Oregon Annual Report: Silver Linings from 2020 and the Quest for Premium Chardonnay

The dozen or so winemakers that associate editor Andrii Stetsiuk and I spoke to during our weeklong trip in in Willamette Valley last month showed resilience and admirable solidarity after Mother Nature surprised them with extreme conditions two years in a row: wildfire smoke in 2020 and record-breaking temperature spikes in 2021.

There was a common thread among the producers who managed to produce exciting wines in both years: meticulous care and hard work in the vineyards, which translated into vibrant and structured wines. Several even produced stellar chardonnays in 2020 despite the trauma of the fires and smoke, which blanketed Willamette Valley due to an inversion layer for more than a week around harvest time.

And while the average score for the nearly 600 wines we tasted was an excellent 92 points, just 44 wines (7 percent) received ratings of 95 points or more, compared with 10 percent in our Oregon annual report last year – reflecting fewer bottlings from top producers of 2020 pinot noirs. In fact, only a single 2020 red, Ponzi Vineyards’ Pinot Noir Chehalem Mountains Avellana 2020, rated 95 points or better.

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF THE USA 2022

“It was the year that never should have been, and we almost didn’t do any pinot noirs ourselves,” said Luisa Ponzi, director of winemaking and viticulture of Ponzi Vineyards, referring to 2020. “Only this one [Avellana] was picked before the fires and we made eight barrels.”

Few producers managed to make reds according to their regular winemaking philosophy. Some declassified their wines while others made rosés and white wines from pinot noir. Even producers like Bergstrom, who picked a large part of their fruit before the smoke event, sold 30 to 40 percent of their wine in bulk due to smoke taint.

“We made a lot of white pinot noir as well as rosé, keeping all press fractions separate,” Alex Fullerton, the owner and winemaker of Fullerton Wines, told me over the phone. “We only decided to make red wine if we thought the bucket ferments tasted OK, and we decided to extend elevage in the barrels so we could see what we were dealing with before bottling. That affected our decision to not bottle certain barrels. It was definitely a big learning experience.”

Other producers we spoke to also tried to find a silver lining in 2020, telling us the lessons they learned from their micro-fermentations. But the conversations brought back difficult memories for some, including Antica Terra, Nicolas Jay, 00 Wines and Domaine Drouhin Oregon, who didn’t release any pinot noir.

“We decided not to make any pinot noir at all,” said Maggie Harrison of Antica Terra. “We brought in half the fruit from the Antica Terra vineyard and it was heartbreaking because the fruit was beautiful. But the numbers [from lab analysis] came back after fermentation and we knew we would never make what we wanted.”

Nevertheless, producers such as Antica Terra, Ponzi, Domaine Serene and Soter made great chardonnays from 2020. In general, chardonnay was much less affected than pinot, whether they were picked before or after the smoke, so long as producers were careful with pressing to minimize extraction of smoke taint particles from the skins.

In the top 15 wines this year, the only 2020 was a chardonnay: the Soter Chardonnay Willamette Valley Estates 2020. Textured and persistent, it’s produced from barrel-fermented, biodynamically grown grapes from their estate vineyards in Yamhill-Carlton and Eola-Amity Hills.

“We were fortunate to be able to pick chardonnay before things got bad,” said Tony Soter, the founder and owner of Soter Vineyards. “2020 was actually great for wine quality. The chardonnay had more hens and chicks [bunches containing normal and smaller, seedless berries] with lower yield and more concentration in the grapes.” But because of smoke impact on much of their pinot noir, Soter only made about 30 percent of normal production.

We have been celebrating Oregon chardonnays for several years now, and producers like Soter agree it has just as much potential as pinot noir.

“The new wave of chardonnay is benefitting from better clones and a general realisation that lower crops make better wines in Oregon,” Soter said. “This commitment to concentration and more sophisticated farming has led to more consistent vintages.”

This belief in chardonnay's continual rise to greatness is echoed by other producers like Cristom, with winemaker Daniel Estrin telling me, “My goal is to create chardonnays that age alongside our pinot noirs."

PLAYING CATCH-UP

For Ben Casteel, winemaker and co-owner of Bethel Heights Vineyard, recognition of chardonnay is under way. “Chardonnay is still priced too low compared to pinot, but grape prices are now catching up,” he said at a dinner with several other producers, explaining that his chardonnay grapes are now priced on par with pinot noir.

Josh Bergstrom, the winemaker at Bergstrom Wines in Dundee, Oregon, added that his highest-priced chardonnays sell out the fastest. While we like that Oregon chardonnays are relatively accessible, perhaps there is a case for increasing prices for the world to recognize their world-class potential alongside Oregon pinot noir. Is the issue now a question of effective marketing and pricing?

Our highest-rated wine this year is, in fact, a chardonnay. The Domaine Serene Chardonnay Dundee Hills Récolte Grand Cru 2019 is intense, layered and powerful. It’s made from a selection of the best chardonnay parcels from Domaine Serene's estate vineyards in Dundee Hills and is only just starting to open up.

2019 was a cool vintage in the Willamette Valley (where most of Oregon’s best wines are grown), with intermittent rains, making it difficult to work in the vineyards but resulting in stunning wines for producers who paid attention to canopy and yield management.

“It was the vintage of fortitude,” said Michael Fay, the vice president of winemaking and viticulture at Domaine Serene. “As a winemaker you have to be so in tune with the weather and you also have to have this sense of what’s going to happen. Everything got ripe in the end with little disease pressure because it was sunny after the rains, and our canopies were open.”

READ MORE PREMIERE NAPA VALLEY: 2021 TAKES CENTER STAGE

Closely following the Récolte 2019 in our top five wines is the Antica Terra Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Obelin 2019. It’s vibrant and peppery, with a tight and firm structure and spicy, wild aromas. Winemaker Maggie Harrison agreed that it was one of the most difficult vintages to work with but resulted in beautiful wines.

“I mean, I wish the wine made itself, but we have to pay so much attention and that makes its mark; even to do nothing is a decision,” Harrison said. “Then we just put things together looking for harmonies in the cellar wherever they exist. We're just looking for beautiful.”

In contrast, 2021 was marked by a “heat dome”, with the hottest day ever recorded in Oregon at 119 degrees Fahrenheit (48 Celsius) on June 29 that year. Thankfully, a rainstorm 10 days beforehand helped the vines through the heat event, and average temperatures dropped in August and even more so in September.

“I don’t think the heat spikes were long enough to affect acidity,” said Arron Bell, assistant winemaker at Domaine Drouhin Oregon. “The harvest started early but it was spread out. It was very beneficial to wait; the vines were a little shocked from the heat.”

We were equally impressed by the Domaine Drouhin Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills Roserock Zéphirine 2021 and Domaine Drouhin Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Dundee Hills Édition Limitée 2021, both of which ranked among our top five wines. The Édition Limitée represents “complete freedom of play on the property to find the most characteristic parcels for a given vintage,” CEO David Millman explained. It displayed earthy and spicy complexity with fantastic tension, but is best approached in a few years. The Zéphirine, from the colder, windier Roserock vineyard in Eola-Amity Hills AVA, is a fragrant, fresh and silky expression, and is already drinking beautifully.

We tasted 37 wines from the outstanding 2018 vintage, which was a dry and warm year that produced opulent and structured pinots. One of our highest-rated wines was the Domaine Serene Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Monogram 2018 – a powerful, polished and full-bodied red made from a selection of Domaine Serene’s three best pinot noir vineyards, aged in barrel for close to two years followed by another two years in bottle before release.

EYES ON 2022

Also landing among our top 10 wines was The Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Noir Dundee Hills South Block The Eyrie 2017, which is a complex, structured and savory red from the cooler 2017 vintage. Although both Monogram and The Eyrie now have five or six years of maturation, they will reward even more time in bottle.

And after the extremes of 2020 and 2021, producers can look forward to bottling their 2022s, which was another unique vintage featuring unprecedented spring frost events and cold weather that delayed the season and produced fruit with racy acidity and in quantity, too, thanks to secondary budding as well as warm, dry weather from June to November.

“These wines are remarkably energetic and lively,” said Jean-Baptiste Rivail, CEO of Ponzi Vineyards, describing their 2022 wines in barrel. “Chardonnays are lithe and bright, [and pinots are] elegant and joyous.”

READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF THE WORLD 2022

Within Willamette Valley, some winemakers believe that Oregon is still too young a region to have accurate distinctions among AVAs, including discrepancies between vineyards planted on flat lands and those on hillsides within a single sub-AVA. Many wines do show a sense of place, be it the dusty tannin quality of wines coming out of Laurelwood, an AVA uncommonly defined by soil type, or the warm and firm profile of wines from Ribbon Ridge. But time and again, we heard the opinion that is it is more important to find quality differentiation in producers rather than appellations.

“When it comes to AVAs, I don’t think we have the experience in grape growing here yet to know where the lines should be,” said Jason Lett, the winemaker for The Eyrie Vineyards. “And I think we need to keep exploring varietals. We need to keep pushing ourselves.”

We tasted delicious wines produced from grapes such as gamay, meunier and sauvignon blanc grown in Willamette, as well as excellent red wines in southern Oregon and to the northeast, where the Columbia Valley and Walla Walla AVAs are shared with neighbouring Washington. Many of the latter wines, particularly impressive syrah and Rhone varietals, are bottled by Washington-based producers.

Fantastic sparkling wines are being produced, too, mostly vintage wines with sharp acidity and low dosage like the Gran Moraine Willamette Valley Yamhill-Carlton Blanc de Blancs 2015. While pinot noir and chardonnay remain respectively the undisputed and rising stars of Oregon, there is more to keep an eye on, and plenty below to enjoy now or in years to come.

– Claire Nesbitt, Associate Editor

Note: You can sort the wines below by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.