faces of Malolactic Fermentation

OK, this will most likely only be interesting to me.  But, I really enjoyed Sigrid Briand and James Osborne’s talks on Malolactic Fermentation.  Not a moment too soon as next weeks UCD winemaking lectures cover MLF.  Of specific interest was the issue of co-inoculation.  Rodrigo Laytte’s of Château Kirwan (see The Art of the Blend with Château Kirwan’s Rodrigo Laytte) explanations of the benefits of co-inoculation where confirmed by both speakers. Additionally, if I understood correctly, co-inoculation can protect against Brettanomyces and can reduce vegetative notes.  They did warn, however, that wine that endured MLF showed reduced color and pigmented polymers.  This could be an issue for unstable colors in Pinot Noir.

All About Filtration

Consumers have lately been conditioned to prefer/request unfiltered wines.  Unfiltered == Better == Artisinal == Complex == “Insert-Your-Own-Quality-Descriptor”.  This talk and tasting presented traditional and cross-flow filtration and gave us an opportunity to taste the differences.  Of the 2 Pinot Noir wines we were shown, 3 samples of each were given: Unfiltered, Cross-Flow Filtered, Cross-Flow and Sterile Filtered.  The wines were well clarified and impossible to detect visually.  The unfiltered wines generally displayed more tannic qualities.  Preferably speaking, I preferred Cross Flow and Sterile filtered version of Wine 1 and the unfiltered version of Wine 2.  Given that this was my first experience of head-to-head comparison of filtered and unfiltered wines, I can’t form an opinion.  I think that I’d have to try it on my own wines before making a conclusion.

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As my winemaking adventure in Bordeaux was coming to an end, I thought it fitting for my last experience to start back at the beginning with a trip to a pépiniériste.

Mercier Groupe Pépiniériste

Mercier Groupe, founded in 1880, is a grape vine nursery headquartered in Vix, France.  Utilizing 100+ different vinifera varieties/clones and 15+ varieties of rootstock, Mercier produces over 1,000 unique combinations of plants suitable for diverse terroir. Guillaume Mercier, CEO of Mercier Groupe, was kind enough to give me a tour of their nursery operations, R&D facility and even share a taste of the Loire Valley wines that they produce. The photo album below depicts the process from harvest to shipment of the young vines.

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Thibault Despagne

I had the opportunity to meet Thibault, his family and the folks at Despagne through CRUSHPAD Bordeaux who make their white wine blends there. Despagne is primarily known in the region for their fine white Bordeaux blends of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc.  However, it is their Girolate red wine and the techniques employed that are of particular interest to me. [click to continue…]

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Rodrigo Laytte

As true as it is said that you only get one chance to make a first impression, it is equally important to set the environment in which to be impressed upon. Below is an excerpt from my first trip with CRUSHPAD Bordeaux to the Médoc to meet Eric Boissenot, oenologist of the Grands Crus, Châteaux Latour, Margaux, Lafite-Rothschild…

Stephen Bolger, CRUSHPAD Bordeaux: So, what are you going to ask Eric when you meet him?

Me (embarrassingly unprepared): Ah. Well. I haven’t thought about it.

Me (several kilometers later and after considering several trite alternatives): I do have one question.

(fast-forward to the end of the meeting with Stephen, Eric and Cecilia Grallert, CRUSHPAD’s Viticultural Consultant)

Me (shamefully posed in English): What is the most important lesson I should learn about Bordeaux winemaking?

(after the laughter subsided from a winemaking question in the same vein of an ecology student asking an environmental scientist the one thing she could do to avoid melting the polar ice caps, I got my answer)

Eric (grossly paraphrased and oversimplified): Blending. Blending varieties to elevate, express and respect the terroir. Blending!

I recalled that answer at every future tasting opportunity.  I’d ask, “What varieties did you use?”, “How much this or that?”.  Thinking that I was gathering data points that I could later utilize.  However, I never fully appreciated the complexity and Art until my visit with Rodrigo.  (Not surprisingly, Eric also consults for Château Kirwan.)

Château Kirwan 2010 Barrel Samples

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