25 Oregon Pinots: 5 x 5 Hand or Land?

My House, Waterbury, Vermont
Tasted Sunday, November 1, 2009 by jfagan with 830 views

Introduction

“1997 Cellar Crawl was formed when five winemakers and friends chose to join forces to learn from each other’s successes and failures, share winemaking secrets and tackle challenges together. It started with a casual trip to each other’s cellars. A joint marketing trip and then a journey to Burgundy sealed the friendships.

2006 Recognizing that their winemaking styles were quite different even after a decade of traveling and tasting together, they started wondering, ‘What would happen if we shared our grapes? If we each made wine form the same five lots of Pinot Noir?’ In 2006 they made it happen. The Cellar Crawl collection is the result of that collaboration.” – from Bethel Heights’ website

In the spring of 2007 I was tasting my way through the Willamette Valley and heard about this project from Steve Doerner and John d’Anna of Cristom. They said the question was “which speaks more loudly, the Hand or the Land?” That sounded very interesting to me and I asked that they keep me in mind when the wines were bottled.

They did. And a group of us tasted through the range of 25 bottles at my house Sunday morning, November 1.

Here are the “hands” and “lands”:
- Steve Doerner (Cristom Vineyards), Eileen Vineyard, Eola-Amity Hills AVA
- Ken Wright (Ken Wright Cellars), Abbott Claim Vineyard, Yamhill-Carlton AVA
- Lynn Penner-Ash (Penner-Ash Cellars), Lia Vineyard, Chehalem Mountains AVA
- Terry and Ted Casteel (Bethel Heights Vineyard), Southeast Block, Eola-Amity Hills AVA
- Laurent Montalieu (Solena Cellars), Willakia Vineyard, Eola-Amity Hills AVA
Each winemaker received 1 ½ tons from each of the five vineyards then made the wine as he or she saw fit..

Joining me for the tasting were Dawn Rowlee, Mike Alekson, Ed Schwarz, Roy Schwarz, Renaye Novogrowski, Peter Anderson, Jim Barton, and Lisa Strausser. Most of us are ITB and many of us have tasted extensively in Oregon.

The wines were served in five flights of five wines “half blind”—we knew the vineyard of each flight but not who made each wine. With each flight we privately wrote our notes and tried to guess the “hand” who had crafted the wine. We then discussed our impressions of the flight and unveiled it before moving on to the next flight. Our hope here was that we would learn something about the winemaking styles that would make it easier to pick the “hands” as the tasting progressed. We had “cheat sheets” detailing how each winemaker had made each wine. While they all worked with the same five lots of fruit, the techniques varied considerably between the winemakers.

The wines were all double decanted shortly before that tasting and served a bit below room temp. The tasting notes are mine augmented by a few phrases from Ed Schwarz. As a group we were pretty consistent with our opinions.

Flight 1 - The Land: Eileen Vineyard (5 Notes)

Planted 1997, clone 115, picked 9/30 at 24.7 brix, 3.4 ph

Flight 2 - The Land: Abbott Claim Vineyard (5 Notes)

Planted 2000, clone 115, picked 9/27 at 26.1 brix, 3.88 ph

Flight 3 - The Land: Lia Vineyard (5 Notes)

Planted 1999, clone 115, picked 9/29 at 26.5 brix, 3.44 ph

Flight 4 - The Land: Southeast Block (5 Notes)

Planted 1979, self-rooted Pommard clone, picked 10/4 at 24.4 brix, 3.32 ph Note: this was the group's favorite flight.

Flight 5 - The Land: Willakia Vineyard (5 Notes)

Planted 2000, Pommard and 113, picked 10/4 at 24.3 brix, 3.51 ph

Closing

So which spoke more loudly, the hand or the land? It turned out for us that some hands and some lands spoke more loudly than others. Most of us were able to pick out Steve Doerner’s wines. With the highest whole cluster percentage (40%) his wines seem to have an unmistakable “savory spice” that stood out regardless of the vineyard. Ken Wrights “hand” proved more elusive. Is that a good thing or not? In all but one flight we were very impressed with Bethel Heights’ efforts and their Southeast Block proved to be our favorite “land”. Planted in 1979 to self-rooted Pommard it really stood out from the the younger grafted plots. Lia Vineyard spoke quite loudly but we didn’t particularly like the speech.

I had assumed we would find some sort of “home court advantage.” For example, Ken Wright has more experience working with Abbott Claim than the other winemakers do. In some cases this seemed to be an advantage. We clearly preferred Lynn Penner-Ash’s Lia Vineyard to the other winemakers’ efforts there and Ted and Terry Casteel excelled with their own fruit.

As always, blind tasting is very educational and sometimes humbling. While no great revelations were arrived at, all on hand agreed it was a great way to spend a Sunday morning.

We refreshed our palates with Cristom Pinot Gris “Estate” 2007 and dove into a great “pot luck” luncheon.

Just think how much fun a Burgundy version would be…Any candidates?

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