Hannah Wallace

The New Wave of Oregon Chardonnay

I wrote this in May for British wine magazine Club Oenologique.

Back in early February, before the coronavirus pandemic had shuttered restaurants, bars and cafes everywhere, I met two Oregon winemakers for a lively lunch at Gabriel Rucker’s bustling Canard in Portland, Oregon.

“This is our waving-of-the-flag wine,” said winemaker Josh Bergström as he poured me a splash of his 2016 Sigrid, a restrained, acid-forward Chardonnay which sells for around $110 a bottle. Bergström, who has been making Chardonnay for 22 years, was joined by his wife Caroline and friend and colleague Ken Pahlow, winemaker at Walter Scott Wines in Oregon’s Eola-Amity Hills (pictured above).

Oregon is renowned for its Pinot Noir. Burgundian winemakers have been snapping up vineyards here since 1987, when Domaine Drouhin — the first Burgundy house to make wine outside of France — bought land in the Dundee Hills.

But lately, the buzz has been all about Chardonnay. The Oregon Chardonnay Celebration began in 2012 with 50 attendees. This February, 56 Oregon winemakers poured for over 500 attendees. While New World Chardonnays have a reputation (often unjustified) for being over-oaked and unctuous, the best of Oregon’s have a natural acidity, lower alcohol and an enormous textural expression.

The Willamette Valley, cooled by Pacific breezes coming through the Coastal Range, has a similar cool climate to Burgundy. Summer days are long, with ample sunshine, and nights are cool. Oregon Chardonnays can have the same brightness and minerality as the best white Burgundies and in order to achieve this, Bergström and Pahlow have to pick grapes early. Earlier, in some cases, than others would like.

“For us, a lot of times, we’re picking Chardonnay at the same time a lot of the sparkling guys are picking for their wines,” Bergström says. Winemakers can have heated arguments with growers. Bergström recalls one conversation in which a grower told him it would be “irresponsible” to pick when he wanted to. Finally they agreed: the grower would pick the fruit but Bergström would have to truck it out himself. This conversation — and others like it — pushed Bergström to move to the estate model.

Pahlow, who learned the perks of picking early while working harvest with Dominique Lafon (both in Burgundy and in the Willamette Valley), sources all of his own fruit. Luckily, most of his growers agree with his harvest dates for Chardonnay. He’s also sourcing from vineyards that practice sélection massale, a viticultural technique that replaces dying vines by grafting cuttings from old vines, thereby creating more clonal diversity (and hence uneven ripening) in the vineyard. “When you walk through the vineyard you think, ‘That’s not really ripe. That’s close.’ But when you pull it all together—Oh my god!” says Pahlow. “Like a symphony, you have all these different things contributing to the final voice.”

Josh and Caroline Bergström

The Bergström vineyard

Bergström and Pahlow namecheck roughly a dozen Oregon winemakers who fall into the “natural acidity camp”. In this coterie are such renowned producers as Bethel Heights, Brick House (founded by former CBS foreign correspondent Doug Tunnell), Crowley, Goodfellow, Lingua Franca (where Lafon is consulting winemaker) and Evening Land. Others, like the Drouhins, Brian O’Donnell at Belle Pente, and Brian Marcy at Big Table Farm, pick a little later, and so have some of that riper quality, though they still lead with natural acidity. “The styles diverge, but what [these Chardonnays] all have, regardless of when the winemakers picked, is this tension. This notion of tension and brightness that is indisputably Willamette Valley,” Bergström says.

Oregon’s success with Chardonnay can be traced back to the late 1980s, when pioneering winemaker David Adelsheim — who had studied at the Lycée Viticole in Burgundy — and a few forward-thinking colleagues travelled to Burgundy and asked the ministry of agriculture for Dijon clones. Amazingly, the French said yes. “We didn’t make a hearty Burgundy and we didn’t make a Chablis, so we posed no competition to France,” Bergström says. That’s when the Chardonnay scene in Oregon picked up steam.

All of a sudden, you could ripen Chardonnay alongside Pinot Noir and you were getting these classic aromas and flavors, Bergström says. Winemakers interested in classic expressions of Chardonnay started planting the Dijon clone and forming small groups to talk about techniques in the cellar and growing practices. These conversations have been going on for 30 years.

Ken Pahlow and Walter Scott Wines general manager Erica Landon

Pahlow in the vineyard

Today, with the realisation that Oregon Chardonnay can be as excellent and ageworthy as its Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris is being ripped out and replaced. “There is an unprecedented commitment to Chardonnay in this valley,” Pahlow says. “You’ve never seen more vineyards planting Chardonnay and placing it in the best spots, which in the past would have been reserved for Pinot Noir.”

This thrills both winemakers, who see themselves as Chardonnay champions—at least for their style of Chardonnay. “For the first time, [we’re seeing that] white wine in Oregon can be a world class wine, and can sell for the same price as Pinot Noir,” Bergström says.

Since the pandemic hit Oregon in mid-March, both wineries have had to pivot to online sales only, cancelling all tasting room visits and launch parties. “We are hanging in there, thanks to the fact that our wine warehouses and UPS and FedEX are considered essential businesses, and most Americans have been stuck at home for the past two months and are cooking more and drinking wine,” wrote Bergstrom via e-mail. That said, he’s had to get “much, much leaner” as a business. Pahlow, whose business was already fairly lean (he employs just three people), says everyone on his crew has had to take pay cuts. That said, direct-to-consumer sales have been solid. “We’ve been blown away by the support. We feel very lucky,” he says.

Flower Power

The American cannabis boom goes far beyond the vast ranks of stoners who can finally roll their joints legally. Hannah Wallace looks at one grower focusing on terroir and nuance in the pursuit of weed that isn't about getting you high

                                          Nathan (left) and Aaron Howard (right) at East Fork Cultivars in Southern Oregon 

 

When he was a baby, Wesley Howard was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder with no known cure. Nine years later, doctors detected scoliosis, a spine-deforming symptom of the disease. At 20, Wesley had his first seizure. ‘It was random neurological mayhem,’ recalls his brother, Nathan. ‘A lot of pain, epilepsy, sleep problems.’ 

Though anti-seizure medications helped, they had negative side effects. Eventually, Nathan and his other brother, Aaron, came to realize that a long-stigmatized plant with which Wesley already had a lifelong relationship, might be a more stable alternative—cannabis. The drug not only gave Wesley relief from the pain, it allowed him to eat and sleep. But this was in 2004, when the only cannabis cultivars Aaron could get his hands on—illegally—were high in a compound known as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is intoxicating. And while he loved the relief and escape afforded by the THC high, Wesley didn’t necessarily want to be intoxicated all the time. 

Around 2009, Aaron began hearing about a non-intoxicating compound found in cannabis, cannabidiol (CBD). Known for its anti-seizure and pain-reducing effects, CBD also mitigates the sometimes negative effects of THC, such as anxiety and paranoia. The two are the most important naturally occurring cannabinoids found in plants of the Cannabis genus. And while they have an almost identical chemical structure, a slight difference in the arrangement of atoms is crucial: THC is intoxicating, getting you high; CBD is not, but has proven medicinal properties. 

But very few cannabis cultivars that were available in 2009 contained enough CBD to be medically effective. ‘At the time, you couldn’t find people who had CBD in their lexicon,’ says Nathan, whose position was complicated by the fact that he was then chief of staff for Oregon state senator Mark Hass. During the long period when cannabis was illegal in the US, most breeders bred for one main trait: high THC. Nathan likens high-THC strains of cannabis to home-produced moonshine during Prohibition’s ban on alcohol. ‘Their main goal is intoxication,’ he says. 

‘Everyone I talked to prior to the 2014 Farm Bill was like, “Weed that doesn’t get you high? One: that doesn’t exist. And two: no one is going to want that.” But the Howard brothers were determined not to listen to the naysayers. Instead, Nathan, 29, and his brother, Aaron, 33, set out to do something different: produce craft cannabis that is high in CBD with lower levels of THC than most consumers have come to expect.

Oregon has an increasing reputation for producing some of the best Pinot Noir in the world. But what few wine lovers know is that it is also recognised for producing top-shelf weed. Even before the state legalised recreational cannabis in 2015, breeders and growers flocked to Oregon for its climate (both political and agricultural). In the four years since, these folks have, for the most part, emerged from the shadows of Prohibition. Right now, there are so many recreational cannabis growers in the state – 1,141 at the last count, according to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission – that the market is flooded with high-quality craft cannabis. (Cannabis is still illegal federally in the United States and interstate commerce of cannabis – even from one ‘legal’ state to another – is currently prohibited.) Taking a cue from the wine industry, many of these cannabis growers are practising organic agriculture and marketing their unique cultivars with vivid tasting notes. ‘The familiar rich, vanilla, berry nose, and puffy pistillate development have been carefully nurtured,’ reads a description of Blue Dream from an indoor grower in Portland.

But as more and more ‘cannabis naive’ people explore the plant – whether for the aches and pains of ageing, serious medical conditions, or just for the pleasure of a few hours’ intoxication – it’s clear that less THC and more CBD makes for an easier transition. For those who are accustomed to sipping a glass or two of wine in the evening, nibbling on a half-square of a CBD-dominant chocolate bar could be just the thing. 

Continue reading at Club Oenologique. 

 

Portland's Wine Bar Renaissance

I wrote this round-up of Portland wine bars for Club Oenologique's web site.

A decade ago, you could count the number of wine bars in Portland, Oregon on one hand, but over the past few years there’s been a flurry of openings, from tiny boîtes with simple fare to those that blur the line between wine bar and wine-driven restaurant. Here, a selection of our favourites

The new wave

Arden Wine Bar

Opened in 2018 by Kelsey Glasser (who is also the sommelier), this chic Pearl District restaurant has a fabulous wine list with many rare bottles available by the glass, thanks to the Coravin. Currently available are an ’05 Rioja Gran Reserva, a 2013 Barolo, and a 2005 Alsatian Auxerrois BTG. The bottle list has strengths in France, Italy, and the Northwest, with reserve bottles comprising 30% of the list at any given time.

Executive chef Erik van Kley turns out delectable seasonal dishes such as roasted squash, frisée, smoked soy brown butter, pepitas, and matsutake and goat cheese cappelletti with caramelized onion, walnut, and black vinegar. Glasser also runs a popular wine dinner series—intimate parties with Oregon winemakers like Brian O’Donnell from Belle Pente. The 2020 lineup will be all women winemakers.

Bar Diane

Earlier this year, natural wine maven and graphic designer Sami Gaston opened her jewel-box-like wine bar on Northwest 21st. The clandestine spot (its entrance is on the side of a building, and there’s no sign designating its location) is chic and cheery with hand-painted retro wallpaper and cozy booths.

The food menu is simple but delicious—cheese plates, beet hummus, roasted delicata with yuzu, and housemade pasta. And you’ll definitely discover unique pours—among them a Ramato from Viola and Wabi-Sabi, a light blend of carignan-syrah-zin from Populis. Every bottle on the wine list is available by the glass (for 1/4 the bottle price), and every wine available by the glass is also available by the half-glass. For happy hour (from 4-6PM, Tues.-Sun.), Gaston takes $2 off glass pours.

Bar Norman

Opened by natural wine champion Dana Frank a year ago, Bar Norman is a candelit boîte with a distinctly French vibe. Lights are strung from the ceiling, second-hand tables and chairs sit snugly beside one another, and the music sets an urbane ambience. This isn’t an accidental, as Frank was inspired by some of her favorite Parisian wine bars. 

Frank, who was the sommelier at renowned Italian restaurant Ava Gene’s and then opened Portland’s first all-natural-wine restaurant, Dame, also curates a small selection of bottles from Oregon, Italy, Georgia, Slovenia, and elsewhere. (You can take one to go or enjoy it in-house for a $10 corking fee.)

Come for the “Hummus Hang”—a monthly pop-up of silky hummus, labneh, and homemade challah—and you might get to hear Frank’s husband Scott Frank (winemaker at Bow & Arrow) DJ. All wines are $12 by the glass unless otherwise noted; flights are $18ish for 3 and $24ish for 4. 

The pared-down bottle list is always changing, with a focus on “time capsules”—bottles that are at least a decade old

Les Caves 

Opened two years ago by winemakers Jeff Vejr (of Golden Cluster) and John House and Ksenija Kostic House (of Ovum), this subterranean spot seats only 18 and is seemingly always full. (A tiny alcove in the wall seats four; the rest of the seats are at the bar.)

The fare is minimal—grilled cheese, tinned seafood, local cheeses, Iberian ham—so the wines become the main attraction. There’s usually an Oregon wine being poured by the glass, but Slovenian, Georgian, Hungarian, Spanish, or Portuguese producers are just as common. “We encourage people to drink globally,” says Vejr. The pared-down bottle list (just 50 bottles on hand) is always changing, with a focus on “time capsules”—bottles that are at least a decade old. Check their instagram @lescavespdx for events like a Bubbles tasting with Aurélien Gerbais from Champagne Pierre Gerbais.

Casual spin-offs of Portland institutions

Canard

Next to James Beard Award–winner Gabriel Rucker’s Le Pigeon is Canard, the chef’s all-day café, where you can enjoy high-end French fare like duck rillettes and foie gras dumplings, as well as decidedly more low-brow snacks like a steam burger (an homage to the White Castle patty) and garlic fries topped with an inspired combo of chermoula and shredded gouda.

The wine list, overseen by Andrew Fortgang, is rich in French, Spanish, Italian, and Oregon bottles as well as more unusual finds—a Pet-Nat rosé from Slovenia, an old-vine Palomina from Galicia. In the evenings, the restaurant often hosts wine tastings with producers like Stéphane and Carine Sérol from Loire Valley and Matthew Rorick and Danielle Shehab from Forlorn Hope in California. Get the steam burger for just $3 at happy hour (4-5PM, 10PM-midnight) and wash it down with an aperitif ($6) or a glass of Belle Oiseau, an Alsatian-style blend from Belle Pente ($7).   

Garlic fries at Canard. Photography by David Reamer

Enoteca Nostrana 

Chef Cathy Whims’ design-focused Italian wine spot—with its quartz bar, champagne cork-inspired stools (by Italian studio Orlandini & Radice), and a bathroom sound installation by surrealist poet Ken Nordine—has one of the best wine lists in town. Wine director Austin Bridges emphasises natural winemakers from Italy, France, and Spain (with a smattering of American producers as well). The impressive two-story glass-fronted wine cellar—which you can see from the first-floor dining room—holds over 3,000 bottles; Bridges chooses 24 or so to serve by the glass and half-glass.

The food menu—unlike Nostrana next door—is limited to mostly small plates, but if you come for happy hour (4-6PM) you can get pizzas for $9 and cool small producer wines for $6 a glass. Right now Bridges is most excited about his cache of Domaine Labet Chardonnay, which won’t last long, and the new Nerello Mascalese from Eduardo Torres at Acosta in Sicily. 

OK Omens

Chef Justin Woodward, who has worked at Noma in Denmark and Mugaritz in San Sebastian, came up with a fun seasonal menu at this casual off-shoot of Castagna next door. Luckily, though, the addictive cheddar-filled beignets and buttermilk fried chicken bites are year-round, as is the Torito—a salad of romaine topped with corn nuts, cotija, and a creamy cilantro dressing.

Wine director Brent Braun keeps the wine list playful and approachable, with bottles starting at $36 and descriptors getting right to the point. (“Zero Sulfite Spanish White that Tastes Like Kaffir Lime and Tepache,” and “Chenin Blanc that Probably is Older than Your Dog.”) A big fan of Riesling, Braun has an extensive selection with choices in the aged, dry, and off-dry categories. At happy hour (5-6PM and 10PM-close) food hovers at $10 and some bottles drop to $28. 

Enoteca Nostrana. Photography by John Valls

Wine bars with elevated fare 

Oui! Wine Bar 

For a while, chef Althea Grey Potter was working under the radar in Portland’s buzzy culinary scene. But no more: she was just on the Food Network’s Chopped and Guy’s Grocery Games. Potter turns out simple seasonal dishes that complement Oui’s wine—like chicken liver mousse with cranberry-pear chutney, chives, dijon, and crostini; roasted broccoli with kohlrabi, pickled golden raisins, capers, parsley, sunflower seeds, and caesar aioli; and elk ragu with whipped goat cheese, rosemary garlic grits, fennel pollen, and vegetable giardiniera.

The wine list is mostly Northwest-focused—with bottles from the urban winemaking collective next door and “featured friends” like Hiyu and A.D. Beckham—and an ever-changing rotation of European wines. The excellent happy hour (4-6PM Mon.-Fri. and Sat.-Sun. 1-6PM) includes $6 small plates and $2 off any glass of wine.

Park Ave. Wine Bar 

This wine shop/wine bar hybrid opened in summer of 2016, but it wasn’t until owners Stacey Gibson and Neil Thompson partnered with chef Karl Holl in 2017 that the spot became a go-to destination on the Portland foodie circuit. Holl won Portland Monthly‘s Chef of the Year award in 2018 for his dynamite religiously seasonal menu, full of foraged mushrooms and tempura-battered vegetables. (Don’t miss his signature dish, the 100-layer wild mushroom lasagna, which is off the charts delicious.)

As for wine, there’s a magnificent by-the-glass list—with a mix of Oregon and European favorites—and any bottle in the store can be consumed on site for a $10 corkage fee. One thing that sets Park Ave. apart are its “legacy pours”—old or rare vintages— offered by the 2-ounce or 5-ounce pour. Recently, Gibson poured a 1999 Marcel Deiss Burlenberg Alsace Pinot Noir/ Pinot Beurot and a 2012 Bergstrom Sigrid Chardonnay. In addition to winemaker tastings Friday nights, the shop hosts Blind Tastings on Tuesdays. Identify a flight of three wines correctly, and the whole flight is $1.

Wines at Dame. Photography by Carly E. Diaz

Dame

When Dame opened in 2016, it was the first wine bar/restaurant in Portland to serve 100% natural wine. Though Dana Frank is no longer involved, founding partner Jane Smith has maintained the spirit and depth of the wine list, with by-the-glass pours of Olivier Pithon’s Cuvée Lais from the Languedoc and Jeff Vejr’s Apini, an orange wine that’s bottled under his new Vinous Obscura label.

For the past year, the kitchen has been helmed by star chef Patrick McKee, whose pop-up restaurant within Dame, Estes, is named after his mother. Expect creative comfort dishes like smoky farro salad with grilled romaine and roasted leeks and a sublime spaghetti with meatballs. Dame has an excellent bottle list as well as a small but well-edited bottle shop, too. (Corkage is $25).

The Champagne bar

Ambonnay

Portland may be a mid-size city but it has had its very own Champagne bar for eight years. There was a small panic when longtime owner David Speer decided to up and move to Hood River. But luckily, new owner Michael Knisely—a New Orleans transplant who runs a pop-up Champagne bar there—is keeping it more-or-less the same.

The slip-of-a-bar seats just 20, has an extensive list of bubbly including Vilmart & Cie Grand Cellier d’Or Brut Premier Cru 2013 and Pierre Péters Cuvée de Réserve by the glass—as well as the occasional glass of Oregon sparkling wine. “Nibbles” include truffle popcorn, cheeses, pistachios, and Mantequilla olives.

Ambonnay

Bonus pours: wine shops that double as wine bars

Division Wines 

This is the kind of well-stocked wine shop/wine bar you wish was in your neighborhood. Will and Danyelle Prouty, who drove to Portland in a 1979 Ford Disco Van, opened Division in 2011 and it’s been going strong ever since.

The food menu is humble—large cheese plates, charcuterie boards, spicy carrot hummus and the like—but the real delight here is the broad selection of wines, which span the globe but are expressive and made with thoughtful practices. Even the most knowledgeable wine person will learn something from Will as he pours Oregon pinot noirs from little-known producers like Cória Estates and Shiba Wichern, or a carbonic red from the Loire called L’Hurluberlu.

Pairings Portland

If the Star Wars Wine Experience (eight wines paired to eight characters from Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker) is not your thing, never fear. Owner Jeffrey Weissler is trying to make wine accessible for all, but his knowledge of biodynamic and natural wine runs deep, and he has a well-edited list of some of the best examples of both in his small Northeast Portland bar. Bonus: he has frequent weekend wine tastings with some of the best up-and-coming natural winemakers in the state. He also allows guests to bring in food from the casual eateries across the street. 

An Interview with Winemaker Barnaby Tuttle

 

I interviewed Portland winemaker and raconteur Barnaby Tuttle for the British wine magazine Club Oenologique.

Tuttle during harvest time

 

Drop into Barnaby Tuttle’s southeast Portland winery, and chances are he’ll be tending bar wearing a baseball cap and rocking out to Miles Davis’s psychedelic Bitches Brew.

Tuttle, who runs Teutonic Wine Company with his wife Olga, is one of Oregon’s most interesting winemakers. Though his favourite grape is Riesling—and he makes some truly excellent Rieslings—he also makes Pinot Noir, a Pinot-Gamay blend, a Tannat, and a Pinot Noir, Tannat and Gewürztraminer blend he calls Red Fang, named in honor of a Portland heavy metal band.

Unafraid to challenge conventional wine orthodoxy, Tuttle has made wine from grapes that were kissed with smoke from the 2017 Gorge fires (he called this Rauchwein), and a medium-dry Riesling from grapes that had 100% botrytis (called Candied Mushroom). He’s even made several wines inspired by scenes in This is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest’s hilarious mockumentary about a metal band.

Portland’s Nostrana wine buyer Austin Bridges is a big fan of Tuttle and his wines – particularly his Rieslings: “they are so unique and different, so powerful and deep,” he says. “But they are also very drinkable and good food wines. They’re top notch Rieslings.” Right now, he has Teutonic’s 1908 Riesling on the menu (made in a dry style, as it was in the early 20th century in the Mosel Valley), and he’s bringing on the Candied Mushroom soon. The Teutonic wines are also found in restaurants like California’s Chez Panisse and Atelier Crenn, as well as New York’s Gramercy Tavern and Eleven Madison Park.

Teutonic Wine Company Rieslings

It shouldn’t surprise you that Tuttle had an unorthodox path to becoming a winemaker. Before discovering wine in 2000, he was an ironworker and worked in a wrecking yard. Wanting to save up for a trip to New Zealand, he got a job waiting tables at Papa Haydn, an upscale restaurant/cake shop in Portland, Oregon. “It was a lot more money than at the wrecking yard,” says Tuttle, now 51.

One day, the manager took him aside and said he’d need to take a wine class if he wanted to keep his job. Tuttle, who grew up working class in North Portland, showed up to the class in his Plymouth Barracuda. “I didn’t belong,” he says. But it was at one of these classes, taught at Great Wine Buys, that Tuttle had an epiphany that would change the trajectory of his life. He had always dismissed silent tastings as “pretentious nonsense,” but was amazed when they yielded similar tasting notes from 80% of his classmates.

The moment that really blew his mind, though, was when the instructor organised a side-by-side tasting of three Oregon Pinot Noirs, all from the same producer but from three different vineyard sites in the Willamette Valley. Even though he was just beginning to train his palate, Tuttle could taste differences between the three wines. “The instructor said, ‘That’s this thing called terroir.’”

The concept of terroir—which Tuttle says was “the coolest thing I’d ever been told”—changed everything. He began devoting himself to tasting wines from around the world. A year later, in 2001, he was promoted to wine buyer at Papa Hadyn. In 2005, he and Olga bought a vineyard in Alsea, Oregon (about 20 miles from the coast), and Tuttle started making his own Riesling.

You have a particular interest in German-style wines. How did you come to grow and make Riesling?
When I was the buyer at Papa Hadyn, I needed some Mosel wine and I heard about this guy Ewald Moseler. He brought in 14 Mosel Rieslings, and I bought everything in the bag and said to Olga, “I’m gonna have to figure out how to do that.” It scared the shit out of her because she knows I follow through on crazy shit. I planted a vineyard a short time later, in 2005. That was the Alsea vineyard.

What was it about those wines that excited you so much?

I had already been into cool-climate wines. Dirty, natty are fashionable now – but those wines took it to the next level. Their acid was off the hook, they pair with food really well, and they last a long time. I used to buy a 1979 Riesling from Moseler for $19.

Did people like German Rieslings at Papa Hadyn?
Not always, but it was like helping an old lady cross the street. It doesn’t make any money, but it’s the right thing to do. I loved selling it and it’s fun, but it isn’t the easiest path.

I think people are apprehensive about sweet wines. I call it sugar shame. They think, “You’re an idiot, why are you drinking sweet stuff?” You have to tell them, “No, it tastes good to me.” 

Riesling is confusing because a lot of the high-tone aromatics add to the perception of sweetness and if it smells fruity, people think it’s sweet. It may have 12 grams of acid and a tiny bit of sugar. There’s this Chardonnay: Rombauer. It probably has 14-15 grams of sugar and 5 grams of acid, so the sugar profile is way sweeter, but when people taste it in a buttery Chardonnay they don’t taste the sugar. You have to educate people in a way that’s super respectful to them. The people who I want to educate the most are people like me, who didn’t grow up with privilege.

One more thing about Moseler – I got to be super good friends with him. He took me to Germany in 2007 to meet all these Riesling producers, and one of them became my mentor: Harald Junglen of Weingut Ackermann. I have so many friends over there—I call them the Mosel Mafia. I’m this crazy American with a passion for Riesling. When I’m there, I’ll wake up in the morning and start working with whomever I can.

Tell me about one of your early failures and what you learned from it.

There are so many. When we planted the vineyard at Alsea, I was a purist. This revolution in wine hadn’t happened yet. There were a lot of good Oregon wines – Eyrie, Cristom, Cameron – but there were also all these Pinots that had to chase this Parker profile that was more like Syrah than Pinot Noir. There was that expectation of dark red or purple. A lot of these guys were using enzymes and new oak or oak chips. Some of those wines are probably objectively really good, but I don’t need the sales rep to pour me 15 wines that taste like the same thing.

A lot of the institutionalized things people were telling me, I was rejecting. In France and Germany, you’re not allowed to irrigate your vines—just a little bit of water the first year. I liked these wines so much more. So I planted Alsea, and I said, “I’m not gonna irrigate. Bugger off!”

But they were right. Being very provincial growing up on the west coast and never spending a summer anywhere else, I thought that the dry summers we get here were like everywhere else in the world. Luckily the farmer next to me ran some sprinklers through and saved my vineyard.

I irrigated the first year and let it ride after that—no more irrigation.

Did you have a lack of money at first? Have you had any outside investment?

Oh, fuck. We had no money. We still have no money. I mean, everybody says they have no money and then the check comes after dinner, and it’s $300 per person so you have to cough it up. I’m like the Top Ramen queen. I know how to make things stretch.

After I left Papa Hadyn, I got hired on at Laurel Ridge Winery in Carlton and was promoted to assistant winemaker. I was mechanically inclined. I started fixing all the machines, dialing in the bottling line. Susan Teppola [the owner] let me make my wine there as a privilege. Then I outgrew the space. We got a tiny bit of family help and stripped every nickel out of our house. I could make more money waiting tables, but I wouldn’t get to have this quality of life.

You’ve done some interesting wine experiments. Tell me about the most successful ones.

The Candied Mushroom is my favourite thing in the world. We’ve been able to do it two years in a row—I was fortunate enough to have 100% botrytis twice. It may not happen again. I’m at the mercy of nature. I mean for dessert wines, it’s a desirable thing, but I’m finding that a lot of the things people are taught to believe are not always true.

Last year, you sent a couple of your wines in to a cannabis testing lab to see if they contained terpenes [the aromatic components in plants that give them their particular aroma and, in the case of cannabis, contribute to the type of high you experience.] Why did you do this?

I don’t like to speak in absolutes, and I kept telling people that this wine shares things with cannabis. I knew it was true, but I just wanted to have it on paper. I think it was the Muscat that came back, and it had the same profile as Lemon Sour Diesel.

Is that a strain you particularly like?
It’s an okay strain. I like heady, cerebral stuff. I don’t like to go numb, I like to be tripped out.

What are your favourite wines around the world?

I like most wines. I typically don’t like Sauvignon Blanc, but once in a while I’ll have it and love it. Olga and I recently had a Sauv Blanc from our friends at Division Wine (in Portland) and we looked at each other and said, “I hate Sauv Blanc, but I love this!”

Pinot Noir I love. Chenin Blanc from the Loire (but also from Tom Monroe and Kate Norris’s Division and Jeff Fischer’s Habit Wine). Nebbiolo, Valtellina stuff. It’s the region right up against Switzerland. They have a distinct strain of Nebbiolo called Chiavennasca, and it’s kind of like Barolo but with the finesse of Burgundy. A super mineral, Alpine wine.

Your winery doubles as a jazz club. How does your interest in jazz inform your winemaking?

Smoking weed and listening to jazz is probably the impetus for the Candied Mushroom. But it’s just like anything else: it’s music that takes you out of your safe space. Something that challenges you. I’m one of those people who when he gets curious about something he chases it really hard. 

Do you listen to jazz when you make wine?

A lot. We’ll put Slayer on and country, too. But a lot of psychedelic jazz. I didn’t listen to jazz before the winery. We kept making it sound better and better.

I hadn’t smoked pot in 25 years, and then Olga and I had these big dinner parties, and I’m like “Wait! No one is on their phones, on their computers! This is probably what it was like for my parents in the ’70s. Sitting around the sound system, eating, smoking, drinking.” In that context, it was like “Wow, I get it now. I need to know everything about this music.” I just threw myself out there and started meeting jazz musicians.

How often can people hear jazz at Teutonic now?

Three times a week: Wednesday and Friday nights, and then we have jam sessions on Sunday. There is a word in jazz: motherfucker. It’s the highest compliment: when someone in jazz thinks someone is a very skilled musician. Miles Davis started it. So Wednesday night is for the motherfuckers, and Friday nights are for the younger guys. It’s more of a hip-hop party vibe sometimes. It’s all up-and-coming—people who are taking lessons from older people. Then a jam session on Sunday at 4PM.