PINOT CAMP IS UNSURPRISINGLY AWESOME!

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Oregon Pinot Camp, an industry weekend that invites wine professionals to the Willamette Valley to showcase the vineyards, wineries, and wines of Oregon. The trip was amazing, confirming certain truths I already knew about the region and shattering some long-held preconceptions. Here are some observations from my short time there, in no particular order:

The Willamette Valley looks a lot like BC. Out of the 270 wine professionals invited to Pinot Camp, I was the only British Columbian (that I could find, if there was another BC camper then he/she is an Olympics-level hide-and-seek player), and one of only 4 Canadians, humbly reminding me that as passionate as we are about wine, we’re still a relatively small market. The vast majority of campers hailed from all across the US, many people from places that apparently weren’t as pretty or as hilly as Oregon because they stared agape out the bus windows as we criss-crossed the countryside, as though something had transported them to the planet in Avatar. I felt right at home, because the Willamette Valley bears many similarities to the BC interior: green, rolling and temperate, just with different license plates. Hot in the daytime, cool at night (Pinot loves this). One notable difference from my home province is the constant presence of Mt. Hood, a huge potentially-active volcano that you can see from almost everywhere in the Willamette. It’s mesmerizing, almost fantastically cone-shaped, and looks very much like something that Frodo would want to throw a ring at. Plus, you always know where East is.

Oregonians are awesome. I did expect this, but it was nice to see how down to earth everyone is there. The Willamette grows everything, not just grapes, and the mix of regular agriculture and viticulture creates an atmosphere of pragmatism and cooperation, with none of the snobbish elitism that can be sometimes sensed in other wine regions (that’s right, get over yourself, Winnipeg). No question was beneath any of the winemakers, and they’re all truly fans of each other’s work. I met all sorts of people working in those wineries and vineyards: hippies, rednecks, scientists, soldiers; whatever their backgrounds, they were all trying to make amazing Pinot Noir, driven by the tangible love of it and not by competition. They love Canadians, too: most of them have visited here and many of them told me that they would be moving here in November.

Somebody spilled the pancakes. Imagine that a plate of two dozen stacked pancakes formed over millions of years (you don’t have to eat it, just imagine it). Alluvium on top of basalt on top of ancient marine sediment and so on and so on. Now imagine that someone spilled that stack of pancakes onto the floor, tilting the mix so that every pancake was visible from the top depending on where you looked; that’s what eons of geological activity have done to the Willamette, creating a heterogeneous salad of soil types that finds even the oldest layers accessible in certain areas. These guys are way into dirt, but of course they are: soil composition is the base component of Terroir, and what the grape vines root into has a huge determinative effect on how the wine tastes. In the vineyards, we jumped into freshly dug soil pits to see the soils for ourselves, and then tried Pinot Noirs from vineyards atop each of those types. Basalt tends to lend perfumed, sweeter notes to a Pinot whereas marine sediment contributes tannin and spice; a winemaker can showcase these characteristics individually as single-Terroir bottlings, or create blends of different sites, which brings me to the next thing I learned:

Blending is an art, not an equation. While Day 1 was spent in the vineyards, Day 2 was in the cellars, and we got a way-instructive seminar on blending. In other regions a winemaker would mix varietals (like Cabernet/Merlot in Bordeaux, for instance), but in Oregon you are blending Pinot with Pinot. Sound easy? Nope. Different barrel types mean different flavours, and the geographical differences between vineyards or even parcels of the same vineyard are striking. Making a delicious whole out of many delicious parts isn’t an obvious exercise, 1+1 does not consistently make a 2. One barrel of Pinot may be lusciously perfumed but lean, another may be full bodied but muted, but combining the two doesn’t necessarily produce a lusciously-perfumed-full-bodied wine – it may come out angular or overly tannic. Blackberry notes from one parcel blended with strawberry notes from a parcel down the hill doesn’t automatically give you a blackberry-strawberry nose, the combinations can be unpredictable and sometimes 1+1= a pony. The mixes and ratios that worked last year almost never work the same way the next year, it’s up to the winemaker and his/her team to taste everything, over a matter of days, and find new inspirations for how the parts come together every vintage.

Acid is not a 4 letter word. Ok, well, it is, but hear me out. Seeking balance in Pinot is pretty much the Willamette’s mission statement, and that means maintaining freshness and acidity, which are natural characteristics of the varietal, and missing from some of the riper, more popular Pinots from further south (in Oregon the term “Californian” is a pejorative, in fact they don’t even call it California, they call it “Baja Oregon”). Case in point: the 2011 vintage, boasting a difficult harvest and higher than average levels of acidity, wines from this year were less ripe and lambasted by critics. What I found, surprisingly, was that this was the vintage that many winemakers were proudest of, the acids gave the wines increased longevity, and it was the vintage that the winemakers showed each other at the Pinot Camp dinners. Oregon’s Pinots have higher acidity than California, but higher fruit intensity than Burgundy, traits that have become the state’s brand. Acidity rocks.

A.V.A.s have feelings too. Ok maybe not feelings, but lots and lots of character. The Willamette’s premier growing areas are in the hills (the elevation has to be above 200ft to avoid the over-fertile Missoula Flood soils deposited during the last ice age). These hills are divided into distinct American Viticultural Areas, or A.V.A.s, and each one sings its own tune: Yamhill-Carlton makes supple, graceful wines while Eola-Amity Hills produces more body. My favourite seminar was on Day 3, where we examined wines from 4 different A.V.A.s and took stabs at blending them together; it was pretty astounding how adding just 5% of the intensely dark McMinnville A.V.A. to a blend takes over the whole thing.

I must thank the legendary Adelsheim vineyards for sponsoring me, and B.C. best-ever wine store Everything Wine for sending me down there. Oregon is a welcoming, unique place, and I can’t wait to go down there again. If you’re going down there soon, maybe I can hide in your trunk, the border guards think that’s really funny.

- Jordan Carrier

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