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.
