Storyteller Wine:


It was a beautiful, sunny day here in the Willamette Valley. So I hopped in the car and decided to drive down to McMinnville to visit winemaker Todd Hamina. I wanted to check out Todd's new winery facility and I also wanted to taste a few of his Pinot Noirs to see if there wasn't something I could feature in a Storyteller newsletter. As we walked around the barrel room Todd gestured to one barrel in particular and said, "recognize this one?" After that it was "so long Pinot Noir (for now), hello Syrah!"

About four years ago my son and and I went to visit Todd when he was making wine at ADEA Wine Company. While Todd and I were talking, my son, looking for something to do, grabbed a black felt pen and had started to decorate a wine barrel with stick figure soldiers from the American Revolutionary War. It was a barrel that held one of Todd's experiments from the 2007 vintage: co-fermented Syrah (80%) and Viognier (20%) and it became rather famous around Portland as the "XX" (for 20%) Syrah. I loved that wine so much I pleaded with him to bottle it separately from the rest of his Syrah. He did and it sold out in record time.

As we laughed about that barrel decorating incident Todd asked if I would like to taste some Syrah from that cool, rainy 2007 vintage. I thought he was talking about a library bottle but no, it turns out Todd has stashed away some Syrah and it is available for purchase. I thought at first it was the infamous "XX" but Todd quickly pointed out that no, this was the wine that I didn't write about. Well after tasting it and hearing the deal Todd was willing to strike, I am more than willing to correct that oversight.

2007 Biggio-Hamina Deux Vert Vineyard Syrah

In case you aren't familiar with this label, allow me to introduce you to Todd Hamina. Todd has had the good fortune to learn alongside some of our best winemakers, including Adam Campbell (Elk Cove), Mike Etzel (Beaux Frères) and at Archery Summit with the late Gary Andrus. Those apprenticeships paid off as he got his first head winemaking job (as well as being named vineyard manager and national sales director) at Patton Valley. After Patton Valley Todd took over as the head winemaker at Maysara and helped oversee the fulfilling of the late Jimi Brooks' (Maysara's first winemaker) dream to see Maysara become a Demeter certified biodynamic producer. By 2006 Todd knew he had to become his own winemaker and in 2007 Biggio-Hamina had its first vintage.

The 2007 Biggio-Hamina Syrah is made entirely with Syrah (93%) and Viognier (7%) from Mike and Patty Green's Deux Vert Vineyard in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA. This is the wine that barrel of "XX" was supposed to be blended with. It is 100% whole cluster because Todd wanted to give the wine some "ooomph" in a vintage year that was wet and cold, even by our standards. After that it was aged in a combination of Oregon oak barrels (only 20% of which were new) and large demi-muids in order to minimize the oak influence.

Syrah and Viognier are rare enough in the northern part of Oregon, but the decision to co-ferment was definitely breaking new ground. In fact, It was Todd's decision to co-ferment northern Willamette Valley Syrah and Viognier that inspired friend and fellow winemaker Marcus Goodfellow to start making the Matello Fool's Journey Syrah-Viognier I wrote about in an earlier newsletter. So from here on out, whatever becomes of the Willamette Valley's grand Côte-Rôtie experiment, this bottle is where it all started.

I will confess that I tasted this wine soon after it was bottled and I wasn't super impressed. Part of that was probably due to being dazzled by the "XX" and part of it was tasting the wine too early, but a larger part of the equation was the fact that Deux Vert Vineyard Syrah fruit typically makes wines that are tight and unyielding at an early age. I remember writing a note to remind myself to check this wine out again in six months, then I promptly lost the note. I can kick myself for that given how this wine is tasting today.

When first opened, this wine has a nice, light plum color that looks like you took a purple crayon and dragged it sideways across a concrete sidewalk. The sidewalk metaphor makes even more sense when you get your first sniff of the wine. It has a dusty/chalky kind of mineral note that combines beautifully with aromas of tart, dark raspberry fruit. Take a piece of white chalk, dip it in raspberry juice and then write a sonnet on a chalkboard. That's how this wine smells. A few more sniffs turn up a bit of dried hay and violets, along with the slightest touch of seared meat.

If you have never had a Biggio-Hamina wine before, Todd makes wines in a lower alcohol, higher acid style that does really well with food. If you are looking for an over-the-top fruit explosive device, keep looking. So the 2007 vintage, while challenging in many ways, really played to Todd's strengths. With this Syrah-Viognier you are looking at a wine that clocks in at 12% alcohol and is so easy and elegant that it positively floats over your palate. There are flavors similar to what you find in the wines aromatics, with lots of raspberry fruit, wet rocks and what can only be described as a nicely coffee-charred flank steak. And somebody cracked some black pepper on that steak!

But that's after it has been popped and poured. Todd gave me a sample bottle to take home, one that had been open at the tasting room for three full days. It was really something to be able to try this wine after so many days of "airing out." Now it was way more floral as the Viognier seemed to have been awakened after a seventy-two hour nap. It had a sweeter floral note on day three, one that left the violets in the dust in exchange for all the lilacs my nose could handle. The palate had gone from stubborn to silky and now it tasted like a juicy little blackberry wrapped in bacon. It was still nice and chalky though, and the acidity hadn't exactly run off to hide.

This is an honest wine for an honest price. It also reminds me more of the Rhone River Valley or southwest France than it does the Willamette Valley. My friend Vincent Fritzsche makes his own wine here in Oregon but on the side he writes a nice wine blog called "élevage." Back in May of 2009 Vincent had a chance to taste this wine and he wrote, "it's not intense and deep, but so complex and savory I could smell this all night. In the mouth, it's nervy and lean, clearly built for food. It was delicious with grilled copper river salmon on a cedar plank. The wine is light in body, but captivating and piquant with a sense of meat and iodine and nicely gripping tannin. The finish is long and lean, a complete opposite to most domestic syrah that overpower with flavor but lack finesse. In sum, I love this wine." I wish I read this note on Vincent's blog years ago because it would have definitely jogged my memory!

Edit this Article