Oregon’s New Pinot Noir Reality

To visit the dozens of wineries in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, one of the nation’s lushest agricultural preserves, is like touring an asylum devoted to the treatment of one peculiar obsessive disorder: a fixation on Pinot Noir.

Oregon grows other grape varieties, producing pretty good Riesling, Gewurztraminer and, especially, Pinot Gris. In fact, Pinot Noir occupies only about one-third of the state’s 7,100 acres of vines.

No matter. All anyone in Oregon wine talks about, thinks about and prays for is Pinot Noir. It is the passion of Oregon’s loyal wine lovers, the obsessive focus of an annual international Pinot Noir celebration and the star by which its winegrowers navigate. Pinot Noir is the source of Oregon’s growing wine fame and, not coincidentally, its public relations peril.

At the moment, Oregon and its Pinot Noir are riding higher than ever. According to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, out-of-state sales of Oregon wines in 1995 account for a whacking 26% of Oregon wineries’ total production. That was twice the share reported only two years earlier. Pinot Noir surely accounts for much of it.

Still, it’s not the first time Oregon Pinot Noir has been pursued, praised and price-hiked. Twice Oregon Pinot Noir had been celebrated by Caesars from afar, only to be lambasted later. Oregon’s 1983 Pinot Noirs were eagerly contrasted--by the Oregon growers themselves--with ’83 red Burgundies, which were fatally flawed with a taste of rot. The Oregon wines shone in comparison and the state’s winegrowers were on a roll.

Then came the ’85 vintage, which was excellent both in Oregon and in Burgundy. Oregon growers wisely refrained from comparing their ‘85s with those from Burgundy (a good thing, because ’85 Burgundies were blockbusters), but their triumph two years earlier assured them attention. And their wines were good, although not as fine as they fancied them to be.

Then came hubris. Flushed with their newfound success, Oregon producers preened. Our Pinot Noirs are comparable to all but the best red Burgundies, they asserted. California Pinot Noirs were dissed; a contradiction in terms, they said. Outside Burgundy, the epicenter of Pinot Noir, Oregon is the One True Place.

Then came the fall. The weak, watery ’86 vintage was priced as high as the ’85 and ballyhooed as equally good. It was nothing of the sort. But the press, if not retailers, let them off the hook.

Then came the ’87 vintage. It’s even better than ‘85, crowed the growers. Taunted twice, the critics struck back. Within weeks of each other, the nation’s two most influential wine publications, Wine Spectator and Robert M. Parker Jr.’s the Wine Advocate, crucified the vintage, and rightly.

It was a disaster. Oregon’s national wine audience evaporated overnight. Prices plunged, wines went unsold and Oregon growers took to their beds. Nothing more was heard from Oregon until the triumphant ’94 vintage.

But in those intervening years, a revolution in Oregon Pinot Noir was underway. The causes are multiple, but the source of the change can best be summed up in one word: outsiders.

The earlier successes had attracted attention. California vineyard land prices were soaring. Where undeveloped land in Napa and Sonoma counties could cost as much as $30,000 an acre, you could pick up potentially prime vineyard land in the Willamette Valley for one-tenth as much.

Also, interest in Pinot Noir was increasing, not least in California. Where California Pinot Noirs once were, indeed, less than satisfactory, a new string of undeniably successful wines was emerging from the Carneros district straddling Napa and Sonoma counties and from the cool, ocean-influenced vineyards in western Sonoma County. Promising, if more erratic, Pinot Noirs also were seen from Santa Barbara County’s Santa Maria Valley.

In short, California winemakers were getting a grip on Pinot Noir. And it, in turn, was getting a grip on them.

So Oregon turned a corner. Investors, first international and then Californian, went to Oregon to establish vineyards and wineries. The first such endorsement was, emotionally anyway, the most significant: Burgundian Robert Jossuet-Drouhin created Domaine Drouhin Oregon in 1987. The same year, Australian winegrower Brian Croser established Dundee Wine Co., a sparkling wine operation selling under the name Argyle.

Yet more outside investment poured in: Archery Summit (Napa Valley winegrower Gary Andrus); Beaux Freres (wine writer Parker and his brother-in-law Michael Etzel); Benton-Lane (Napa Valley winegrowers Carl Doumani and Steve Girard); Cristom Vineyards (which hired winemaker Steve Doerner, formerly with California’s Calera Wine Co.); King Estate Winery (aviation electronics money from the King family of Kansas City, Mo.); Van Duzer (Napa Valley winegrower William Hill); and Willamette Valley Vineyards (public share holding).

All of a sudden the stakes changed. Almost without exception the newcomers began making noticeably better Pinot Noirs than all but a handful of the old-timers. How could this be? The answer is partly economic and partly cultural.

Economically, nearly all the old-line Oregon winegrowers are shoestring operations. To this day, three-quarters of Oregon’s 75 producing wineries make fewer than 5,000 cases a year each. In comparison, a Napa Valley winery is considered small at three times that size.

Make no mistake: Money is the handmaiden of fine wine. You need money, lots of it, to buy tanks, presses and barrels. You need money to plant vines. Above all, you need money to take risks, to wait out the fall rains in the hope of a spell of good weather. The best wines come from producers who eliminate lesser barrels of wine, the better to create a higher overall standard. Shoestring wineries simply cannot afford such rigor.

The big money also enabled some of the newer wineries--Archery Summit, Beaux Freres, Domaine Drouhin Oregon--to plant Pinot Noir vines much closer together than was previously done in Oregon. Dense planting, as it’s called, reduces the space between vines and rows. Conventionally planted vineyards, in California and Oregon, typically have 565 vines per acre: seven feet between vines and 11 feet between rows. Land is cheap (or was, when the practice became established) and American tractors are large.

But Burgundy (and Bordeaux) vineyards are planted much more densely: three feet between vines and three or four feet between rows, resulting in as many as 4,000 vines per acre. No one knows for sure whether such close spacing makes a qualitative difference. And the expense was, until recently, considered so prohibitive that almost no one chose to investigate. A densely planted vineyard--there are varying degrees--costs up to four times as much as a wide-spaced one--there are four times as many vines, four times as much trellising and exponentially more labor. For what result?

In Oregon, for this observer anyway, the answer is clear: Densely planted Pinot Noir vines create a fuller, richer, more dimensional wine than wide-spaced vines.

Taste Domaine Drouhin Oregon’s special bottling called “Laurene,” made exclusively from closely spaced vines. Or taste the Pinot Noirs from Beaux Freres or John Thomas wineries, the tiny vineyards of which are densely planted. Most recently, you can taste Archery Summit’s “Premiere Cuvee” 1994, which comes from a new semi-densely planted vineyard. These wines are finer, fuller, richer and more compelling than most other Oregon Pinot Noirs.

But money isn’t everything. Culture matters. This is trickier, a matter of interpretation. The old culture of Oregon winegrowing had more than a tinge of an underachiever’s self-justification. It was a cult of the noble failure. Commercial success was suspect, hinting of compromise or selling out. “Our way or no way” was the unspoken rallying cry.

Outsiders had nothing to prove, no resentments against others’ success. Indeed, they came from success--in winegrowing, electronics and other pursuits. Above all, they know how to make things happen. They were willing to invest their money and, above all, they know how to get it back.

Their winemaking standards aren’t those of the old-timers but rather those of the most successful wineries in the world’s most successful wine precincts: Napa, Sonoma and Santa Barbara counties and Burgundy. The pace is quick in these places. Ambitions are ferocious and well defined. So it’s no coincidence that the best Pinot Noirs made in Oregon today are, with few exceptions, those made by newly arrived outsiders.

In fairness, the best of the old-timers are playing a good game of catch-up. Producers such as Ponzi Vineyards and Adelsheim Vineyard are in the top rank, at least for their best Pinot Noir bottlings. Tiny wineries such as John Thomas, Cameron, Ken Wright, Evesham Wood, Panther Creek and Tyee are keeping pace as well. Others, however, are falling behind, unable to muster the ambition or resources to pursue the new leaders.

Most important, though, is that a new standard for Oregon Pinot Noir is emerging. Prices are high and probably will remain so: $20 a bottle and higher. The best producers will keep pushing, just as they do in California. It’s been a long time coming, but Oregon Pinot Noir finally has arrived to stay.