Hannah Wallace

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.

The Columbia Gorge: A Food and Wine Paradise

I live just an hour from the glorious Columbia Gorge, and whenever I go there to hike or taste wine, I take mental notes of all the new arrivals—especially in the natural wine sector. Last year, Nate Ready at Hiyu Wine Farm mentioned that Italian winemaker Josko Gravner's nephew, baker Jure Poberaj (who, with his girlfriend Nina Jimenez, owns the White Salmon Baking Co.) was going to start making wine, too. I realized it was time to pitch a story. The imminent opening of the stylish Society Hotel Bingen didn't hurt my chances of getting an assignment. 

It was such a delight to be able to report on all the latest food, brewery, and wine news for Bloomberg Businessweek's Pursuits section. Here's the article in PDF form— Download Gorgenow or see the link to the online version here. 

Or, you can just read it here: 

A decade ago, after graduating college, Jure Poberaj moved to Hood River, Ore. (population 7,806), in search of outdoor adventure. Born in Slovenia and raised in Washington, D.C., Poberaj, now 31, was drawn to the magnificent Columbia River Gorge an hour east of Portland for its mountain biking and world-famous kitesurfing (gusts of wind here, where the river stretches about a mile across, can reach 70 mph). The lively brewery scene didn’t hurt either.

As life happens, he met his girlfriend, pastry chef Nina Jimenez, and together they decided to create their own shop, with Poberaj learning how to bake bread by apprenticing around the Northwest. The duo opened the White Salmon Baking Co. four years ago on the sunny Washington side of the gorge, and it’s been crowded ever since, its counters heavy with luscious huckleberry galettes, rhubarb-poppyseed scones, and hearty wood-fired sourdough loaves. As I sat on the patio savoring a latte and messy bacon-avocado toast topped with jammy egg, Mount Hood’s snow-capped 11,250-foot peak standing majestic in the distance, Poberaj told me of his plans to convert some of his land in White Salmon into a vineyard.

 

 

Jure Poberaj and Nina Jimenez

Photographer: Kate Schwager

In 2017 the Eagle Creek Fire razed almost 50,000 acres of forest in the area, leaving many hiking trails closed and causing $8 million in economic loss to the region, according to a study commissioned by Travel Oregon. Today, as the forest slowly recovers, tourists aren’t waiting, particularly foodies seeking out-in-the-wild natural wine experiences—that is, tasting vintages made with organically farmed grapes, native yeasts, and no additives in the cellar (aside from a bit of sulfur). And as of May, there’s a new stylish place to stay: Society Hotel Bingen.

A standard queen room at the Society Hotel Bingen.

Source: The Society Hotel

The Scandinavian-chic property just down the hill from White Salmon, in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Bingen (population 737), is the second Society property from the Portland-based hospitality group. They converted a 1920s schoolhouse into a book-lined lobby that winks to its past with library carts and a door marked “Principal’s Office.” The gym still has a basketball hoop and original bleachers—and now some kettle bells and yoga mats. “We want to appeal to the adventurous traveler at various stages of life,” says co-owner Matt Siegel.

To that end, there are modern, well-designed bunk rooms and standard rooms with king or queen beds, all with shared baths, while the 20 interconnected private cabins (from $269) offer kitchenettes and hammocks. A spa—complete with saltwater soaking pool, cold plunge, and spacious sauna—has a bar and several fire pits around which guests congregate for drinks and conversation post-shvitz.

The spa pool at the Society Hotel.

Photographer: Micah Cruver

The Wineries

Start your wine-tasting circuit with Savage Grace, about 7 miles west of Bingen in the bucolic community of Underwood, Wash. Winemaker Michael Savage recently bought a vineyard here and is organically farming all 10 acres. Pull up a stool at his new tasting room and gaze down at the spectacular beauty of the gorge as you sip an unexpected 2017 orange gewürtztraminer.

On the other side of Bingen, in Lyle, James Mantone at Syncline Winery makes Rhone-style varietals including mourvèdre, syrah, grenache, and carignan, as well as a bone-dry picpoul and a spicy gamay noir. Pack a picnic lunch for the picturesque garden under white oak trees.

The new tasting room at Savage Grace.

Source: Savage Grace Wines

At Domaine Pouillon, a winding 4-mile drive east past fields with roaming horses and grazing cows, Juliet Pouillon pours her husband Alexis’s fruity and biodynamic Alsatian-style wine, edelzwicker. “There’s something magical about the gorge,” she says, “There’s a can-do energy.” Their first fizzy pétillant naturel will be released on Bastille Day. (Most tasting rooms don’t serve food, but Domaine Pouillon will whip up a cheese or salmon plate on request.)

Back over the bridge to Oregon, a picturesque 10-minute drive east to Mosier, Analemma Wines’ Steven Thompson makes some of the best terroir-driven biodynamic wines around—from a single-vineyard sparkling blanc de noirs to a vibrant tinto blend, which tastes of dark red cherry and dried herbs. The micro-climate in Mosier is similar to Galicia, and he’s lately been experimenting with varieties like the floral-tasting mencia.

Analemma’s vineyards above the hamlet of Mosier (population 459).

Source: Analemma Wines

Dining and Beer

Resolutely casual Hood River is your best bet for healthy, delicious fare. Start your day with Broder Øst’s aebleskivers, Danish-style spherical “pancakes” dusted with powdered sugar and served with lingonberry jam and housemade lemon curd. (The kitchen also makes a mean Swedish hash with two baked eggs, smoked trout, pickled beets, and walnut toast.) Upstairs, the funky—and reportedly haunted—1912 Hood River Hotel has 41 rooms and suites, many with fantastic gorge views.

PFriem Family Brewers, one of Oregon’s best breweries, offers about 20 beers on tap—from a hazy IPA to a Belgian strong. The new seasonal menu is excellent, too, in which sambal honey kicks up buttermilk fried chicken and a lentil-mushroom veggie burger with spring garlic aioli sets a new standard.

New on PFriem’s spring menu: buttermilk fried chicken, served over creamy polenta with braised chard.

Source: PFriem Family Brewers

Down the street, New Yorkers Dan and Jenn Peterson opened Ferment Brewing Co. last August. Dan, who cut his teeth at Brooklyn Brewery, makes flavor-packed Belgian and French farmhouse ales as well as lagers, pale ales, and stouts. In a state where hoppy IPAs are king, this is a refreshing change, and the offerings pair perfectly with the Mediterranean-inflected menu of flatbreads and slow-roasted meats—plus Jenn’s housemade frozen yogurt, a light treat befitting active Hood River.

On the upscale end of the dining spectrum, Celilo still stands strong after 14 years, with skillet-roasted Totten Inlet clams and rich pork sugo over rye-flour gnocchi, served with purple broccoli sprouts.

A charcuterie board and beers from PFriem.

Source: PFriem Family Brewers

But the area’s most memorable reservation is high in the hills above town at Hiyu Wine Farm. Hiyu means “the big party” in Chinook Jargon, a Pacific Northwest pidgin language, and Nate Ready and his partner, China Tresemer, don’t disappoint, bringing in chefs such as Gunnar Gislason from Michelin-starred Dill in Iceland to collaborate on locally legendary dinners. If you aren’t in town for one, opt for a lavish family-style weekend lunch. Otherwise, wine tastings are Thursday through Monday by appointment and include seasonal snacks such as Columbia River smelt escabèche and griddled pea shoots with cured duck yolk. Ready’s field blends are wild experiments in natural wines with historical antecedents: Some 120 grape varieties are grown side-by-side, then fermented together. Falcon Box, a Burgundian field blend made to approximate a wine made in 1800s Burgundy, has a brothy, umami flavor.

Some Hiyu wines—including a dolcetto made by Poberaj—are served at White Salmon Baking Co.’s Monday night pizza parties, with its seasonal wood-fired pies and a natural-veering list that also includes little-known producers in Slovenia and Italy. Turns out Poberaj’s great uncle is cult Italian winemaker Josko Gravner, known for aging wines in terracotta amphorae, and he’ll be heading to Oslavia, Italy, to work harvest with him this fall.

Sandwiches at White Salmon Baking Co.

Photographer: Kate Schwager

Explore the Gorge

The food and wine may be great, but the best part of the gorge is the outdoors

Biking
Rent an e-bike from Sol Rides for the 16-mile round-trip journey from Hood River to the hamlet of Mosier via the Historic Columbia River Highway, the first designated scenic highway in the U.S., now a pedestrian and bike path. The 1920s feat of engineering clings to sheer cliffs and burrows through basalt rock. Pause under the Mosier Twin Tunnels for unparalleled views.

Hiking
On the Oregon side of the gorge, the popular, short-but-steep Angel’s Rest Trail has reopened after the fires, though the forest service still urges caution. Head to the Washington side for views of Mount Hood. Beginners can try Catherine Creek; the longest trail is just 5.5 miles round-trip. East of Bingen, the 7.8-mile Coyote Wall Trail is more of a challenge and also popular with mountain bikers. For more hikes, the Friends of the Columbia Gorge maintains a detailed list—just remember to be on the lookout for poison oak and ticks.

Kitesurfing
For lessons, Kite the Gorge is the best place to find a pro. Private two-and-a-half-hour lessons start at $285.

Kitesurfing on Hood River.

Photographer: Zach Dischner

Vignerons to Watch

Three up-and-coming Gorge winemakers Hiyu’s Nate Ready is excited about right now. Not all have tasting rooms, so check local stores for a bottle to take home.

Michael Garofola of Cutter Cascadia
“Michael comes from this Italian-influenced background, and he’s also steeped in classical wine,” says Ready of Garofola, currently the sommelier at Portland’s James Beard Award-winning Beast. Now he’s making his own dolcetto (a red and a rosé) from fruit he farms at Flotow Vineyard, above Hood River. His 2017 vintage of Strawberry Mullet captured the smoke from the Eagle Creek fires; the 2018 vintage is juicy with hints of watermelon.

Bethany Kimmel at Color Collector
After working in the cellar at Analemma, Kimmel struck out on her own. So far, she’s focusing on gamay—“the wines are lovely and perfumed and have amazing textures,” says Ready—but she just purchased a vineyard above Snowden, Wash., and plans to plant grapes like jacquère, chasselas, and persan.

Graham Markel at Buono Notte
Markel, who started his project within Hiyu, focuses on Italian varietals like sangiovese and pinot grigio. (He also makes a vermouth.) “The wines have an amazing fragrance and texture and, I think, a rare beauty,” Ready says. “They’re really special.”

 

 

 

Celebrating the Maialata—Italy's Festival of the Pig

Cathy Whims has been resurrecting the classic Italian Maialata celebration in the Willamette Valley for the past 7 years. I wrote about the colorful event—a festive celebration of food, community, and nose-to-tail eating—for Saveur. 

When Dario Cecchini was a child, he looked forward to the day each year when the pig was butchered. "It was an ode to life, a moment of sacrifice," says Cecchini, the famed butcher from Antica Macelleria Cecchini in Panzano—in Italy's Chianti region. "We would take care of the animal for a whole year. They were part of the family. But then Carnevale would arrive. Carne is meat. So for us, it was a celebration of meat."

Cecchini is describing la maialata di carnevale, often shortened to maialata, the festival of the pig that is practiced in many parts of Italy, typically in the late winter or early spring, before Lent begins. This year, Cecchini celebrated his third maialata stateside near Portland, Oregon, where Italian-focused chef Cathy Whims hosts one each year for around 100 ticketholders at a nearby Willamette Valley winery.

Traditionally during maialata in Italy, family would arrive in the morning from far and wide to assist in the slaughter and butchering of a fattened pig. (Family members would help the host process a ready pig, and a week or two later, the host would help another relative do the same.) No part of the pig was wasted or is today: the entire animal, even its blood, is used in dishes. Some such as roasts or pastas are prepared and eaten that day—including crispy pork skins, uncured soppressata sausages (made with meat from the pig's head and feet), blood sausages, and porchetta. Other parts would be processed into long-lasting salami, pancetta, prosciutto, and other cured preparations, meant to last the better part of a year. Wine flows throughout the day as aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends labor in the kitchen. And at the end of the day, there is a huge celebratory feast for everyone who has helped prepare the meal.

"It was done anywhere where people are raising pigs, so that's practically everywhere in Italy," says Italian food expert Faith Willinger, author of Eating in Italy, Adventures of an Italian Food Lover, and Red, White & Greens: the Italian Way With Vegetables, though she adds that the name and culinary traditions are slightly different in each region. (In Sardinia, for example, porceddu, or suckling pig, is a primary focus of the celebration.) Daniele Vettorello, a bartender at Nostrana, an Italian restaurant in Portland, Oregon, grew up going to maialate in his village, San Giorgio di Lomellina (southwest of Milan in Lombardy), and still does. At his house, maialata results in friendly competitions over who makes the best salami, pancetta, and prosciutto—often judged by the ones leftover from the year prior. "The real maialata is more than a party," he told me, as we sat in Nostrana's bustling dining room with Whims, who is the chef-owner there. "You feed the whole family."

 

Whims first had her own experience while visiting a winery in Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia. She, her husband David West, and Willinger were staying at a winery, Le Vigne di Zamo, in Udine. “The winery had held a maialata and they had made this video pastiche of the photographs,” says Whims. “We got so excited about the idea. We thought, ‘How great would that be to do a version of it in Oregon?’”

 

When Whims returned to Portland, she contacted Rudy Marchesi at Montinore Estate. "I thought he'd be the perfect person because he's such a Renaissance man. He makes his own salami, cheese, and biodynamic wine, and has a beautiful winery." This past March was the seventh year of their Oregon maialata. Similar to how the celebration has evolved over time in Italy—you're no longer permitted to slaughter a pig in your home, for example—it evolves slightly each year in Oregon, too. Attendees drove up Montinore's long tree-lined driveway around noon. After coffee from local Caffe Umbria and a taste of burro del Chianti—lard whipped with Chianti spices, slathered on toasted ciabatta—everyone headed for the winery.

 

The first event of the day was a butchery demonstration with Dario Cecchini. As Cecchini broke the animal down into primal cuts, he gave an eloquent disquisition on the importance of the pig in Italian culture and the merits of being a butcher. As he spoke, transfixing the 100-plus gathered attendees, he would occasionally hold up a cut for all to see. "Prosciutto!" he said, at one point, holding up the pig's leg. Nostrana's in-house butcher Rob Roy and the Portland Meat Collective's Camas Davis broke down the remaining parts of the pig that Cecchini had begun

 

Montinore's wine flowed freely all day—the L'Orange, a blend of pinot gris and muscat ottonel, and the Rosso di Marchesi, a blend of teroldego, lagrein, pinot nero, sangiovese, and nebbiolo, were served with lunch. Chef Sarah Schneider and the team at the Nightwood Society—a female-owned private event space for farmers, butchers, and creatives in Portland—taught a sausage-making class. And Whims and Paolo Calamai of Portland's Florentine restaurant Burrasca taught everyone how to make gnocchi (Whims) and wild boar ragu (Calamai). The gnocchi and ragu were cooked and served as a snack. There was also a class on salting and preserving taught by traveling chefs Eric Bartle and Sarah Kundelius.

 

At the end of the day, guests migrated down to the wine cellar, which had been transformed into a romantic dining room with hanging lights, a candelabra, and an accordion player. Guests sat at four long tables, clinking wine glasses and sharing food family-style, some of which they spent the afternoon crafting. The first course, made by chef Rick Gencarelli of Lardo and Grasa, was an elevated pasta e fagioli, made with prosciutto, Ayers Creek borlotti beans, garganelli infused with Oregon black truffles, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and brown-butter gremolata—all topped with microplaned Perigord black truffles. The pasta was followed by a chicory salad with frisée, wild cress, and finely slivered blood oranges; Umbrian lentils with salsa verde; and roasted kale and sprouting broccoli from Gathering Together Farm. At last, the pork dishes arrived on platters: Tuscan-style porchetta (which Cecchini had prepared at the end of his demo), stinco di maiale (braised pork shank) prepared by Nostrana's Rob Roy, and pork-and-fennel sausages.

 

By the end of the day, the guests at Whims’ event had made new friends and connections, and bonded over this honoring of the pig and this coming together of family and community. For some, it even revived memories. A man from Sardinia approached Marchesi and shared: “Yesterday my wife said to me, ‘We’re going to this thing at a winery, and you’re gonna love it.’ I walked into the cellar tonight and I was instantly transported 6,000 miles to my mother’s kitchen.”

 

The Futurist: Oregon's Bertony Faustin

I got to profile Bertony Faustin, a fantastic winemaker here in Oregon, for the Makers issue of Food & Wine. See below for the full article. 

When Bertony Faustin opened his Abbey Creek Vineyard tasting room in 2012, he’d regularly greet customers who’d then ask, “Who’s the winemaker?”

“When I’d say, ‘It’s me,’ they’d have this look of disbelief,” Faustin says. Faustin, who is black and hails from Brooklyn, knew he was the first recorded black winemaker in Oregon, but, he adds, he didn’t want to own it. At least, not until 2015, when Oregon was celebrating 50 years of winemaking. “All they were talking about was legacies, pedigree, the past,” says Faustin. “No one was talking about the future.” 


So Faustin—with the help of his filmmaker friend Jerry Bell Jr.—decided to make a documentary about Oregon’s minority winemakers. The film, called Red, White & Black: An Oregon Wine Story, tells the stories of Faustin and several of his winemaking colleagues. Among them are Jesus Guillén, the Mexican-American winemaker at White Rose Estate who passed away in November 2018, but in just his second year as head winemaker, earned a 96 from the Wine Advocate for his “whole cluster” Pinot Noir; Jarod Sleet, now the assistant winemaker at ROCO Winery, who in the film was a cellar assistant at Argyle; Remy Drabkin of Remy Wines in McMinnville, Oregon, who worked her first crush in 1995 (at Ponzi) and is gay; and André Mack, a former sommelier at Per Se who now makes wines in Oregon under the Maison Noir label. A disparate crew, they have in common a desire to reach non–wine drinkers by making wine more accessible and less pretentious than how it is often perceived; the film vividly documents their ambitions and achievements. 


                                                                                    The trailer for Red, White & Black: an Oregon Wine Story 

 

Faustin himself could be called a maverick winemaker, though not because he’s a minority. His 15-acre vineyard is located in the urban West Hills of Portland, Oregon. When he decided to take over his in-laws’ vineyard in 2007, he had never had so much as a sip of wine. “I was like, worst case: I’ll make raisins!” he says, laughing. Now, after 10 years of winemaking, he’s got a sure hand. He works with six grape varieties: Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Albariño, and Gamay Noir. Several of these wines sell out quickly. But Faustin is not much interested in chatting about terroir or skin contact. Geeky wine talk along those lines, he says, alienates the very people he hopes to bring into the wine-drinking fold. Instead, at his tasting room, hip-hop and R & B are the backdrop, creating a mellow, comfortable atmosphere for drinking wine—one where everybody feels welcome.

Three to Try

To purchase Faustin’s wines or plan a trip to the tasting room, visit abbeycreekvineyard.com.

2017 Abbey Creek Chardonnay Best of Both ($25)


This rich Chardonnay has a honeysuckle scent and balanced acidity. A blend of oak and stainless, it can please both camps of Chardonnay drinkers.

2014 Abbey Creek Pinot Noir Cuvée ($45)


Faustin sources the fruit for this elegant Pinot from his top block of estate vines for a wine with hints of blackberries and a silky mouthfeel.

2017 Abbey Creek Gewürztraminer ($29)


Only available on 
tap at the Abbey Creek tasting room, this slightly effervescent Gewürztraminer is refreshingly bone-dry and reminiscent of cider.

The Next Wave of Sustainability in Wine

By now, the wine-drinking public is familiar with sustainability descriptors like organic, biodynamic, and even natural. They’ve been to LEED-certified wineries, and they may even have heard about a more holistic certification, called B Corps, which takes into account the way a business treats its employees, its environment, and its community. But a new wave of winemakers is working with ultra-sustainable practices—some of which are so groundbreaking they don’t even have a certification yet. SevenFifty Daily spoke with winemakers who are setting the bar with green building and agroecological farming practices to learn why they’re worth pursuing—and how they can help create a more sustainable future.

A “Living Building” Tasting Room

A few years ago, when Cowhorn winemaker Bill Steele was planning a new tasting room at his Jacksonville, Oregon, winery, he had a game-changing conversation with Stephen Aiguier, the founder and president of Green Hammer. Steele and his wife, Barbara, knew they wanted a green building. Aiguier listened as Steele talked about his aversion to chemicals in the field and in the cellar.

“We wanted a building that was consistent with our biodynamic farming philosophy,” says Steele, whose winery is located in the Applegate Valley AVA. “And Stephen said, ‘It sounds like you’re describing the Living Building Challenge.’” Once Aiguier started explaining it, the Steeles were all in.

 

The most rigorous standard for green buildings in the world, the Living Building Challenge (LBC) was formulated by the Seattle-based International Living Future Institute (ILFI) in 2006. It’s designed around seven performance areas, referred to as petals. Unlike other certifiers of green buildings, the ILFI won’t certify a building until a full year after it’s completed. That’s because some of the building’s petals—namely, energy and water—require 12 months of continuous occupancy before they can be shown to work in accordance with the challenge. The Energy Petal requires that the building produce 10 percent more energy than it consumes; the Water Petal requires (among other things) that 100 percent of the project’s water needs be supplied by captured precipitation or other natural closed-loop water systems.

There’s a reason it’s called a challenge.

For Green Hammer and the Steeles, it was the Materials Petal that posed the biggest challenge—it requires the architect to reject materials that contain any one of more than 800 chemicals on the International Living Future Institute’s Red List. Since there are no reporting standards for the building industry, this means the architect of an LBC project has to call each manufacturer to ask if its products contain any of the Red List chemicals. Aiguier spent more than a thousand hours on the phone with companies, asking questions about their products’ components and microcomponents. When making these calls, he says, “you sound like a crazy hippie. A lot of people essentially hang up.”

Barb and Bill Steele of Cowhorn. Photo by Clair Thorington.

But the Green Hammer team persisted. Fortunately, the ILFI has a product database of nontoxic building materials (made without Red List chemicals) called Declare. High-profile companies—Etsy and Google, for example—have publicly signed on to using Declare products in their buildings. As a result, materials vendors are starting to reformulate their products and be more transparent about what’s in them.  

In May 2018, Cowhorn’s tasting room became the first winery tasting room in the world to be named a Certified Living Building. And it’s not that other wineries haven’t tried. Sokol Blosser, which had already achieved a U.S. Green Building Council LEED certification for its barrel cellar in 2002, aimed for LBC with its new tasting room but was unable to achieve certification.  

Continue reading at SevenFifty Daily. 

 

Embracing Smoke Taint as an Expression of Terroir

This story appeared on SevenFifty Daily on July 25.  

The 2017 Eagle Creek fire is seared into Oregon winemaker Michael Garofola’s memory. Since February 2017 he had been working with a 0.61 acre block of Dolcetto for his Cutter Cascadia label in the von Flowtow vineyard on the west side of Hood River, and the fruit was just beginning to ripen. On September 18, the fire was raging. Hood River was on Stage 2 evacuation notice—locals might get a call at any moment to drop everything, grab their family members and pets, and get out. In the meantime, Garofola—who leases this block and farms it solo—was thinning fruit and taking samples.

“You’re out there with a bandana over your face in the vineyards,” he says. “The sky is orange. It’s just like what you imagine the last skies over Vesuvius looked like. It’s dark. It’s eerie.” That particular day, Garofola didn’t get the call. “I did my work for the day, packed up, and drove back to Portland.”

During the fire, which started on September 2 and wasn’t fully controlled until November 30, the grapes were going through véraison—the onset of ripening, when the berries change color. “If the fire had happened a month before, it wouldn’t have been a problem,” explains Garofola. “But post-véraison [the grapes] are ripening, losing acidity, but their skins are becoming more porous.” The porousness makes it easier for the skins to soak up the smoke. Phenolic glycosides contained in the smoke, such as guaiacol and eugenol, which are initially bound with sugar, break apart and become volatile during fermentation.

the Dolcetto vineyard during the fires [Credit: Michael Garofola of Cutter Cascadia] 

 

A Smoky Vintage

Most winemakers and critics abhor the taste of so-called smoke taint, using descriptors like “burnt,” “medicinal,” or “wet ashtray” to describe it. But instead of letting the grapes sit on the vine—as some neighboring growers did—or selling them off to the bulk market (a common practice at bigger wineries when smoke taint is detected), Garofola decided to go ahead and make a rosé and a red under his Cutter Cascadia label. Earlier this month, he released 30 cases of his rosé, called Strawberry Mullet, to Portland area shops including E&R Wine Shop, Division Wines, and Pairings Portland. He’ll bottle his red in late July.

“This is the climate of the vintage, without a doubt,” says Garofola, who is also the sommelier at Beast in Portland. “It’s not something I want to happen every year, obviously, but at the same time, I did with it what I felt was the best for the wine.” That is, he manipulated the wine as little as possible. After forest fires, some winemakers use carbon filtering, reverse osmosis, or manufactured yeast strains to mitigate or mask smoke taint, but not Garofola.

Making wine without such processes or additives was “the most authentic thing for me to do,” he says. “I’m not apologizing for the smoke. I’m not the one who started the goddamn fire! I’m just leaning into it.” Garofola says the smokiness of the rosé, which had almost no skin contact, is muted. The red—which obviously will have had more skin contact by the time he bottles it at the end of June—is a little riskier. Right now, the wine conjures a vivid sense memory for Garofola. “It reminds me of a tobacco shop my old man used to take me to in Indiana,” he says. “It smells exactly like black cherry tobacco.”

Hiyu Wine Farm winemaker Nate Ready is also unapologetic about his smoky 2017 vintage. He grows over 100 varieties at his main vineyard, five miles south of Hood River—this was the site that was most affected by the fires. In fact, Ready believes there’s a delicacy to these wines that comes from the fire, which delayed ripening and—because of the cover of smoke—created lower-alcohol grapes with a finer thread of acidity.

“The wildfires are totally part of the terroir,” says Ready. “That’s what’s so cool about wines—they reflect the culture and the ecosystem. And living in the West, we should get used to it. This is going to be part of the flavor of living in the West.”  

Ready dislikes the term smoke taint because it labels a smoky character as a flaw. The smoky nature of his 2017 wines has made him more attuned to élevage, the progression of wines as they ferment in barrels. “You’re looking to take the wine to a place where these things express themselves in the cellar and evolve to a place where—Oh!—it’s more stable and compelling,” says Ready. “For sure, it’ll still change in bottle, but in ways that are more subtle.” As a result, he will probably hold the 2017 wines in barrel longer than usual. (Nothing has been bottled yet.)

Ready plans to talk openly about the forest fire’s effect on the grapes at tastings and in his newsletter. “I would just say, ‘There was a fire in 2017 and you can taste it in the wine. You can taste it structurally,’” says Ready, whose wines—he makes rosé, white, and red—are bottled under his Hiyu and Smockshop Band labels.

A Rauchwein for Aging

Barnaby Tuttle at Teutonic Wine Company in Portland is a little more brazen. Last year he committed to buying Riesling grapes from Laszlo Regos at Pear Blossom Vineyard in the Columbia Gorge. Needless to say, he didn’t anticipate a devastating wildfire—or that the grapes would come back from the lab with an exceptionally high sensory threshold level of guaiacol. Knowing that the chemical guaiacol was concentrated in the skins, Tuttle pressed the wine—whole cluster—as fast as he could. “And then I thought, ‘Hey, let’s have some fun. Let’s make a deliberately smoked wine!’” Tuttle recalls.

Tuttle explains that he and his crew crushed the fruit, did pigéage, or punch-down, and gave the wine four days on the skins. The result, which he bottled in April and calls Rauchwein (“smoke wine” in German), has an ever-so-subtle smoky scent. “I can feel it texturally on the palate,” says Tuttle, who has made enough Riesling to know what the mouthfeel should be. “And then, in the finish, there’s a kick that makes me think of mezcal.”

But the Rauchwein may become smokier over time. Teutonic’s tech notes for the wine say it’s meant to age “a long time.” Knowing that the smoky phenols may become more prominent as the wine ages, I ask if that concerns him. “I hope the taint grows in bottle,” he says. “I suppose there is a point [at which] the taint could be overwhelming, but it would have to grow exponentially for it to be a distraction. Maybe there is a risk to making interesting wines?”

After the winemakers grapple with the effects of the smoke and fire, however, it’s up to the retailers to sell the wines. Some retailers are talking up the smoked character of the 2017 vintage; others, not so much. Jeffrey Weissler, owner of Pairings Portland, has been pouring Garofola’s Strawberry Mullet for guests and is almost sold out. “People like it,” he says. “It’s an interesting, delicious, funky wine.” But he doesn’t push the forest fire angle. “It’s a sore spot for a lot of winemakers,” he says.

But Brent Braun, the sommelier at Portland’s OK Omens and Castagna, does talk to guests about the two smoky rosés he has on the by-the-glass menu at OK Omens. One is Strawberry Mullet and the other, a Dolcetto rosé made by winemaker Darryl Joannides of Viola Wine Cellars in Portland. “People love them. Especially the Strawberry Mullet because it’s so intensely smoky,” he says. “It’s so obvious. It’s fun!” Viola’s Dolcetto, on the other hand, is “lightly smoked,” says Braun. “It hits the classic notes. It’s a pretty light, refreshing patio rosé.”

Michael Wheeler of PDX Wine distributes Teutonic’s wines to restaurants and wine shops across Oregon and, when he’s doing a tasting, likes to talk about the smoky smells and flavors that resulted from the forest fires. “Or as I like to call it, terroir from the sky,” Wheeler says. “Taking what nature gave and making a true, full terroir wine—land and air. A pure wine of nature and the vintage.”

 

The Four Top: Climate Change, Wildfires, and Rosé in Winter

I was on Katherine Cole's the Four Top again—a marvelous podcast about hot-button topics in food and drink.  You can listen to our wide-ranging discussion about climate change and wine, the wildfires (and wine), and why rosé should also be enjoyed in the winter, below.  The other guests were climatologist Dr. Greg Jones, writer Jordan Michelman from Sprudge, and Katherine herself. 

Listen to "Ep. 45: Dr. Greg Jones | Hannah Wallace | Jordan Michelman" on Spreaker.

Preserving Oregon's Wine Legacy—One Interview at a Time

I did a Q&A with the director of Linfield College’s pioneering Oregon Wine History Archive for SevenFifty Daily. 

In SevenFifty Daily's Unsung Heroes series, we profile behind-the-scenes professionals in the drinks industry who are essential to making businesses function but who don’t normally get the spotlight.

Archivist Rich Schmidt (right), behind the camera. 

In 2011, Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, established the Oregon Wine History Archive, an ambitious project to chronicle and preserve all aspects of the Oregon wine industry. Since then, Linfield—which has also hosted the International Pinot Noir Celebration (IPNC) every summer since 1987—has become a significant hub of wine education. In March of this year, after a $6 million gift from Grace and Ken Evenstad of Domaine Serene in the Dundee Hills, it became the first liberal arts school in the country to offer an interdisciplinary bachelor’s degree in wine studies.

The archive, located in a climate-controlled room at the Linfield library, houses everything from old photos and receipts to wine country guidebooks from the early ‘80s and land-use planning maps. “It’s a sweet space for a college of our size,” says Rich Schmidt, the director of archives. The archive’s online component is growing too. It currently contains over 200 oral histories—video interviews with winemakers, viticulturists, and others immersed in the state’s wine industry. SevenFifty Daily asked Schmidt about the genesis of the project, why Eric Asimov made the cut, and which oral histories will always stick with him.

Continue reading here. 

 

Portland Visionary Rukaiyah Adams

Every so often an assignment comes along that takes you out of your typical beat, making you so honored to be a journalist because it allows you to meet wise and captivating people and learn about their work and their passions. This was one of those moments. I got to profile Rukaiyah Adams for Bon Appetit's Healthyish series on "Superpowered Women"—women who are redefining wellness in their communities. As I spoke to Rukaiyah over lunch at her southwest Portland home, I realized that we have a lot in common: she's a runner, she invests in startups run by women and people of color (I don't do that, but I write about them), she loves Oregon wines (particularly Antica Terra) and she longs for our city to be a place where everyone is included in its successes.  I learned a lot from interviewing her. 

 

When Rukaiyah Adams left a New York City–based hedge fund in 2010, a non-compete clause forced her to take an extended break from work. Missing her mom, who had just been in a car accident, she flew to her hometown of Portland, Oregon.

“I went for a run in Forest Park. It was raining lightly, and the sound of rain tapping against the leaves, the smell of soil...” and that’s when it came to me: I am not a New Yorker.”

Nine months later, she packed her bags and moved to Portland, a decision that had major ripple effects. Not only did living in Portland reignite her relationship with David Chen, a lawyer in the Bay Area, it helped her switch gears professionally.

“I could make ten times more in New York, but I was past the mastery part,” Adams tells me, as she putters around the kitchen of her 1920s English-cottage-style home, making us lunch. “I needed to develop a point-of-view.” In Portland, she landed a job as director of investment management at the Standard, a financial services group, and, in 2013, was appointed to the board of the Oregon Investment Council, the state pension fund.

Today, Adams, 44, is the chief investment officer at Meyer Memorial Trust, the third largest foundation in Oregon, with assets of $788.5 million. Started by Oregon grocery store magnate Fred G. Meyer, the trust gives away roughly $35 million a year to Oregon-based social justice and advocacy organizations, equitable education and affordable housing initiatives, and environmental programs. These grants are only possible due to the success of the Meyer investment portfolio, which Adams manages.

“Rukaiyah is tackling big, thorny, important, often fraught issues,” says Eve Callahan, an executive vice president at Portland-based Umpqua Bank and long-time admirer. “And she’s doing it with such grace and generosity.”

But when I ask her what she does at Meyer, Adam’s reply is pithy: “My job is to make the money.”

Long runs in nature—she loves jogging along the Willamette River as well as in 5,200-acre Forest Park—help keep Adams poised in her high-pressure position. “Believe it or not, being healthy and having outlets is pretty important to the technical requirements of the job,” she says as we sit at her marble kitchen table, eating iceberg lettuce with goat cheese, sliced cucumbers and radishes, and shaved carrots, along with avocado smeared on toasted sourdough. “If the person managing money is pulling out her hair and crying, it generates a lot of stress!”

In high school, she played basketball and soccer, and, at Carleton College in Minnesota, she was passionate about rugby. Running has even spurred radical investment changes that have been good for the Meyer portfolio.

“Once, in 2014, I was running in Forest Park and stopped and heard the trickle of water and decided that day to switch our investments from oil to clean water.” She has not regretted the decision—global water stocks continue to outperform oil stocks by a considerable margin.

More recently, Adams has shifted Meyer’s strategy from a more traditional one of investing in global markets to mission-related regional investing.

“Historically, Meyer has focused on venture capital and accelerators—which has done quite well,” says Adams. “But, looking back over who has benefitted from that investing, it’s the same people who normally benefit.” Over the past year, Adams has stepped up investments in businesses run by women and people of color. In 2016, she invested $2 million in Nitin Rai’s Elevate Capital, a fund that invests in Pacific Northwest startups led by women and minorities. (Elevate was a seed investor in feminist tomboy clothing company Wildfang as well as in Hue Noir, a makeup company geared to people of color.)

But sexy startups only comprise a small part of Oregon’s economy. “The reality is that most brown people and people of color are employed by small businesses. And we need to grow those businesses,” Adams says. At the moment, Adams has her eye on a few businesses around the state. She’s particularly keen to invest in firms that bridge the urban-rural divide. “They don’t know it, but I’m watching them closely,” Adams says, conspiratorially. “I’m watching how they respond to stress. How they manage their time. How steady they are over time. When you invest in someone, it’s like getting married to them.”

On that subject, on New Year’s Eve, Adams wed Chen in an elegant ceremony at the Parker Palm Springs. Adams paused as she sliced vegetables for our salad to show me some photos: One of her and Chen all dressed up in their wedding best, looking radiant and joyous; one of Adams hugging her mom in front of a decorative concrete screen wall.

Several times during our interview, she tells me with pride what a fabulous cook Chen is. The youngest of three boys (by about a decade), he spent a lot of time at home with his mom, who taught him to be confident in a kitchen. He has a habit of leaving a cookbook lying on the kitchen counter—Andy Ricker’s Pok Pok, for instance, or Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty—with a note: “Pick a recipe.” Adams grabs the Pok-Pok cookbook and flips to Ricker’s recipe for Vietnamese turmeric-marinated catfish with noodles and herbs, and I glimpse a note she scrawled beneath it commemorating that he made it for her on Valentine’s Day last year. Adams says their division of labor is simple: she takes care of the baking and roasting, and he does all the cooking. (She happily does the dishes.)

Adams also loves Oregon wines, particularly winemaker Maggie Harrison’s Antica Terra. (“All I do is hug the bottles when I get them,” Adams says.) But her weekday routine does not allow for leisurely meals—at least until dinner. Like many other West Coast investors, she’s up by 6:00 a.m. to check the markets. “So even if I’m not at work, I’m working.” If she runs in the morning before work, she’ll grab a yogurt or piece of fruit on her way out the door. “I love those shredded wheat things that have sugar on top, which I probably shouldn’t eat, but they’re delicious,” she says. Once at the Meyer Memorial Trust office in the Pearl District, she’s at her desk for a few hours, and then around 11:00 a.m. she goes for a 20-minute walk. “I usually have to miss lunch, then I have to gobble it standing up at the sink,” she says. In an effort to eat more mindfully, she’s started bringing leftovers. By around 3:00 p.m., she’s ready for a cup of coffee and a walk—without her phone. “I like to smell the city and see people,” says Adams.

Lately, though, she’s working on cutting back. “2018 is going to be the year of no. I have two talks to give this year, and that’s it,” Adams tells me, with what sounds like resolution. But you get a sense that this woman would never be satisfied sitting on the sidelines.

When Adams moved back to Portland in 2011, she found a city in flux. Always a majority-white city, Portland was gentrifying at a rapid clip, with black and brown families being pushed out to the suburbs. A fourth generation Portlander—her great grandmother moved to Portland from Louisiana in the late 1950s—she had already witnessed gentrification first hand. Walnut Park, the neighborhood she grew up in, is now known as the Alberta Arts district.

As we eat, she tells me the devastating history of Lower Albina, better known today as the Rose Quarter. A vibrant African American and immigrant neighborhood full of bungalows, jazz clubs, corner groceries, and churches, it was affordable and easily walkable to downtown and the neighborhood known as the garment district (now the Pearl). In the late 1950s, the city declared the area blighted and leveled it, making way for the Interstate, Memorial Coliseum, and a hospital that never materialized. Residents, including Adams’ great grandmother and the German family she rented a room from, were forced to move out. It was an act of racial injustice that many Portlanders are still smarting from.

Adams is now on the board of Albina Vision, a coalition of community leaders and developers that aims to redevelop the Rose Quarter with affordability, equity, and walkability in mind. If Adams and the rest of the Albina Vision board get their way, the Rose Quarter will have a public connection to the Willamette River (right now, the lovely bike-and-pedestrian Eastbank Esplanade ends abruptly at the Steel Bridge), a walkable street grid from the 1950s, and affordable housing as a form of reparations to the families who were displaced.

Adams pauses and her voice drops to a whisper, so that I need to lean in to hear her. “My grandmother wrote in her Bible, ‘Dear God, I hope I’ve made the right decision in bringing my family to this place. And someday, I hope that one of my children has love, meaningful work, and safety.’” says Adams. “And I am that child.”

Why Hyperfocused Wine Clubs are on the Rise

This story was published on SevenFifty Daily last week.

From grower Champagnes to Oregon producers, niche interests are fueling subscription services

Wine clubs are nothing new. They’ve been around since at least 1972, when the the Wine of the Month Club was founded. Even publications like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Nation have wine clubs. But over the years, this sector of the wine industry has stagnated, according to Paul Mabray, a veteran of the successful wine tech startups Wine Direct and VinTank.

Until recently, that is.

A flurry of hyperfocused online wine clubs have launched over the past few years and appear to be thriving. There’s a wine club for organic and biodynamic wine. There’s one that focuses exclusively on Oregon producers and one that ships only Champagne; there’s even a club that singles out wines from women-owned wineries in Sonoma County. These subscription wine clubs are startups that are either self-financed or financed by investors (that is, they’re not financed by wineries).

“The subscription economy is in full force,” says Mabray, who is known in the wine industry as “the dean of digital.” “It’s a whole new rebirth of this thing that wineries have been doing for the longest time.” Though there are no statistics for subscription wine services (aka online wine clubs), Mabray, who is on the board of the startup Clubzz, a wine subscription management tool, says this sector is growing “very strongly.”

The rebirth of online wine clubs echoes the popularity of subscription services in general. Consumers are now buying personalized wardrobes on Stitch Fix, new razor blades on Harry’s Razors, and gourmet dinner ingredients on Blue Apron. Even Amazon has gotten in on the action with Subscribe & Save—customers get 15 percent off when they order the same staples on a regular basis. Consumers love the convenience, personalized service, and (in some cases) discounts. “And for companies,” says Mabray, “subscription services create a predictable revenue stream.” A recent survey by McKinsey & Company shows that the subscription economy has grown by more than 100 percent a year over the past five years, with the largest retailers generating more than $2.6 billion in subscription sales in 2016 (up from $57 million in 2011).

Etty Lewensztain launched Plonk Wine Merchants in 2010 as a highly selective online wine shop. “It was a digital version of that cool wine boutique in your neighborhood,” says Lewensztain. “I was getting rid of the wines that are a waste of time.”

But the unique wineries and offbeat grapes she featured on the site were so little known that customers were stumped. “They didn’t know the brand or recognize the varietal,” Lewensztain says. “So we decided to choose wine for people.” Sales with the wine club quickly outpaced à la carte purchases, and in 2013, Lewensztain rebranded Plonk as a wine club. (Though she’s added a wine store back onto the Plonk site, it’s mainly where current subscribers go to reorder wines they’ve loved from their shipments.)

Today Plonk Wine Merchants features wines that have been made with organic and biodynamic grapes—though Lewensztain stresses that she’s not dogmatic. “Some are certified; some are not,” she says. “We’re not religious about every single wine needing to be Demeter-certified.”  

The same goes for natural wines. Though she’s generally a fan herself, she’s wary of selling the “interesting” but not mass-consumer-friendly type of natural wines. “You know—the kind that have particulate matter floating around in them,” she says. “I think those wines are better suited for an on-premise atmosphere where you can have a sommelier explain the wine to you—and take it back if you don’t like it.” But her litmus test is that the wines be made well and sustainably, with no sprays in the vineyard. “Authentic wines that are not made in a boardroom and tinkered with with Mega Purple and so on,” Lewensztain says. “We’re really not into that style of wine.”  

Some recent popular bottles include the Balla Geza Fetească Neagră from Romania and a Pojer e Sandri Nosiola from Italy’s Trentino region. Plonk’s monthly shipments of 4 or 12 bottles include shipping costs. The 4-bottle shipment is $110, and 12-bottle is $285, making it the better deal, at $23.75 a bottle. Plonk features wines only from existing wineries (there are no private-label wines). Though Lewensztain would not disclose how many members Plonk has, she said the business has grown “quite a significant amount” over the past five years. Like other online wine clubs included in this article, Plonk does not accept marketing dollars from wineries. “We are self-funded,” says Lewensztain, “and we definitely don’t take any sort of payment.”

Plonk Wine Merchants provided inspiration for Carrie Wynkoop, a political strategist based in Portland, Oregon, who founded the wine club Cellar 503 three years ago. Says Wynkoop, “Lewensztain does a good job of explaining wines in a non-snobby way.”

But Wynkoop created Cellar 503 mostly because it was something she craved. “I have a big passion for Oregon and for Oregon wine,” she says. “I was sitting on the beach with my husband, and I was like, ‘I just want someone to send me Oregon wine to my doorstep.’ He said, ‘There you go: That’s your idea.’” Six months later, she had launched Cellar 503, focusing on small-batch winemakers (fewer than than 10,000 cases a year) and bottles under $30. The club, which Wynkoop and her husband funded through their own savings, is breaking even right now, with roughly 300 club members, but Wynkoop says they’re on track to make a profit in 2018. Though 40 percent of Cellar 503’s members are from Oregon, the remaining 60 percent hail from 28 other states—an indication of Oregon wine’s prominence on the national stage.

Wynkoop loves ferreting out small producers that the wine-drinking public would otherwise not know about, saying, “I like to call myself a little PR agency for the small guys.”

Each month, to keep things fun, Wynkoop sets a theme. January was “Italy in Oregon,” so she featured wines like a 2014 Primitivo from Cana’s Feast and a 2016 Vermentino from Troon Vineyard. February—“We Love Southern Oregon!”—included bottles from little-known wineries like Simple Machine in Talent (near Ashland) and Nicole Reese in Medford. In May, to celebrate Mother’s Day, Wynkoop features women winemakers. Members can choose to receive shipments of two or four bottles, either monthly or quarterly.

 

After experimenting with prices, Wynkoop now has a flat pricing structure. “One of the things members said was irritating was that [the price] was different every month,” Wynkoop says. So now, two bottles of white are always $45, and two bottles of red are always $55; mixed is $50. (Shipping is an additional $19.99, though club members in the Portland area can pick up their wines at a monthly free tasting at the Cellar 503 tasting room.) Because Wynkoop wants to feature wines that are approachable and affordable, bottle prices never exceed $30. “I want folks to feel comfortable opening them on a Wednesday night,” she says, “[and] not feel they need to save them for a special occasion.”  

But there is a wine club at the “special occasion” end of the spectrum too. SommSelect, founded by Master Sommelier Ian Cauble in 2014, focuses on premium wines—the kind of high-quality bottles you’d find at Michelin-starred restaurants. “There are a lot of people in this space who are discounting,” Cauble says. “[But] nothing incredible is ever 80 percent off.”

That said, for premium wines, SommSelect’s half-case prices are hard to beat. The club offers a monthly “educational blind-tasting kit” of six wines (three red, three white) for $199, or Somm Six, also $199, a monthly shipment of six of Cauble’s favorite wines (a mix of reds, whites, and rosés). Shipping is included.

But most of the company’s business comes from à la carte ordering. Every day, SommSelect sends out one to two detailed emails telling the story of a wine—profiling its winemaker, the estate’s history, and its appellation. David Lynch, the James Beard Award–winning wine writer and former wine director at Babbo, Quince, and more recently, St. Vincent, was hired as SommSelect’s editorial director last year, and he and other writers help Cauble compose the lively, absorbing profiles. (Cauble’s deep tasting notes are included, as are food-pairing recommendations.) Customers can either snap up the featured bottle on the spot or build a custom order for later shipment. (Members get free shipping if they buy roughly $100 worth of wine.) The custom order ships after 60 days or once it has reached a 12-bottle case—whichever comes first.   

“We’re offering wines that people are fighting to get a taste of,” says Cauble, noting that when allocations are small, the emails go out only to the company’s top 500 customers. Some examples of upcoming wines that will be offered to all email subscribers are Nicolas Joly’s Clos de la Bergeries Savennières 2014, for $55, and a 1990 Frog’s Leap Merlot, for $150.

Cauble would not divulge the number of club members SommSelect has on a monthly basis, but 20,000 people have signed up to receive the free daily emails. He says business has been growing by 20 to 30 percent per year since 2014. “We are making money,” Cauble says, “but everything is going back into the company.” SommSelect has new offices in Sonoma, California, and is expanding its warehouse as well.  

Last fall, after the wildfires in Northern California, the writer and brand strategist Amy Bess Cook posted a list of women-owned wineries in Sonoma County. “I wanted to bring attention to female wine entrepreneurs,” she says. “There are plenty of women in the wine business, but we’re not in departments of upper management.” Cook’s intent was to create awareness so that consumers could funnel their dollars to these women-owned businesses. After getting positive feedback on the site, Cook, who had operated a wine club at Tin Barn Vineyards, decided to start Women-Owned Wineries, a club dedicated to these wines. It launched a few weeks ago, financed so far through a crowdfunding campaign. The club’s current focus is on the 51 wineries on the WOW Sonoma site initially, but Cook says that it will eventually grow to include all women-owned wineries in the U.S. Bottles will start shipping in May.

Niche wine clubs like these illustrate the continuing fragmentation of the wine market, says industry analyst Rob McMillan, the founder of Silicon Valley Bank’s Wine Division and the author of the annual State of the Wine Industry report. But they may prove to be exactly what the discerning consumer desires. “The need is there to get these small wines to consumers,” McMillan says. “The wine lovers that are out there want these. If you can be a trusted curator, that has value to consumers.”

 

Honey, Do: the Mead Revolution

I wrote about mead for the April issue of Food & Wine.  

I'd always thought of mead, the ancient alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey, as a cough syrup–like draught from Chaucer’s time. But a recent tasting organized by Chrissie Manion Zaerpoor, author of The Art of Mead Tasting & Food Pairing, changed my mind: I sipped meads that ranged from a dry sparkler that reminded me of a refreshing rosé, to a marionberry variety aged with chile peppers. Turns out, mead has as much range and variety as wine—and just like its grape-based sibling, it has terroir as well. And there’s never been a better moment to try mead. There were only about 30 meaderies in the U.S. two decades ago, and today, there are over 500. Want to taste the trend? Start with a visit to one of these great craft mead taprooms.

Charm City Meadworks
Baltimore, MD 

James Boicourt and Andrew Geffken founded Charm City Meadworks in 2014 and have just opened a new facility with 10 meads on tap. Outside the tasting room, their still meads—evocative of wine—come in 500 ml bottles; the carbonated ones come in 12-ounce cans. (Distribution is currently limited to the D.C./ Maryland/ Northern Virginia area.) Favorites include basil lemongrass, sweet blossom, and the seasonal mango comapeño, which packs some heat.  

Nectar Creek
Philomath, OR 
 

 

Brothers Nick and Phil Lorenz make 15 session-style meads (carbonated and less than 10 percent ABV), the most popular of which is “Sting”—made of freshly juiced ginger and white clover honey. (It won a gold medal at the Mazer Cup.) They’re also experimenting with sour meads (fermented with Brettanomyces and lactobacillus) and braggots (mead fermented with malted grains). If you can’t get to their Philomath tasting room, rest assured: their meads are distributed to 10 states including California, Georgia, and Texas. 

Sap House Meadery
Center Ossipee, NH

Ash Fischbein has his high school English teacher to thank for his mead career: he read about the beverage in Beowulf. “Back then, it was more about, ‘How can I get my friends drunk?’” laughs Fischbein. Now, Fischbein and his cousin Matt own Sap House Meadery, where their stand-out melomels — mead fermented with fruit — win awards at the Mazer Cup International mead competition. At their new mead pub, lined with rough-sawn pine, you can taste mead cocktails, mead- mosas, and (on Friday nights) pair dry semi-sweet mead with oysters.  

Wild Blossom 
Meadery
Chicago, IL

Greg Fischer was six when he began beekeeping, so it’s hardly surprising that he became a mead-maker, opening Illinois’ first meadery 17 years ago. At Wild Blossom Meadery’s posh tasting room, you can try bourbon-cask aged meads like Sweet Desire, a blueberry mead, and a Barolo-style red, Pyment, that’s co-fermented with grape skins. 

Gretchen Carlson on Fighting Sexual Harassment

The news anchor encourages women in the wine and spirits industry to speak up and demand action

When Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson came forward in 2016 with sexual harassment allegations against Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, there was no MeToo hashtag or Time’s Up movement. “It was an excruciating decision,” says Carlson. “I felt like I had jumped off a cliff by myself.” In an inspiring keynote address at the Women of the Vine and Spirits Global Symposium Napa, California, this week, Carlson encouraged women to have the courage to speak up about sexual harassment and sexual assault in their workplaces.

Speaking Out

Like many women, Carlson has endured sexual harassment and assault throughout her career. She was harassed by a stalker for four years early in her television days. Screenwriter William Goldman wrote a book in which he referred to her as Miss Piggy for being overweight when she was Miss America in 1989 (she was, in fact, 110 pounds). She was also sexually assaulted twice, in her 20s, while starting out in the television industry. The first time, she had cold-called a high-level TV executive. He spent the day showing her around the offices, making calls on her behalf, and then took her out for dinner. In the backseat of a cab, though, he attacked her. “All of a sudden he lunged [at] me and was on top of me and his tongue was down my throat. I screamed for the driver to stop and let me out of the car,” says Carlson. “At the old age of 22, I didn’t realize that breaking into the television business also meant letting him break into my pants.”

The second time, she was in Los Angeles, meeting with an agent. “Again, we were in a car—he grabbed my neck and he forced my head so hard into his crotch I couldn’t breathe,” says Carlson, adding that she managed to escape.

“Only recently did I realize that these cases weren’t actually harassment—they were assault,” says Carlson. “But like so many female survivors, I thought, ‘I’ve got this. I’m okay. Just move on, Gretchen.’ I bought into the myth that somehow I’d asked for it, and thought I wouldn’t be believed if I told people anyway.” It took Carlson 25 years to call these two instances assault out loud.

So while she encourages women to speak up about sexual harassment and assault—and also urges men to speak out when they see it happening in the workplace—she realizes how tough it can be. When Carlson’s complaints went public in 2016, she was most concerned about the impact her case would have on her children, who were 11 and 12 at the time. “They were of paramount concern to me,” she says. “My face was constantly on the news, and they were going to school.” But ultimately, she says, she underestimated her kids. Her daughter came home from school bewildered by all the gossip but said, “Mom, I felt so proud to tell them that you are my mom!” And when her daughter finally stood up to two kids at school who had been taunting her, she told Carlson, “Mommy, I found the bravery and the courage to do it because I saw you do it.”

Continue reading at SevenFifty Daily.  

What's Next for Oregon Wine?

I attended the Oregon Wine Symposium last week here in Portland and reported back for SevenFifty Daily. 

At the 2018 Oregon Wine Symposium this week, Nielsen’s senior vice president of beverage alcohol practice, Danny Brager, announced that Oregon has the fastest-growing wine industry of any state. The state’s annual wine sales increased 17 percent in 2017 (over 2016) compared with 2.3 percent for Washington, 3 percent for California, and 2.8 percent for the U.S. overall.

One of the most interesting panels of the two-day symposium was “What’s Next for Oregon? Exploring Oregon’s Changing Wine Landscape.” There were three official panel members: land-use expert Richard P. Mendelson, from Dickenson, Peatman & Fogarty; Liz Thach, MW, a professor of wine and management at Sonoma State University; and Chris Tanghe, MS, the chief instructor at GuildSomm (and Wine Enthusiast’s 2017 Sommelier of the Year). But on the spur of the moment, moderator Bree Boskov, MW, of the Oregon Wine Board asked Ken Wright (of Ken Wright Cellars) and David Adelsheim (of Adelsheim Vineyard)—both respected figures in the Oregon wine industry—to join the panel.

[Image courtesy of Oregon Wine Board]  

The trend of sub-AVAs and “nested AVAs” (or AVAs within AVAs) is going strong, said Mendelson. Napa Valley already has 16 nested AVAs, and the Willamette Valley (so far) has six. “It harkens back to the old-world appellation hierarchy,” Mendelson said. But it creates some marketing challenges. “What I had seen in France was that ‘Bordeaux’ became nonexistent on labels of Médoc and even finer, distinguished wines,” he said. “You will not see the word ‘Bordeaux’ on the label.” The more consumers become familiar with a sub-AVA—Yamhill-Carlton, for instance, or Russian River in California—the less they associate that wine with its larger AVA.

 

But there is a way around the problem: conjunctive labeling—that is, including the names of both the sub-AVA and the larger AVA on the label. Thach used the example of Sonoma Valley. In 2005, there were 13 AVAs in Sonoma Valley, and many had separate marketing associations that were really good at their job. “Sonoma County was not being marketed at all,” Thach said. “No one was putting ‘Sonoma County’ on their labels.” As a result, sub-AVAs such as Russian River were better known to consumers (who may not even have known Russian River was in Sonoma County).

That changed when grape growers came to the vintners and suggested conjunctive labeling. After consumer surveys and many conversations, the various players created a Sonoma County logo and a joint marketing program with a digital strategy, events, media tours, and the like. In 2010 the California legislature passed the idea into law, requiring all wineries in Sonoma County who claimed a sub-AVA on their label to also have the words “Sonoma County” on their label. Thach says the logo—a stamp that reads Sonoma County—has been highly effective, especially because it means wineries don’t have to entirely redesign their labels. (The stamp is placed to the right.)  

Oregon winemakers may wish to pay attention to this success story.

At a recent meeting of the Willamette Valley Winery Association’s marketing committee, winemakers brought 40 bottles of their wine to share. Of those bottles, 36 didn’t have the words “Willamette Valley” on them. “Which is amazing, just amazing,” Wright said at the symposium. He worried that something valuable might be lost in the single-minded focus on the marketing of sub-AVAs: “We have forsaken the Willamette Valley.”

The experience got Wright thinking. Last summer, he called together a group of Oregon winemakers to discuss his concerns. Eight concepts came out of their lively discussion, but the two he mentioned at the Oregon Wine Symposium were conjunctive labeling and a requirement for 100 percent varietal content for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. (At the moment, Oregon state law allows winemakers to use up to 5 percent of other grapes in a varietal without declaring them on the label. Federal law allows even more leeway—it allows producers to add up to 25 percent of other varietals without declaring them.)

Though at first it may seem unrelated, the idea of having 100 percent varietal content shares the same goal as conjunctive labeling: to protect the name of Willamette Valley and the high quality of its Pinot Noir. Wright’s concern stems from the fact that most choice areas in the Willamette Valley are already planted. New growers and winemakers are planting on the valley floor and may be making “thin, diluted wine,” mixing it with other grapes, and marketing it as Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. “And that,” said Wright, “would be a problem.”

According to Wright, only two places in the world require 100 percent varietal content by law: Spain for its Albariño and Brunello for its Montalcino, which must be made of 100% Sangiovese. “We should join them,” Wright said. “It’s religious. It’s like tomatoes from San Marzano, bamboo shoots from Kyoto. . . We have Pinot Noir here that inherently wants to be spectacular.”

Thach challenged Oregon winemakers to try to bring more entry-priced bottles to market. Oregon wineries produce plenty of luxury and ultra-premium wine, as Thach demonstrated with a graph that showed Domaine Serene on the high end (with a $320 bottle) but very few bottles in the $15-to-$20 range. Entry-level wines, she said, will help reel in consumers who have not yet tried Oregon wines because of their high price tag. “It still needs to be good, clean, fruit-forward wine that’s accessible,” Thach said. “Just not as expensive.” She emphasized that it doesn’t even have to be Pinot Noir.

Tanghe, who teaches a master class on the Willamette Valley AVA for GuildSomm, spoke about the four Oregon sub-AVAs that are currently under consideration with the TTB: Laurelwood (nestled into the Chehalem Mountain AVA), Mount Pisgah in Polk County, Tualatin Hills (abutting the Chehalem Mountain AVA and the proposed Laurelwood AVA), and Van Duzer Corridor. He said applicants are frustrated that they have been waiting three years for approval from the TTB. Mendelson advised patience, in his experience with Paso Robles, California, it can take as long as seven years for approval to be granted.

Earlier in the symposium, Mendelson had reminded attendees that to be approved as a distinct AVA you must prove that you have “distinguishing viticultural features”—such as climate, geology, soils, elevation, or physical features. But once an AVA is approved by the TTB, it needs something more ephemeral if it doesn’t want to “die on the vine”: strong leadership. “And then that leadership has to justify the value-add [higher prices] and you must protect the name,” Mendelson said. It will be interesting to see whether the TTB will approve the proposed new AVAs—and whether conjunctive labeling will soon be coming to the Willamette Valley.

Becoming a Master of Roussanne

Maggie Harrison on her unconventional path to becoming a winemaker and her dedication to a difficult grape. (This story was originally published on SevenFifty Daily on Jan. 19, 2018.) 

As soon as you taste one of Maggie Harrison’s wines—whether it’s an earthy Pinot Noir, a marvelously complex Chardonnay, or her lush, floral Roussanne—you understand why she has such a loyal following. What you taste in the glass comes from the unconventional ways in which this winemaker picks and ferments her fruit, particularly the Roussanne, a Rhône variety that’s notorious for ripening unevenly. For more than a decade, Harrison has been pulling the very best expressions out of a handful of varieties and making exquisite, nuanced wines at Antica Terra in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

Maggie Harrison with Sean O’Connor (left) and chef Timothy Wastell (right)

 

The Epiphany

Harrison’s unlikely journey to becoming a winemaker started on an island off the coast of Kenya. With a degree in international relations and conflict resolution from Syracuse University in New York State, Harrison landed a job at the Carter Center in Atlanta but deferred acceptance so she could travel. After a year spent backpacking around Europe, another year in South America, and yet another year in Africa, she was less and less sure about pursuing a career in conflict resolution.

“One evening, on an island off the coast of Kenya, I was having a beer and a complete nervous breakdown,” Harrison says. “A fellow traveler from Mozambique was unlucky enough to have pulled up a seat next to me. I spent most of the evening explaining to him that I was feeling adrift. Finally, this guy put down his beer, exasperatedly, and looked me in the eye. ‘You’ve just spent half an hour telling me everything that’s impossible,’ he said, ‘everything you don’t want to do.’”

“Then he asked, ‘What is it that you want to do?’” Harrison considered the question for a moment and said she thought she’d like to learn how to make wine. The traveler asked if there were any grapes in her country and she said there were.

After leaving Africa, Harrison headed for a winery in California. It wasn’t just any winery but Sine Qua Non in Ventura County—the cult winery owned by Manfred and Elaine Krankl.

The Oregon Trail

After working eight vintages with the Krankls—a period she calls the most formative of her life—Harrison was asked by one of their dear friends to be the winemaker at a new venture in Oregon’s Eola-Amity Hills. She demurred.

“I had just begun Lillian—my own tiny Syrah project in California,” Harrison recalls, “and my first vintage was still resting in the barrel. I was afraid that if I took on another project, I would be stretching myself too thin.”

The owners of the new vineyard—Scott Adelson, John Mavredakis, and Michael Kramer—none of whom had winemaking or vineyard experience, were persistent. Ultimately, though, they accepted Harrison’s firm “No, thank you.” But they did ask her for a favor: Would she mind taking a look at the vineyard and giving them some pointers on how to farm it? Harrison flew up to Oregon on a rainy spring day.

Her arrival was not auspicious. One of the partners picked her up at the airport and drove her southwest to the Eola-Amity Hills. The weather was gray and bleak, and the endless suburban strip malls along 99W only made things seem bleaker. When she finally arrived at the vineyard, in the countryside northwest of Salem, a sign in barely legible script read “No Trespassing.” “The r was backwards,” Harrison recalls, “as if it had been written by an ax murderer.”

But once she set foot in the vineyard, Harrison fell in love with the property.  

“To our left were wetlands and views of the ryegrass growing beyond. To our right, on a steep hillside, was a forest of gnarled, moss-covered oaks. When we reached the top of the hill, the first thing I noticed was the light,” Harrison says. “The clouds fractured over the vineyard and allowed the sun to ray through… I could see the vineyard—a sea of yellow leaves and stunted shoots. The vines were at the beginning of their growth cycle, but they were already beginning to defoliate. The site was so beautiful, the potential so clear—but the suffering was equally clear.” Harrison had only been there a minute before she ducked behind one of the oaks, called her then-boyfriend (now husband), and said, simply, “We’re moving to Oregon.”  

Luckily, he agreed.

Harrison finished her last vintage of Sine Qua Non in 2005, and in 2006 she became an owner—with Adelson, Mavredakis, and Kramer—of the 40-acre property in the Eola-Amity Hills. At the time, only six acres were under vine. But since then, she’s planted another 13, bringing the vineyard to just under 20 acres. It’s here that Harrison grows Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes and bottles them under the Antica Terra label.

Reckoning with Roussanne

But Lillian, Harrison’s California project, lives on. Each fall, she flies south to California and picks Syrah, Roussanne (which she started sourcing in 2011), and (in the past) Cabernet Sauvignon. The clusters, carefully stacked in vented plastic totes, are sent to Oregon by refrigerated truck to be sorted and fermented at the Antica Terra facility in Dundee. The resulting wines are bottled under the Lillian label, named after Harrison’s maternal grandmother.

Harrison has a particular passion for Roussanne, the only white wine she makes under the Lillian label. If you ask her how she produces it, she grows animated, eager to share the unique methods she’s devised to get the most out of this tricky variety.  

Lillian and Antica Terra bottles at Harrison's Eola-Amity Hill Vineyard (the Roussanne is at left) 

“There is not a tremendous amount of Roussanne grown in this country, because of its somewhat annoying habits,” Harrison says. “The growers struggle with it because it ripens incredibly late, and the winemakers struggle because it ripens incredibly unevenly.” (Jon Bonné, in his book The New California Wine, reports that fewer than 400 acres of Roussanne are planted statewide.)

“Roussanne is the least uniform grape variety I’ve ever seen,” says Harrison. “A single vine will have clusters that are green, yellow, gold, amber, rusted, and botrytis. Nothing is ripe at the same time.”  That’s a major frustration for most vineyardists, but it became a creative challenge for Harrison. Her work-around is to pick when 80 to 85 percent of the fruit is perfectly ripe and then collate by color.

“Roussanne becomes really russet when it’s ripe—deeply amber and a little bit scaly,” says Harrison. She and her vineyard team bring the whole block in at once and then separate it by color at the sorting table. First they sort by clusters—one box for the greenest, then gold, then amber—as well as a box for the fruit with the highest percentage of botrytis. The grapes on the richest end of the spectrum are sorted one by one. Harrison handles each of these boxes differently.

The grapes on the lightest end—the greenest ones with the highest acid—she handles like Chardonnay. “I’ll give them 10 to 18 hours in the press,” she says, “and then [send them] directly into barrel.” The yellowish grapes, she’ll macerate on the skins for six hours and then take them to the press. Deeply golden grapes she might let macerate on the skins for as many as 20 hours to extract maximum aromatics, flavor compounds, and textures. Says Harrison, “We’re trying to eke out what’s there.”

Finally come the richest grapes. “The challenge here,” says Harrison, “is really how you’re going to access the aromas you know are there—in the gentlest way possible.” Instead of walking on the fruit with rubber boots (the way winemakers may do when making a dessert wine like Sauternes), she macerates and ferments the fruit on the skins for three to five days, gently washing the skins with the juice twice a day until the aromatics crack open and the flavors become really clear. Each of these Roussanne wine groups is fermented in barrel, separately, for a year. “Then we take samples and take them to the blending table,” says Harrison. “That’s where we find the ratio that comes together to form the most compelling whole.” The result is a highly aromatic, floral wine with a lush texture and an almost oily quality.

A few years ago, Harrison was at a dinner party at a winemaker’s house in California. She says the winemaker exclaimed, “We hate Roussanne!”

The reason it’s a turnoff for some, she surmises, is that it’s a low-acid grape. “If you try to retain the acid that exists, you lose out on the dripping honey beeswax characteristic,” she says. “But if you forgo that, you lose all the acid.”

In her inimitable way, Harrison has figured out a method for working with the fruit and pulling the best aromas, flavors, and textures from it to create the finest expression of a Roussanne.

 

Confronting Sexual Harassment in the Drinks Industry

{Note: this story was written before both Mario Batali and Andrew Friedman were accused of chronic sexual harassment and assault by dozens of women who have worked for them over the years. I expect many more women will come forward over the coming weeks and months to reveal other powerful men in the restaurant industry have been guilty of the same thing.}

 

Over the last few months, numerous women have come forward to accuse movie producer Harvey Weinstein and dozens of other men in various industries of sexual assault and harassment. The restaurant world has begun its own reckoning: Celebrity chef John Besh was the first to fall, as documented in a lengthy exposé in October in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Twenty-five women came forward to share their stories of sexual harassment while working for the chef’s restaurant empire. Besh, who has stepped down from his role at the company to “focus on his family,” has inspired both fear and soul-searching in the restaurant industry. Could your company, too, be fostering a culture where sexual harassment thrives?

For those working in the restaurant and alcohol industries, it’s not exactly breaking news that sexual harassment is widespread. In 2014, a report by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United found that 90 percent of female restaurant workers had experienced sexual harassment. Two-thirds had been harassed by a restaurant owner, manager, or supervisor.

The women SevenFifty Daily interviewed for this story—sommeliers, PR execs for alcohol companies, event planners, bar managers—mentioned not only persistent sexual harassment throughout their careers but also “look the other way” human resources policies, especially at male-run restaurant groups. “It’s just endemic across the whole industry,” says one wine PR executive who asked not to be named. Melissa Lang, a veteran of several restaurant groups who now is the events manager for the Dallas-based restaurant chain Dave & Busters (more on that later), says, “Sexism is so rampant—you become jaded to even noticing.”

The alcohol industry may be even worse than the restaurant world. Though no sexual harassment statistics are available for the booze industry overall, the culture of free-flowing wine and liquor is certainly known anecdotally to spur bad judgment. “A lot of my sexual harassment complaints are alcohol-fueled—there’s no question about it,” says Richard Curiale, a Bay Area lawyer who litigates sexual harassment cases and leads sexual harassment training for the tech and wine industries. “I would say 60 percent of the complaints I get wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been drinking.”

As stories of sexual harassment and even assault continue to emerge, it may be instructive to look at companies that have structures in place to deal with sexual harassment. The resources and tips cited here have proven effective in reducing harassment by employees, employers, and customers.

Continue reading at SevenFifty Daily. 

How Bartenders Combat Stress

This story was published on NBC's Better on Nov. 17th. 

Bartending might seem like a fun, carefree job — how stressful could it be to make cocktails and pour wine and microbrews to thirsty guests? Very, according to U.S. News & World Reports. Using their own data and data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook, the company recently released a list of most stressful jobs of 2017. Bartending is one of the twenty-two professions that made the list, right alongside anesthesiologist, paramedic and patrol officer.

Constantly interfacing with public—especially an inebriated public—can be trying, especially when you have to do it cheerfully and for prolonged periods on your feet, without a break. That said, the kind of stress a bartender faces depends very much on the type of bar. If you’re at a dive bar, you have to be security in addition to a charming host.

“Do you have to cut someone off and have them scream in your face?” asks Colin Carroll, the bar manager at Trifecta, a popular restaurant in Portland, Oregon. In a sophisticated spot like Trifecta, that doesn’t occur. But Carroll has stress of a different sort.

“There are ten tickets with 13 different cocktails and 'where the hell is my flat bread?' There’s always a running checklist of five to 10 things to do,” says Carroll, who is always prioritizing things in his head from most to least important. For Carroll, who has bartended for 11 years, this creates a low but ever-present level of anxiety.

Bartending is also physically draining. Carroll works 50 hours a week, the majority of it on his feet.

“Especially as you get older, it takes its toll on your body,” says Carroll, 36.

Continue reading on NBC's Better. 

 

Navigating Pregnancy and Maternity Leave in the Drinks Industry

Paid maternity leave is still a rarity, but some forward-thinking companies are setting the bar

{This story was published by SevenFifty Daily on Oct. 17th.}

Three years ago, when Chelsey Smith took a job at the Jack Daniel’s bottling plant in Lynchburg, Kentucky, she had no idea what the policy on maternity leave was. “I didn’t have a clue about it until I was pregnant,” says Smith, now 26. So when she and her husband, Drew, a truck driver for the company, learned they were pregnant with their first child last year, they were happily surprised to discover that Brown-Forman (the owner of Jack Daniels’s) had a progressive parental leave policy: Chelsey was entitled to 12 weeks of paid leave, and Drew, as the non-birth parent, was due six weeks, paid.

Brown-Forman’s parental leave policy proved crucial for the new parents. Chelsey had complications during labor—the epidural caused part of her left leg to remain numb—and she came home from the hospital on crutches. In addition to pediatrician visits, Chelsey had to see a neurologist several times and have an MRI. (The cause of the numbness is still a mystery.) The extra appointments would have been impossible if Drew wasn’t also home and able to drive the family.

“When I came home from the hospital, I was on crutches and couldn’t put my foot on the ground. Drew did everything: bathed me, cooked supper, went grocery shopping, did dishes and laundry—the list goes on,” she says. And because Brown-Forman’s policy allows the non-birth parent to take his (or her) six weeks any time over the first six months of the baby’s life, Drew can reserve a week or two for when Chelsey returns to work.

 

Drew, 32, realizes how rare paid paternity leave is in the United States and says he can’t imagine not having this benefit. “Those nights of hardly any sleep are much easier to deal with,” he says, “when you don’t have to worry about getting up on time in the morning.” And the time he’s been home with Chelsey and their daughter, Megan, has brought them closer as a family. “I sure am glad I was there the first time that little girl smiled,” Drew says. “I would’ve missed that and many other memories without these benefits.”

Chelsey, Drew, and Megan Lee Smith. Photo courtesy of Drew Smith.

Brown-Forman—which also makes brands such as Woodford Reserve, Sonoma-Cutrer wines, and Finlandia vodka—has one of the best parental leave policies in the alcohol industry.

“Their parental leave policy is fantastic. And their paternity leave is the highest I’ve seen,” says Deborah Brenner, the founder and president of Women of the Vine & Spirits, a membership organization dedicated to the support of women in the alcoholic beverage industry.

“It was a topic that mattered a lot to me,” says Kirsten Hawley, Brown-Forman’s chief human resources officer. “It came from conversations with women who were trying to make hard choices between staying at home to bond with a newborn baby or coming back to work so they could earn an income. And also talking to dads about their desire to stay home with their newborn child longer than they had the opportunity to.” At the time, the company already offered decent parental leave—two weeks, paid, for dads, and six weeks, paid, for moms—but it was covered by a short-term disability insurance policy. Hawley thought the company could do better. She says, “We decided to not treat childbirth as a disability.”

The revised policy, which kicks in after a year of employment, also makes no distinction between fathers and same-sex partners—the “non-birth parent” can be male or female. “We wanted to be sure that our leave addressed today’s modern families,” Hawley says. It also covers adoptive parents and foster parents, giving them six weeks of paid leave. It covers all Brown-Forman’s salaried workforce and hourly nonunion employees.

Needless to say, this is not the norm in the alcohol industry. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2016 National Compensation Survey, the leisure/hospitality sector has among the lowest rates—6 percent—of access to paid family leave. (That category includes restaurants and hotels, though not bars.) The only category to fare worse was the construction industry. Manufacturing, which includes companies that make alcoholic beverages, was slightly higher, at 10 percent.  

“The restaurant industry is not flexible, and it doesn’t put any value on families or mothers,” says Jessica Brown, 34, who oversees the food and beverage program at JetBlue. Brown should know. She had worked for two years as the wine director for a notable New York restaurant group when, soon after she’d told her direct supervisor she was pregnant, her position was eliminated. “It’s unclear whether the owners knew about my pregnancy when my position was eliminated,” she says, “but it was definitely a shock.” Not that the company offered any paid parental leave anyway.

Brown spent months applying for jobs in the industry and had some positive interviews, but once she disclosed that she was pregnant, in each case she was told (later, by the various HR staffs at the places she applied) that the employer had decided not to fill the position. Ultimately, she was able to parlay her food and beverage experience into a “day job” at JetBlue.

But maternity leave is also not the norm in any industry: A mere 15 percent of workers in the U.S. have access to paid leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent data. That lack of paid time off means that one in four employed mothersreturns to work two weeks after giving birth.

Five states—California, New Jersey, New York, Washington, and Rhode Island—and the District of Columbia have passed paid family leave laws, but many other states offer just six weeks of paid leave at partial salary, which any woman who has given birth says is barely enough time (or money). Still, it is better than the unpaid leave mandated by federal law. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires all businesses with more than 50 employees to offer new moms and dads 12 weeks of unpaid leave. (To get this “benefit,” though, you have to be full-time and have been with your company for a year.) Crucially, the FMLA also offers job protection: Your employer must offer you the same job when you return to work, or one that is nearly identical, with identical pay and benefits.  

But what if you’re pregnant and you work for a small employer, like a restaurant, cocktail bar, or small wine importer? “You hope to win the lottery,” says Kate Newhall, the policy director at Family Forward Oregon, a politically savvy nonprofit that advocates for family-friendly policies in the state.

Family Forward Oregon spearheaded the campaign for a statewide paid sick leave bill, which was signed by Governor Kate Brown in 2015, and it is one of the leading organizations behind Time for Oregon, a coalition fighting for paid family and medical leave in the state. A bill to provide such leave was introduced in the 2017 legislative session, but it didn’t pass. Newhall is confident, however, that it will be on the agenda again in 2018, saying, “We’re in it to win it!”  

Until Oregon passes a paid family leave bill, it is one of the 45 states where new mothers have to fend for themselves—or rely on family. When Sonia Kehler, 44, a bartender in Portland, was pregnant with her daughter Vela, her boss at Captain Ankeny’s bar gave her six weeks off, unpaid. Kehler survived financially because her partner, also a bartender, was able to find a better-paying day job and because her father babysat Vela when she went back to work. She was able to pump breast milk in an employee bathroom. Having been a bartender for years, Kehler wasn’t surprised by the lack of any kind of paid maternity leave. She says, “I never even asked.”

Rare is the independently owned bar or restaurant that can afford to offer paid maternity leave. Liz Davis, the owner and manager of Xico, a Mexican restaurant in Portland with 25 employees, has offered health insurance to all employees—even those who work only part-time—since the day the restaurant opened five years ago. But paid maternity leave is another matter. “Our profit margin is so small, and we actually can’t operate with one less server,” says Davis. “We’d have to replace her. So it becomes a situation where we’re paying two people.” But after reading Hillary Clinton’s book What Happened (Simon & Schuster) and thinking about the issue at length, Davis decided to offer one week of paid maternity leave. “I know that’s nothing,” she says, “but for [my employees], it’s the difference between being able to pay rent that month and not.”  

In states like California, which was the first in the nation to pass a paid family leave law, in 2002, restaurant owners aren’t faced with this tough decision, because thestate pays for the leave through a worker-funded insurance program. Jacquelyn Dowell, 33, is a bartender at Oakland’s Ramen Shop. When she told her boss she was pregnant, he was very supportive.

“He sat me down and said, ‘What shifts are gonna be good for you? I just want you to be comfortable,’” Dowell says. “So that was amazing.”

Six weeks before her due date, Dowell was racked with false labor pains, and her doctor told her not to return to work. California’s short-term disability program covered her at 55 percent of her salary for six weeks, and the state’s then Paid Family Leave covered another six weeks off, also at 55 percent of her salary. 

Was that enough to live on in the high-rent Bay Area? “Not at all—not even close,” Dowell says. But fortunately, Dowell’s husband, Kevin, works for a small spirits company, The 86 Co., and he was allowed a month and a half of paternity leave at his full salary. Knowing that most bartenders in the U.S. don’t receive any pay during maternity leave makes Dowell feel lucky. “Yet I feel that what I received wasn’t enough,” she says. “It’s super unfair. It’s just crazy to me that pregnancy isn’t covered.” Last year, California governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that will increase the Paid Family Leave payment to 70 percent of a minimum wage worker’s salary. (Workers with higher pay will get 60 percent of their salary.)  The new coverage will take effect in 2018.

Companies in the alcoholic beverage industry that are truly family-friendly, like Brown-Forman and The 86 Co., are few and far between. Some leading wine and spirits distributors offer paid leave, but only to members of the sales team. (This recalls Starbuck’s recent fiasco: Earlier this month shareholders objected that a new, 18-week parental leave policy was only for salaried workers, whereas hourly workers receive only six weeks.)

Diageo, the British multinational spirits and beer company (Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker, Guinness) whose U.S. offices are based in Norwalk, Connecticut, has made Working Mother’s list of 100 Best Companies for the past nine years. In addition to subsidizing day care, the company offers job-sharing, flextime, and a decent parental leave policy. All full-time employees who have worked a year for the company—even fathers and adoptive parents—are eligible for four weeks of paid leave.

One restaurateur who is helping set the bar for paid family leave is Danny Meyer at Union Square Hospitality Group. Last fall he announced an eight-week parental leave program at all 16 of his restaurants and bars that applies equally to birth parents and non-birth parents. The program covers full-time employees who have been with the company for at least one year, and gives four weeks at 100 percent of the base wage, and another four weeks at 60 percent. Of course, this means that workers at restaurants that still accept tipping will not get tips while they’re out, but the base wage at USHG restaurants is still higher than the tipped minimum wage in New York City. (Similarly, workers who take advantage of this leave at the group’s nine Hospitality Included restaurants—that is, restaurants that have abolished tipping—would not get revenue share, but their base wage is higher than the current New York City minimum wage of $11 an hour.)  

But the majority of companies in the alcohol industry don’t offer paid parental leave for the simple reason that they don’t have to. Kat Kelly, now 38, was pregnant when she took a job as import manager at Baron Francois, a French wine importer. (She did not disclose she was pregnant in her interview because she feared she would not be hired if they knew.) She says her boss presented the company as family friendly in her interview, but he offered her only six weeks off, unpaid, when she gave birth. (Because she hadn’t been at the company for a full year, and because Baron Francois had 20 employees at the time, Kelly was not entitled to any time off under the FMLA.) Luckily, she had applied for short-term disability and so got a tiny portion of her salary. But just a month into her six-week leave, Kelly says she felt pressured by the company to work from home.

“Psychologically, I wasn’t ready. And I don’t think I’d physically healed from the C-section,” says Kelly, who returned to work exhausted. “I was forgetting things, feeling overwhelmed.” The only place she could pump her breast milk was in one of two single staff bathrooms, and coworkers were always knocking on the door. To top it off, she also felt pressured to go to evening wine events and drink a lot. “I wanted to be like, ‘Oh, I’m still cool,’” Kelly says. “But I wasn’t able to do that anymore.” She eventually left Baron Francois—and the wine industry—to work at NARS Cosmetics, which she says is a truly family-friendly company. “They have a nice, big pumping room,” she says. “Women have babies, and that’s a natural part of life.”

Kylie Henshaw, human resources coordinator at Baron Francois says the company still doesn’t have a formal maternity leave policy, but in January it will be subject to New York state’s new Paid Family Leave Program, which requires that all companies offer eight weeks of leave to new mothers and fathers, paid at 50 percent of her or his salary. (The Program covers full-time and part-time employees; full-time employees must work at least 26 weeks, or six-and-a-half months, at a company to be covered; part-time employees must work at least 175 days to be covered. The Program also covers employees who need to care for a sick relative.) Henshaw says the company has since moved to a new office space and now has a private room in which new mothers can pump.

But until all states start passing paid family leave policies like California and New York’s—or bars, restaurants, and alcoholic beverage companies start issuing more progressive maternity leave policies on their own—the drinks industry will continue to lose some of its best employees.   

“One of the main problems that the restaurant industry has right now is maintaining qualified employees,” Jessica Brown at JetBlue says. To her, it is no surprise why.

“They’re losing a tremendous number of seasoned professionals because they don’t support families or any type of maternity leave.” Employees who have been with a company for a long time are, she says, “put out to pasture” just because they decide to start a family. “The industry has to take a hard look at this issue in general. They need to look at the Big Picture.”

 

Private-Label Wines: A Peek Behind the Label

 

When consumers hear the term private-label wines, they may envision Trader Joe’s Two-Buck Chuck or Costco’s Kirkland Signature brand, which includes Chiantis and Malbecs that retail for $6. But what they may not realize is that the private-label market has grown beyond the bottom shelf. Premium private-label wines are popping up at Costco and even Whole Foods for as much as $24. 

Private-label wines—traditionally, brands created for a company (often a retailer or restaurant), which sell exclusively via one sales channel—are no longer, by definition, plonk. (Though plenty of volume-driven, inexpensive wine still exists.) These days, restaurants from Shake Shack to The French Laundry, as well as brands like Whole Foods and Grand Hyatt hotels, are getting into the private-label game, partnering with respected wineries like Frog’s Leap (in the case of Shake Shack) and Michael Mondavi’s Folio Fine Wine Partners (for Grand Hyatt’s Canvas line) to make wines that are exclusively available to their customers. Some of these wines are easily identifiable “linked” brands, such as Costco’s Kirkland, Sam’s Club’s Member’s Mark, and Trader Joe’s eponymous label. Others are less obviously aligned with their owners, including Whole Foods’ Wine Farmer or Kroger’s Acronym, which many consumers may not realize are private-label brands. What all private-label wines chiefly have in common is that the retailer, hotel chain, or restaurant often has a hand in forming the flavor profile and style of the wine and that the resulting wines are priced lower than similar wines from recognized wineries.

The profile of these wines has risen to such a degree that the Wall Street Journal’s wine columnist, Lettie Teague, recently devoted a column to the category. She singled out three Costco wines, including the 2015 Rutherford Napa Valley Meritage ($14), which she called a remarkable value. She also liked the 2016 Member’s Mark Mosel Riesling ($10.50) at Sam’s Club.  

“Everybody has the same goal: to buy good wine for cheap,” says Andrew Cullen, founder of the CostcoWineBlog.com, which publishes independent reviews of the retailer’s private-label wines.

And every retailer has the same goal: to make more money.

Continue reading my story on SevenFifty Daily. 

Thriving While Sober in the Booze Industry

I wrote this piece about alcoholism in the wine, beer, and spirits industry for a new wine industry publication called SevenFifty Daily.  

Drinks professionals weigh in on their recovery from alcoholism and how they’re charting a new course

 

It’s July 2014 and Giuseppe González, celebrated bartender and owner of Manhattan’s swank Suffolk Arms, is in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail. It’s his birthday weekend. A rock-star partier, González also has type 1 diabetes, and his doctor has just told him he needs to quit drinking—or else. But at this weeklong bacchanalia, his doctor’s advice is far from his mind. Instead, he heads to a party and ends up in the bathroom with a bag of blow. His cell phone rings.

“It’s my mom, calling to wish me happy birthday,” González says. “She hears me and she’s like, ‘Joey, are you all right?’ and I say, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’” González got off the phone with his mom and called a friend to ask for help. His friend replied, “I’ve been waiting for this call for a while, bro.”

The next day, González went to his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He’s been sober ever since. That’s not to say it has been easy. “Alcoholism is chronic—it never goes away. There’s never gonna be a day that goes by that I think I have control over it,” says Gonzalez, who, three years later, attends an AA meeting every morning.  

González has plenty of company. People who work in the food and beverage industry are around alcohol daily and are often expected to drink it. Temptation is everywhere. As González puts it, “I had easy access to some of the best spirits—and some of the best bartenders in the country were my best friends.” In such circumstances, it’s easy to overindulge. Statistics bear this out: The hospitality industry is the profession with the highest rate of substance abuse, according to the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

Recently, though, a handful of high-profile bartenders, chefs, general managers, and others in the industry have been speaking out about their struggles with alcohol abuse—and their newfound sobriety. Sean Brock, chef at Husk, McCrady’s, and Minero in Charleston, South Carolina, went to rehab last January and spoke about the pleasures of not drinking in a recent article for the New York Times. A year ago, Jack McGarry, co-owner of New York City hotspots Dead Rabbit and BlackTail, stopped drinking after a close call that landed him in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. And Mickey Bakst, general manager of the Charleston Grill in South Carolina, who’s been sober for 35 years, is outspoken about his alcoholism. “I have an extraordinarily blessed career, all due to the fact that I got sober,” he says. Though not all recovering alcoholics have stayed in the industry, many have—and they say their careers are more successful than ever. The stigma of being a drinks professional with alcoholism is seemingly starting to disappear.

Continue reading on SevenFiftyDaily.com. 

 

I'm on the Four Top, Katherine Cole's new OPB podcast

A few weeks ago, wine writer Katherine Cole invited me to be a panelist on her new podcast, the Four Top. On the podcast, which just won a James Beard media award, Katherine and three other food-world insiders (usually members of the media) talk about hot-button topics in the food and beverage culture. For this episode, Peter Platt of Andina restaurant, OPB reporter Roxy de La Torre, and I discussed Sanctuary Restaurants, undocumented immigrants in the restaurant industry, and Peruvian cuisine. Have a listen here, and subscribe to the Four Top on iTunes! 

 

Listen to "Ep. 18: Sanctuary Restaurants | Undocumented Labor In Food | Peruvian Cuisine" on Spreaker.

Wild & Wonderful: Dana Frank's natural wine-focused restaurant Dame

I'm pretty excited about my first story in Food & Wine, about Dana Frank's beguiling new natural-wine-focused restaurant, Dame. 

Reporting this meant I got to know the Oregon winemakers who are on the menu at Dame, as well as their wines. Five of the winemakers were at the dinner: Kelley Fox (of Kelley Fox Wines), Dan Rinke (Johan), Chad Stocks (Minimus and Omero), Steven Thompson (Analemma), and Scott Frank (Bow & Arrow), Dana's husband.  

                                             Frank pouring wine from a banquette at Dame 

My story is not available online yet, but here's a tease: 

Things can get geeky when you hang out with natural-wine makers. Conversation flits from how much VA, or volatile acidity, a wine should have, to why Pinot Gris ought to be turned into a red rather than a white. Opinions fly. Cursing is compulsory. And, if you've opened a half dozen of their bottles, you're in for a rollicking good time. 

On a recent night at Dame, sommelier Dana Frank's new natural-wine-focused restaurant in Portland's Concordia neighborhood, she'd gathered her winemaker friends for a spring feast paired with their best vintages. "Yes, these are really unique, interesting wines," said Frank as she popped open a bottle of Bow & Arrow's Melon, a supercrisp, golden Loire Valley varietal made by her husband, Scott Frank, who was at the other end of the table. "But they're also really delicious."

Keep reading in the April issue of Food & Wine, pg. 83.  

 

Natural Selection: Oregon's Natural Winemaking Movement

Is natural wine a fad or the next big thing in sustainable viticulture?  I wrote about Oregon's place in the natural wine movement for the January issue of Oregon Business Magazine.  

 Three natural winemakers at a recent dinner at Dame, Dana Frank's wine bar 

It wasn’t long ago that you’d find me perusing the wine aisles at Trader Joe’s, searching for a bottle of affordable Pinot Noir for book club. A conscientious consumer, I’d choose a bottle from Oregon or Washington even if I couldn’t find organic or biodynamic. Little did I realize that even these wines—usually hovering at $12 a bottle—contain all sorts of chemicals and additives that, while not imminently dangerous, I’d certainly refuse to ingest if they were listed on a loaf of bread or a box of Grape Nuts. But because the FDA doesn’t regulate wines (that job falls to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau), there are no labeling requirements for what goes into each bottle.

If there were, you would be shocked. In addition to the pesticides and herbicides that many conventional wineries use in the fields, winemakers routinely use chemicals and additives in the cellar.

Some of the more egregious include Velcorin (dimethyl dicarbonate, which essentially sterilizes the wine and requires wearing a hazmat suit to dispense it); a plastic polymer known as PVPP (used as a fining agent to remove astringency); and something called Mega Purple, a grape concentrate that is used to “plump up” the color of a pale red wine and add a jammy flavor.

Though USDA organic standards forbid the use of most of these additives, they allow less benign substances like enzymes, powdered tannins, oak chips, dry powdered fish bladder (Isinglass) and egg whites.

As the market for organic food has soared over the past decade, a parallel movement has been quietly humming along in the wine world. It turns out that many mass-produced wines have been tinkered with endlessly in the cellar; they might contain anything from designer yeast strains and bentonite clay to the chemicals listed above.

So, mirroring the organic-food movement, a scrappy and somewhat rebellious movement has sprung up that champions so-called natural wines. The phrase, and the practice, is controversial, because there’s no agreed-upon definition of natural wine, and neither is there a third-party certifier.

Continue reading here. 

Wine without Water: the Case for Dry-Farming Grapes

At a recent dinner celebrating “dry-farmed” Oregon wines at Portland’s Southeast Wine Collective, diners listened intently as winemaker Russ Raney explained why he and John Paul decided to form the Deep Roots Coalition.

Evan Roberts from Crowley Wines, Brian O'Donnell from Belle Pente, Katie and Tom Monroe from Southeast Wine Collective, and Russ Raney, founder of Evesham Wood

“Back in the late ‘90s, we were astonished by the number of vineyards that were going into the Willamette Valley with irrigation,” said Raney, who is the founding winemaker at revered Oregon winery Evesham Wood. The Willamette Valley, which gets 42 inches of rainfall a year, seemed like one place that you shouldn’t need to irrigate—or so believed Raney, who had worked on vineyards in Germany, where irrigation is frowned upon. John Paul of Cameron Winery in the nearby Dundee Hills adamantly agreed. Not only was the duo passionate about conserving water, they aspired to make complex, place-driven wines. In 2004, they formed a small collective of winemakers who spurn irrigation, relying on natural rainfall alone. They called it the Deep Roots Coalition, in honor of the way non-irrigated vines’ roots sink deep into the soil in search of moisture.

My story on the merits of dry-farming vineyards—both for the planet and the palate—appears in the winter issue of Modern Farmer.

Oregon's Rabble-Rousing Winemaker: John Paul

I got to interview one of my favorite Oregon winemakers for Portland Monthly's Long Story Short column.

Cameron Winery's John Paul, a longtime advocate of dry farming, isn’t worried about this summer’s heat waves.

 

John Paul was finishing his postdoc in chemistry at UC Berkeley when he found himself drawn more to the wineries of Napa than to the lab. By 1984 he and his wife, Teri, had purchased a vineyard site in the Dundee Hills, and Cameron Winery was born. Since then, Paul has become one of the most revered winemakers in Oregon—his complex pinots, chardonnays, and Giuliano (a Friulian blend) enjoy a cult following. Still, Paul produces no more than 5,000 cases a year, 80 percent of which stay in Oregon. (He and his 14-year-old dog, Jackson Pollock, make the Portland deliveries themselves.) An outspoken critic of both irrigated vineyards and herbicides, Paul is also the founder of the Deep Roots Coalition, an organization that advocates for “dry-farmed” wines.

The pivotal moment came when I was assistant winemaker at Carneros Creek in Napa and I was sent to a tasting of Domaine Romanée-Conti wines: 1976 vintage. I still remember sitting down with these big Burgundy glasses, which I’d never experienced before, and just being completely blown away by the wine. And getting up from that tasting and going, “This is the wine I want to make.” I’d never had a wine like that before, because it was too expensive for me!

When we first put in the vineyard, the deer were wiping out the vines, so we installed an electric fence. I had planted the vineyard to be like a grand cru vineyard in Burgundy—I planted 20 different clones of pinot noir in a two-acre parcel. My wife came up with the name: Clos Electrique. It literally means “electric fence.”

To irrigate is to take away a critical component of the terroir. Our established vineyards are doing fine this summer because the vines are old and they have really deep roots—they send their roots deep in search for water and minerals and bring forth each year a wine that says, “This is Oregon fruit. It could be from no other region of the world.”

Russ Raney and I founded the Deep Roots Coalition in 2004. A lot of the talking heads in the industry were extolling the virtues of irrigation. We knew that it was wrong, and if you irrigated in France, for example, you would lose your appellation. So we formed the DRC, and now two dozen wineries are members. I think we’re starting to influence the conversation in a big way. I don’t think people understand: Vineyards use a huge amount of water. But I also don’t think they understand what irrigation physiologically does to the grapes. It’s why California wines have 15–16 percent alcohol. They wouldn’t be [so alcoholic] if they were dry-farmed.

Don Oman, founder of Pastaworks, turned me on to Italian wines. And then he got me to go to Italy with him several times. I fell in love with the wines of Friuli. I started growing Friulano at Clos Electrique when somebody showed up at the winery with a bunch of cuttings in the back of his pickup truck and said, “I bet you would like these.” The new Giuliano is totally amazing. It’s exactly what I want to be making: 40 percent Friulano. It’s got this grapefruit-rind thing in the mouth.

Dijon clones are planted up and down the Willamette Valley for both pinot noir and chardonnay. I think that’s a huge mistake. They just don’t make very good wine! They’re bred for production, not for quality. Obviously people who have Dijon clones would argue all day with me that that’s not true. But in my opinion, Dijon clones make inferior wines in most cases, on the same soil type, than the clones that were here before them: Pommard and Wädenswil.

My kids are now 28 and 33. Julian, at 28, has become a complete wine geek. He designs my labels, and he loves to talk with me about how I’m making the wine. But I don’t think he has any aspirations to make wine—although recently he asked if he could come up and work harvest. You know what? You just never know.

Zoned for Eco-Travel: Oregon's Land Use Law 2.0

Oregon's famously strict land-use laws are what make our state so desirable. But with a new flurry of farm stays, European-style hiking trips, and forest resorts, a movement is afoot to relax these laws. Hannah Wallace investigates how this could be a boon not only for eco-tourism operators, but for the environment as well

The front porch at Leaping Lamb Farm, a farm stay in Alsea, Oregon

This story appears in the June issue of Oregon Business Magazine.

Green Springs Inn & Cabins, 18 miles southeast of Ashland, is a singular place. A portion of the 150-acre property—which includes an eight-room main lodge and nine rustic cabins — lies inside the sprawling Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. All nine solar-powered cabins are made from felled trees that were on the land when owner Diarmuid McGuire bought 145 acres from Boise Cascade in 2003. The property attracts all sorts— eco-travelers from Europe, Microsoft and Facebook employees, and Pacific Crest Trail hikers looking for their next meal. “People who want to be in the forest but not feel like they’re damaging it,” says owner Diarmuid McGuire.

The property is appealing precisely because of its setting on the edge of a vast wilderness; the 87,000-acre Cascade-Siskiyou forest has one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the Cascade Range, with rare alpine meadows, 120 butterfly species, 200 bird species, and several dozen endangered animal species including the willow flycatcher and the northern spotted owl. In fact, Green Springs Inn is located on “resource land”— in this case, forestland that is protected from development under Oregon’s pioneering land- use laws. (McGuire was allowed to build nine cabins on this land due to a provision in the law that allows seasonal hunting and fishing cabins.)

“We’re in one of the last great boreal forests on the planet!” McGuire says, his voice swelling with pride. “The forest has been abused by human activity, but we’re seeing the trend slowly reversing itself. But people need to understand it to support it.”

In order to do this, McGuire dreams of building an interpretive center on his property that would teach visitors about the Cascade-Siskiyou ecosystem and why it’s so important to preserve. He’d also like to build an additional 30 or 40 cabins, some of which he could sell off to finance the project. But he can’t do that because Oregon’s landmark land-use law forbids it. Passed in 1973, the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Act protects so-called resource land — land zoned as forest or agriculture.

“This legislation is what makes Oregon worth living in,” concedes McGuire. “But on the other hand, if you want to run a business on resource land, you have to deal with a set of pretty strict rules.” An amendment added in 1984 (“Goal 8”) allowed large destination resorts — places like Sunriver and Running Y Ranch — on resource land. “Most of these are gated rural communities with golf courses and some visitor accommodations,” says McGuire. (See “Destination Resorts 2.0,” page 56) But oddly, that amendment still forbade small-scale resorts, projects like Green Springs Inn, with a relatively small environmental footprint.

Which is why McGuire, with the support of Rep. Peter Buckley (D-Ashland), is drafting an amendment that would tweak the law, allowing small destination resorts with educational facilities and low-impact recreational activities (hiking, birding, fishing, etc.) to open on resource land.

“Both of those things gave us a lot of heartburn,” says Greg Holmes, Southern Oregon planning advocate for 1,000 Friends of Oregon. It would’ve opened up some of the worst outcomes that have come about under the large-scale resort amendment, Goal 8. So for the time being, McGuire is putting the legislation on hold and instead trying to get approval for his project at the county level.  But even if the Jackson County supervisors grant him a permit to build on resource land, that decision could be shot down by a community member.

“Any citizen with $500 can appeal that decision to the Land Use Board of Appeals,” says McGuire. “And I cannot afford to fight an appeal.” If that happens, McGuire says he would rewrite the amendment, hopefully gaining 1,000 Friends’ buy-in, and ask Buckley to back it in the 2016 legislative session.

McGuire’s vision to allow small eco-resorts on protected land is one of several early-stage efforts that suggest a movement is afoot to relax Oregon’s famously strict land-use laws. Tension has always existed between environmentalists and pro-business interests in the state, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the tourism sector. As written, the 1973 law forbids small destination resorts on resource land and makes it difficult (but not impossible) for working farms to host overnight guests.

But as more tourists visit the state to discover its untrammeled rural beauty — from horseback riding in wine country to agritourism in the Gorge — business owners like McGuire are eager to oblige. Farmers are opening farm stays that include breakfast, outfitters are taking cyclists and horseback riders on agritourism-themed excursions, and nonprofits are forging European-style networks of hiking trails that merge public land with private enterprise — all while having minimal impact on local environments. Oregon’s land use law 2.0 may be a boon not only for ecotourism operators but for the environment as well.

That’s what the visionaries behind “Gorge Towns to Trails” are hoping, anyway. Launched three years ago by the nonprofit Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Towns to Trails seeks to develop a 300-mile trail that wraps around the Gorge, linking small towns and communities with wineries, breweries and secluded natural areas. Project manager Renee Tkach says the idea is modeled on European hiking tours, which allow travelers to hike from winery to winery (or pub to pub), spending the night along the way — sometimes at a winery or farm — while an outfitter delivers your bags.

“This program would’ve been a crazy idea 28 years ago, because there wouldn’t have been any connections between the towns,” explains Tkach. But over the past 28 years, the U.S. Forest Service has snapped up more than 40,000 acres of land, protecting it from development but also making it easier to build trails between towns. Friends of the Columbia Gorge also has a land trust through which they’ve already purchased over 1,000 acres of land. (The Land Trust is actively working with area land owners who are interested in easements and may purchase more private land as it becomes available.)

Originally, Friends of the Columbia Gorge thought the trail would live only on public land. But Tkach says that Gorge-area businesses  — especially wineries and other agritourism ventures —have been so supportive of the concept of a European-style trail network that traverses both public and private land that the Land Trust may not need to purchase all the remaining private land.

“There’s a winery in Mosier called Analemma, and the owner, Kris Fade, was saying, ‘I want a trail that goes right through my vineyard, just like in Tuscany — private land but with a permit,’” recounts Tkach.

Though the entire 300-mile loop is a few decades off, certain segments are near completion. The Hood River to The Dalles corridor is 78% completed, says Tkach, and the Washougal to Stevenson section is 80% completed. When it’s finished, the Hood River-Dalles trail will be a three-to- five day experience with hikes of 10 to 12 miles a day. Tkach guesses that the entire 300-mile loop could be a two-week hiking trip.

Gorge Towns to Trail already offers “Trails to Ales” day hikes that end at a brewery and “wiking” trips that send hikers off with a wine tasting. But this spring, as a preview of future longer trips, they began offering overnights under the category of “Play & Stay.” In April they ran a “Blooms & Brews” trip that took guests on a private tour of gallery Lorang Fine Art in Cascade Locks, followed by dinner and pints at Thunder Island Brewing, an overnight at the Best Western and a morning hike at Dry Creek Falls. A few Gorge wineries may soon add yurts for farm stays, but for now, Airbnb seems to be filling in the lodging gaps, especially in towns like Mosier that don’t have hotels.

Nowhere is the cross-pollination of low-impact recreation and agritourism more apparent than in the wine industry. Wine-related tourism has always contributed a lot to the state’s economy: $207.5 million in 2013. Though the Oregon Wine Board doesn’t track economic impact by types of wine tours, outfitters say interest in their cycling, horseback riding and “wiking” (hiking and wine tasting) trips has never been higher.

“In the last two years, our Wine Country trip has really taken off as one of our bigger tours,” says Pedal Bike Tours’ marketing director Lota LaMontagne. Guests bike a 12-mile loop down backcountry lanes and stop at three wineries: Adelsheim, Bergström and Four Graces.

Lindley and Justin Leahy of Willamette Coast Ride run a six-day, intermediate- level horseback-riding trip that takes riders from wine country through the Siuslaw National Forest and on to the Oregon Coast. It ends with a wine tasting at WillaKenzie Estate in Yamhill. Though they just moved to Oregon last year, their trips have been a hit with equestrians from both the U.S. and abroad. (Justin, whose father is noted equestrian Willie Leahy from Ireland’s Connemara Trail, grew up riding and training Connemara horses.)

“One of the obstacles with horseback riding are the liability issues,” says Lindley. “The folks at WillaKenzie welcomed us and are very open minded and friendly to both tourism and local businesses.” Lindley says these trips are also a low-impact way for travelers to see the Siuslaw National Forest up close. “Although we’re in federally owned land a lot of the time, there are different privately-owned pieces that are clear-cut, so you get to see a little bit of everything,” she says.

Over in Bend, James Jaggard from Wanderlust Tours retrieves tourists at motels and drives them to vineyards, breweries and cideries, where they can either hike or canoe off to the next site. These tours are popular with both retirees and college students, he says. “They love that our guides can interpret the natural and cultural history here,” says Jaggard. “Sipping local wines and craft beers is the icing on the cake.”

Agritourism, it turns out, is a growing part of Oregon’s tourism economy — and not just at wineries. “Staying on a winery, hazelnut farm or hop farm is such a cool, unique, original Oregon experience,” says Harry Dalgaard, destination development specialist at Travel Oregon. Despite land-use restrictions and liability issues, Dalgaard has seen a surge in the number of farm and ranch stays over the last few years, and a “relative explosion” of tours to farms and ranches. Travel Oregon is so confident about the potential of agritourism that the agency convened a statewide working group last year to more comprehensively develop and promote agritourism.

Some counties are more lenient than others when it comes to allowing visitors on a working farm. Lucky for Scottie Jones, the owner of the perennially booked Leaping Lamb Farm Stay in Alsea (35 miles southwest of Corvallis), the Benton county planner she worked with in 2006 was open to the idea. She approved Jones’ application for a two-bedroom cottage even though her land was zoned exclusively for farm use (EFU). Jones had to notify her neighbors of this change, but they gave their blessing too.

Jones, who is a member of Travel Oregon’s agritourism working group, sees farm stays as an essential way of maintaining farmland. “You don’t lose farmland if you allow small farms to diversify into agritourism,” she says. Her story proves her point. New farmers in 2003, Jones and her husband, Greg, learned the hard way that lambs alone would not pay for the farm. After a few years, they were only grossing $5,000 annually.

“Our retirement was financing the farm,” Jones says, noting that you can’t graze more than 40 lambs on 20 acres of pasture. “The economies of scale just aren’t there for small farms.” Now, with just one on-farm cottage (it goes for $250 a night in summer), Jones is grossing $35,000-$40,000 a year. Sixty percent of her guests come from Portland, with the rest hailing mostly from Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the summer, she gets lots of European visitors, who are more familiar with the concept of farm stays, she says. Jones was spending so much time referring would-be guests to other farm stays (because Leaping Lamb was all booked up) that she launched Farm Stays U.S., a promotional website for American farm stays. So far there are 800 listings, with 32 in Oregon.

The other hurdle agritourism-minded farmers face is liability insurance. Because of the inherent risks of being on a farm (think dangerous farming equipment, slippery mud and temperamental animals), only one company in the state has insured farmers until now, says Ivan Maluski, director of Friends of Family Farmers. But Senate Bill 341, which at press time had just passed unanimously in the Oregon Senate and was headed for the House, will hopefully change that by limiting a farmer’s liability when members of the public visit for U-pick, pumpkin patches or farm stays. “The hope is that the bill will lower the risk of farmers getting sued and create an opportunity — a regulatory environment where more companies will consider insuring farmers,” explains Maluski.

Once liability issues and land-use restrictions are tackled, Dalgaard predicts we’ll soon see a veritable explosion of agritourism across the state. In some cases, entrepreneurs are creating an agritourism infrastructure in rural areas that haven’t had any tourism at all until now. Last fall 33-year-old James Good opened Good Bike Co. in Prineville—50- miles northeast of Bend. Located at the crosshairs of the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail and The Oregon Outback, a 360-mile “bikepacking route,” the shop has done a brisk business catering to cyclists of all sorts. But when Good began connecting with local farmers and ranchers, he realized there was an untapped opportunity.

“I thought, ‘That’d be a perfect match, to integrate cycling with farm-to-table,’” says Good, who was inspired by a recent cycling trip he and his wife took in Scotland. This summer he’s offering day-long bike trips to a nearby lavender farm, a dairy farm, a biodynamic vegetable farm, a working cattle ranch and a family-run cheesemaking operation. He also runs custom tours to the Willamette Valley, schlepping guests’ gear so they can ride from winery to B&B unencumbered.

McGuire, from Green Springs Ranch near Ashland, is encouraged by all of these developments in rural areas. And he’s well aware that the very reason Oregon farms are still intact — and so appealing to visitors — is because sprawl is contained. “Farms are being subdivided in every single state of the union except for Oregon,” says McGuire. “That’s why I would defend Oregon to the death!” But McGuire dares to dream for a balance that’s so far been elusive. “I’m thinking if we can write a real bill — something that the environmentalists and the people concerned about the economy could agree on — that would be a hot ticket.” 

To see the original on OBM's web site, click here. 

Grape Expectations: why are big players in the wine industry buying up vineyards in Oregon's Willamette Valley?

 

California-based Jackson Family Wines just bought Zena Crown Vineyard, in Salem's lovely Eola-Amity Hills

This story appears in the October issue of Oregon Business Magazine. 

On December 18, 2012, a massive windstorm blew through the Willamette Valley, causing severe roof damage to Kevin and Carla Chambers’ triple-wide mobile home just outside Newberg. “We had a waterfall in our house,” says Kevin, a vineyard manager who has worked in the Oregon wine industry for 35 years. “My wife and I looked at each other and said, ‘Obviously, we’ll have to do something about our living situation.’”

Back in 1989, the couple had bought a 32-acre property called Resonance, knowing that it was an exceptional site for growing pinot noir grapes. In the hands of local winemakers such as Peter Rosback at Sineann and Brian Marcy at Big Table Farm, Resonance fruit consistently made some of the best wines coming out of the valley, according to reviews in respected publications such as International Wine Cellar.

So it was with mixed emotions that Kevin and wife Carla decided to part with their property, selling it to the illustrious Burgundian winery Maison Louis Jadot. (The sale price was not disclosed, but insiders say it broke a record for per-acre price for a vineyard in Oregon.) Setting the international wine world atwitter, legendary Jadot winemaker Jacques Lardière came out of retirement to run the company’s Oregon outpost.

“It was hard to let go of  Resonance,” Kevin says. But with the money they made from the sale, the Chambers were able to buy their first stick-built home—on a Christmas tree farm in the Eola-Amity Hills.

While modest in size—the property has 20 acres of planted vineyards—this Resonance sale is just one of a half dozen recent Willamette Valley real estate transactions that signals the region’s growing appeal on the international wine stage. This trend is being driven by a handful of factors: the drought in California, comparatively low land prices in the Willamette Valley and the aging of Oregon winemakers. But the central reason large, out-of-state players are investing in the Willamette Valley is consumer demand for Oregon pinot noir.

“There are not so many places outside Burgundy where pinot noir is known, and Oregon is one of them,” says Thibault Gagey, deputy general manager of Jadot, referring to the company’s decision to purchase its first vineyard outside of Burgundy in Yamhill-Carlton.

The Oregon wine industry has come a long way since 1965, when David and Diana Lett planted the first pinot noir cuttings in the Willamette Valley. The region achieved international acclaim in 1979  —  when the Letts’ Eyrie pinot noir came in third place at a blind tasting of some of the world’s finest pinots in Paris. Burgundian wine producer Robert Drouhin was so impressed that he sent his daughter Véronique to Oregon to work the 1986 harvest with three Oregon winemakers. In 1987 Drouhin purchased 225 acres in the Dundee Hills, making Domaine Drouhin the first French firm to plant roots in the Willamette Valley.

Today there are around 600 wineries in Oregon. Three-fourths are still small by industry standards, producing fewer than 5,000 cases per year. A 2011 economic impact study valued the industry at $2.7 billion, but that figure is larger today, says Michelle Kaufmann at the Oregon Wine Board. “We’ve had record harvests since then, additional wineries popping up, and all this outside investment.”

By all accounts, the buying spree over the past two years is unprecedented. A year ago, Jackson Family Wines in Santa Rosa, California, bought 320 acres of vineyards in both the Eola-Amity Hills and the Yamhill-Carlton wine regions. In May 2013, Seattle’s Precept Wine, the largest privately owned wine company in the Northwest, bought the 30-acre Yamhela Vineyard. In April California-based Foley Family Wines acquired the Four Graces, which included 54 acres in the Dundee Hills and 40 acres in Yamhill-Carlton. Sommelier Larry Stone, former president of Evening Land Vineyards, just bought a vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills and has planted 66 acres. 

Jadot winemaker Jacques Lardière in the Resonance vineyard

In all cases, neither side would disclose sale prices. But Peter Bouman, the broker at Oregon Vineyard Property, says the recent range for planted acres has been between $45,000 and $60,000 an acre.

Private equity firms such as San Francisco-based Bacchus Capital Management have also made strategic investments in the valley. Bacchus has made debt and equity investments in Wine by Joe, one of the largest producers in Oregon, and in May they bought Panther Creek winery outright.

Then there are the outsiders who have been working and living here so long they are practically insiders. Domaine Drouhin staked its claim here 27 years ago. Late last year, they purchased the 122-acre Roserock Vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills. This past March, pioneering Oregon winery Elk Cove bought the Goodrich Road Vineyard in Yamhill-Carlton, which has 21 acres of vineyard.

Wine-industry brokers say this is just the beginning. “The French are coming. And they’re going to keep coming,” says Bouman, who conducted the Jadot sale. 

How is this frenzied activity impacting Oregon’s hundreds of small-scale winemakers? A tight-knit group  —  everybody here seems to know everybody else, and gossip travels fast  —  most winemakers interviewed for this article share the attitude of “a rising tide raises all ships.”

However, some also expressed anxiety about skyrocketing grape and real estate prices. Many winemakers don’t actually own their own vineyards, so these “land grabs” are taking thousands of acres of grapes off the market, causing a dearth of grapes and record-high prices. The average price for Oregon pinot noir grapes in 2012 was $2,738 per ton, a 20.6% increase over 2011. And though that figure dipped slightly in 2013, the price of North Willamette Valley pinot noir grapes  —  the most highly prized —  were $2,819 a ton. As a result, winemakers who don’t own their own vineyards are being priced out of top-quality grapes.

Oregonians have long been sensitive to encroachment from outsiders. Today’s influx of well-heeled vintners from California, France and elsewhere echoes the recent migration of professionals from cities like Brooklyn and L.A. to Portland. Will the vintners, like these urban escapees seeking a greener, more balanced lifestyle, drive up real estate prices  —  not to mention bottle prices  —  in the Willamette Valley?

A perfect storm of factors has led to this moment. First, a bunch of vineyard owners are reaching mature vintages themselves — and are ready to cash in. “They’re 60, pushing 70, and need to retire,” notes Bouman, who has four vineyards for sale, including the 70-acre Eola Springs Vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills, listed at $2.5 million.

The historic drought in California is also much worse than winemakers anticipated. Every week headlines proclaim record-low rainfalls. As a result, vineyard managers are predicting extremely low yields.

Kevin and Carla Chambers sold Resonance to Jadot in 2013

“There’s no question anymore that the water issues in California are driving people north,” says Bouman. “I got a call the other day from a guy who is growing 500 acres in Lodi [in California’s Sierra Foothills] and basically is considering selling everything lock, stock and barrel and moving up here because of the drought. I’m getting an increasing number of calls like that.”

Few California buyers will publicly admit that the drought is one of their reasons for coming to the Willamette Valley, where the average rainfall is 35 inches a year. Marcus Goodfellow, owner and winemaker at Matello Wines, thinks that’s intentional. “That’s the game changer that no one talks about,” says Goodfellow. “What happens when California can no longer be California?”

When people ask Hugh Reimers, chief operating officer of Jackson Family Wines, why the company bought land in Oregon, he jokes, “Well, we were worried about global warming.” But Reimers, who grew up in Australia, says that’s tongue in cheek. The wine behemoth  —  which owns vineyards in Chile, Australia, France and Italy —  had been eyeing Oregon for a long time, he says. So when the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) decided to sell off its vineyard investments, putting more than 500 vineyard acres in Oregon on the market in 2013, Jackson Family Wines snapped two of them up.

In addition to buying Gran Moraine in Yamhill-Carlton and Zena Crown in west Salem, the company bought Soléna Estate, a 35-acre vineyard, and Maple Grove, a big tract of land near Monmouth, where the company is planting 100 acres of vineyard.

“There are few places in the world where you can grow world-class pinot noir,” Reimers says, explaining why the company purchased 1,380 land acres in Oregon. But it didn’t hurt that real estate here is far cheaper than in other fashionable wine-growing regions. “And I think Willamette Valley vineyard prices will continue to appreciate. “says Reimers. “So it was a good real estate investment for us, as well as investment in quality.” While prime vineyards in Napa can go for as high as $300,000 an acre, $50,000 an acre is more typical in the Willamette Valley.

According to Gagey, Jadot’s purchase of Resonance Vineyard had more to do with the valley’s high-quality pinot noir than low land prices. “We went there two times, we tried the wines, we liked the wines,” says Gagey of his visits to Resonance. They also loved the specific property, on an east-west ridge in Yamill-Carlton, because it was dryfarmed (not irrigated) and own-rooted. (That is, old vines, not grafted rootstock.) “Those two things, we are very interested in,” says Gagey. Though small in terms of acreage, this purchase represents a big shift for the 160-year-old winery, which until now has only had acreage in Burgundy. They expect to release 2,000 to 2,500 cases of their first Oregon vintage (from 2013) in 2016.

Many local winemakers are flattered by this newfound passion for Willamette Valley pinot — and think investments by well-financed outsiders are a good thing.

“I’ve gotta be honest: The vast majority of the last 40 years has been getting our pinot on the map,” says Goodfellow, who has been making wine in Oregon since 2002. “Seeing big players like Jackson Family Wines purchase here validates the Willamette Valley as a region.” 

Goodfellow, who purchases all the fruit he uses to produce 4,000 cases of wine a year, was dismayed to learn that one of his regular fruit sources  —  Bishop Creek Cellars  —  was on the market.  “I’ve been producing wine from that vineyard since 2005,” he says wistfully.

But the general sentiment amongst Oregon winemakers, he says, is that these recent acquisitions may turn out to be a great boon for the region. “What’s happening now is proof that we have a grown-up wine region. We’re not the little brother to Burgundy anymore.”

Thirty-five-year-old urban winemaker Thomas Monroe at Division Winemaking Company in Southeast Portland relies on other growers for all of his fruit too. Despite being pushed out of three vineyards  —  and being turned down by another  —  Monroe, too, is sanguine about the influx of out-of-state winemakers. “It causes some short-term supply chain issues,” he says. “But ultimately, it’s an accolade  —  these people believe in Oregon. They have a lot of money behind them. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t know that they would be able to make a high-quality product from this state.”

Oregon winemaker Eugenia Keegan

One thing that’s engendered good will is that most of these newcomers have hired well-regarded Oregon winemakers. “Jackson Family Wines has employed Eugenia Keegan, who is extraordinarily well-loved in Oregon,” says Goodfellow. (Keegan, who is general manager at JFW, came from Four Graces in Dundee.) JFW also hired Tony Rynders; Precept hired Sarah Cabot. Some companies have even continued allowing local winemakers to buy grapes from their new properties  —  at least for the time being. Lynn Penner-Ash, for one, was able to negotiate a long-term deal with JFW that allows her to keep buying grapes from one particular 3.5-acre block of the Zena Crown Vineyard. “We have worked with this site since its first crop in 2007 and have consistently done well in the press with the wines we produce from there,” says Penner-Ash. “It would be difficult to see our block go.”

But underneath this upbeat acceptance of outsiders lies a barely articulated wariness. The Willamette Valley has always positioned itself as the anti-Napa. Even today, tasting fees  —  if they exist  —  are minimal. And though there are plenty of fancy LEED-certified tasting rooms, there are just as many unheated sheds or scrappy living rooms where wine lovers taste by appointment only. Most established winemakers also have a philosophical commitment to keeping bottle prices affordable.

This presents a conundrum. One of the repercussions of these recent land grabs is that grape prices are through the roof. “In my 35 years in this industry, I have never seen grape prices higher than they are now,” says Kevin Chambers. And grapes from acclaimed sites like Shea Vineyards go for as much as $4,500 a ton.

Though of course a boon for vineyard owners, these higher grape prices mean wineries that don’t own their own vineyards are having to scramble to find new grape sources, or pay a premium.

Monroe and his wife, Kate, have felt the pinch of these price increases. Though they haven’t been directly impacted by the recent vineyard sales (yet), they have been priced out of a few of their regular fruit sources. Just four years ago, when he made his first Oregon vintage, Monroe was paying in the mid-$2,000 range per ton for pinot noir grapes. This year he’s paying well over $3,000.

Despite rising grape prices, Ken Pahlow, winemaker at Walter Scott Wines in the Eola-Amity Hills, hews to a $45 per bottle threshold. “I always felt that if Russ Raney [former winemaker at Evesham Wood]  —  after 25 years in the business  — if his most expensive wine was $44, how could I come in and charge more?” Pahlow says about Raney’s Cuvée J, which Pahlow considers to be one of the best wines in the valley.

“Nearly 40% of our production is Willamette Valley pinot noir or chardonnay that retails for $23,” he says. “Once you get over $40, $45, you’re not going to sell a lot of wine to the Portland market.” 

The newcomers  —  Jackson Family Wines, Jadot and Precept  —  are undeterred. Jackson’s entry-level Oregon Pinot under the La Crema label, released in April, retails for $35, and the company’s Gran Moraine Yamhill-Carlton Pinot is $45. These higher price points are strategic. “We didn’t go up there to try to bring the market down,” says COO Reimers. “If anything, we went up there because we saw an opportunity to elevate the market and the industry by producing wines at much higher price points.”

Elevating the market is a lofty goal. Elevating land prices … not so much. Peter Rosback at Sineann Winery — who purchases 100% of his grapes  —  says he was hurt by Kevin Chambers’ sale of Resonance Vineyard. “Kevin  —  he’s a friend of mine  —  he needed the money, but that pinot noir was really special,” says Rosback. He’s also frustrated by “California carpetbaggers” who have snapped up prime vineyards in the Willamette Valley. 

“It’s annoyed me and friends of mine mostly because we aren’t rich,” says Rosback. “Winemaking is not a highly profitable enterprise. Our margins are low, and we have competition from all over the world.”

The winemaking process at Trisaetum Winery, where Jadot makes its wine. From top to bottom: The fruit is sorted, then dumped into a vat to ferment. During the fermentation process, juice is drained from the bottom of the vat and pumped back to the top in a process called "pumping over."

Yet overall, even Rosback thinks these investments by well-financed outsiders are a good thing. “It’s validation of what our pioneers figured out 40 years ago,” he says.

This is a good outlook to have, since the acquisitions by outside winemakers show no signs of slowing down. In September California music executive Jay Boberg, chairman of digital music provider INgrooves, and Jean-Nicolas Méo of Domaine Meo-Camuzet in Burgundy bought the 13-acre Bishop Creek Cellars vineyard in Yamhill-Carlton. Bouman says a few additional high-profile French winemakers are poking around, and he’s also shown properties to Californian, Italian and even Brazilian buyers. Mike McLain at McLain & Associates Vineyard Properties in Albany confirms the interest from California and abroad, saying his phone is ringing off the hook. “We’re getting a lot of calls from all over!” he says.

 And yet the question remains: Can the Willamette Valley make room for these deep-pocketed newcomers while maintaining its unpretentious, laid-back vibe? Or does their arrival signal a shift in the landscape  —  like the entrance of a shiny new Starbucks that drives up rents and latte prices in its wake?
Gone are the days when a winemaker of modest means could buy land in the Willamette Valley without significant outside investments. 

“The water is much deeper than it was 12 years ago when I started,” says Goodfellow. “Your margin for error is less. You have to elevate your game.”
But if you can’t afford a vineyard  —  or land on which to plant one  —  then you’re stuck paying $3,500 a ton for pinot noir grapes … at least for a few years. People are planting like crazy right now, according to Goodfellow and others, so prices should come down in three years, when those vineyards start bearing fruit.

Which brings us back to per-bottle prices. The fastest-growing segment of the wine industry is the upper end of the wine market  —  those that sell for $20 a bottle or more. Plenty of Oregon winemakers already charge $50 or more per bottle. But with grape prices higher than ever  —  and Jackson Family Wines and other newcomers charging more per bottle — the idealistic Oregon winemakers who want to keep pinots affordable may have to rethink their strategy.

Maybe, just maybe, all these changes in the valley  —  not to mention the continued drought in California propelling winemakers to move north  —  will give Oregon winemakers permission to charge a little more for their wine. That would be a boon for Oregon winemakers, if not exactly for consumers. 

As for Kevin Chambers: He had planned to farm hazelnuts on his new property in west Salem but can’t shake the grape-growing bug. “This property is crying out to be a vineyard,” he says of his new southeast-facing property, which spans the crown of the Eola-Amity Hills. Once Chambers rips out 62,000 more Christmas trees, he’ll plant grafted rootstock. He intends to sell his grapes to local winemakers. “It’s all cyclical. Prices are very high right now. We’ll see quite a bit of planting over the next five years, and then prices will come down again.” 

 

Drinking (dry-farmed) Wine in the Willamette Valley

I have a story in the May issue of Afar magazine about the beautiful Willamette Valley. Though I didn't get a whole lot of space to wax poetic, I got to write about a few outstanding small-production wineries: Belle Pente, Brick House, and Beaux Freres.  All three of these wineries are members of the Deep Roots Coalition, a motley crew of Oregon winemakers who practice dry farming—that is, they spurn irrigation and rely on natural precipitation alone. Dry farming, which is the norm in France, encourages the grape vine's roots to grow deeper, resulting both in hardier plants and more interesting wines. Irrigated vines don’t express their true terroir, proponents say, which is why in France, if you irrigate, your appellation is revoked. I hear the DRC, founded in 2004 by winemakers Russ Raney and John Paul Cameron, is about to get a web site.  I'll link to it when they do.

In the meantime, enjoy my "Wander"—and the Willamette Valley.  (In my humble opinion, the PDF from the magazine— Download WANDER 6.44.34 PM—looks much better than the web version.) 

 

 

Show me Some Skin: skin-fermented white wines in the U.S.

The grapes used in Big Table Farm's Wirtz Pinot Gris sit on skins for up to 10 days. The result? A full-bodied and luscious wine that's amazing with seafood.

 

On a trip to Slovenia several years ago, I tasted a butterscotch-hued wine that blew my mind. I was visiting winemaker Branko Cotar, in the sleepy village of Gorjansko, not three miles from the Adriatic Sea. Though the Vitovska Grganja I was sipping looked (sort of) like a white wine, it had the full-bodied, tannic taste of a red. In the depths of his cobweb-filled cellar, Cotar, a burly man with an impressive mustache, let me in on his secret: He'd made this wine by allowing the grapes to macerate in their skins for two weeks, a technique that's typically used only with red wines.

Skin-fermented whites were once the exclusive domain of Georgian, Italian, and Slovenian winemakers like Cotar, Gela Patalishvili, Stanko Radikon, Josko Gravner, and Ales Kristancic of Movia. But recently, American winemakers have begun experimenting with them, too. In California, Broc Cellars, Wind Gap, and the Scholium Project are making macerated whites; here in Oregon, where I live, Big Table Farm, Cameron, Johan Vineyards, and Antica Terra have all recently been playing with them as well. Virtually any white wine grape can be used: Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Roussanne, Malvasia, Ortugo, Trebbiano, Ribolla Gialla, and so on.

And though these wines, frequently dubbed "orange wines" for their copper color, are an acquired taste--they have a funky nose and often a cider-like zing--they've caught on at restaurants, too. Michael Garofola, sommelier and manager at Portland's Genoa restaurant fell in love with skin-fermented whites when he tried Radikon's Oslavje at a dinner party. Now he makes sure there's always an orange wine on the tasting menu at Genoa, so he can introduce diners to them one glass at a time. (The Old World orange wines are not inexpensive, ranging from $63 for Monastero Suore Cisterencensi "Rusticum" '09 to $205 for Gravner's "Breg" '04, so it's best if diners know what they're in store for.) Last fall, Garofola organized a five-course "orange wine dinner" at Genoa with bottles from Movia, Radikon, and Gravner, among others. Because there's no protocol for what to pair with orange wines, Garofola says he just opened all five bottles at once and threw them on the table.

"There was a lot of debate about which was best with which foods," says Garofola. The dinner began with a savory baked romanesco broccoli custard with black truffles and spicy mustard greens and culminated with a braised pork belly and smoked tenderloin with braised cabbage, apples, and pickled mustard seed.

Guest David Speer, sommelier and owner of both Portland's Red Slate Wine and Ambonnay champagne bar, said the Gravner--which gets a whopping nine months of skin contact--went best with the pork. "The Gravner was the biggest and boldest and needed to have bold flavors around it," recalls Speer. The Radikon, on the other hand, was more versatile. "Over the course of the night the Radikon would shift and change. It worked almost with everything."

At Genoa, Garofola is currently pairing a Coenobium 2010 with an Insalata di Carota, cooked with alfalfa hay and topped with mascarpone.

At L'Apicio in New York City, sommelier Joe Campanale always has an orange wine by-the-glass. (He also has them on the menu at his two other restaurants, dell'Anima and Anfora.)

"If you have a dish that you'd normally want to pair with a light red or a rich white, an orange wine would be a good in-between," Campanale says. But because of its tannin-acid structure, he agrees with Garofola. "It does really well with pork."

Skin-fermented whites are not, however, universally acclaimed as alluring and profound. Some critics, in fact, complain that they're not only technically flawed but also an annoying fad. In a recent blog for Inside Scoop, Jon Bonné, the San Francisco Chronicle's wine editor, railed against orange wines ("less oxidized than murky or beset with microbial flaws") but then singled out a few he thinks are worth drinking: La Stoppa Ageno from Elena Pantoleoni and, in the U.S., the 2011 Pinot Gris from Wind Gap and the Prince in His Caves from Abe Schoener's Scholium Project. (Bonné found it "more refined than ever.")

But at restaurants like L'Apicio and Genoa, diners order them all the time. "We've always done well with them," says Campanale, who likes the theater of decanting orange wines. "The way they look is so impressive. And a lot of them do get better in the decanter."

For recipes from L'Apicio and Genoa, see BonAppetit.com.

Vintage MFK Fisher

Inextricably bound up with M.F.K. Fisher’s lifelong passion for food was the pleasure she took from sipping and serving a simple house wine, a crisp aperitif or a prickly, delicious glass of Champagne. In “M.F.K. Fisher: Musings on Wine and other Libations” (Sterling Epicure; $19), Fisher’s biographer, Anne Zimmerman, gathers all of the eminent food writer’s essays on drink under one beautifully designed cover. Some of these gems have been plucked from well-known collections, like “The Art of Eating” and “Long Ago in France,” but many others — the entertaining “a Vintage Spat,” for example, and the rousing “Wine is Life” — have been out of print for decades. For Fisher fans, coming across these is like reading an as-yet-unopened letter from a dear old friend.

Continue reading my review of "Mustings on Wine and other Libations" on the New York Times' the Moment blog.

Oregon Wine Getaways

Though I'm a native Oregonian, I'd never ventured to the wineries in the southern part of the state—until researching this 12-page story for the October issue of Portland Monthly. But those full-bodied tempranillos and cabernet francs were some of my absolute favorites during the month-long research trip I conducted in July. 

Those and the pinots from Belle Pente, Bethel Heights, Cristom, De Ponte Cellars, Evesham Wood, Eyrie, Lemelson, Lenné, and... Let's just say that Oregonians are spoiled.

I also got to interview maverick winemaker John Paul Cameron about dry farming and the Deep Roots Coalition (a group of Oregon winemakers committed to not irrigating their vines); talk to chef Christopher Czarnecki about where he sources wild mushrooms for the Joel Palmer House in Dayton; and research the latest kerfuffle on closures. (Short version: a handful of Oregon winemakers believe red wines age just as well—if not better—with screw caps as they would with cork closures.)

In addition to the five weekend itineraries in the feature, I suggest a few excursions that make perfect day trips from Portland (which got pushed to the web due to lack of space in the magazine).  So if you just have one day to experience wine country, my recommendations are Hawks view Cellars, Big Table Farm, the adorable town of Carlton, or a bike trip with Pedal Bike Tours.

Personally, I'm excited about the afternoon cheesemaking classes at Kookoolan Farms, which in October include Mozzarella 101, Washed Curds, and Italian Hard Cheeses (all taught by Willamette Valley cheesemakers). Owner Chrissie Zaerpoor told me that the $50 class fee includes generous tastings of topically relevant cheese as well as homemade kombucha. (She and her husband Koorosh also sell everything you need to make cheese at home at their farm store: rennet, curd cutting knives, thermometers, molds, enzymes, and even acid-testing kits.)

Beyond Organic Wine

Food trends are typically followed by parallel trends in wine. Witness the recent focus on organic, biodynamic, and local wines—at restaurants and wine shops across the country. But, just as the locavore movement has begun spurning mere organic produce (consecrating “beyond organic” farmers such as Joel Salatin as movement heros), fans of terroir—let’s call them terroir-ists—are touting something called natural wines. 

For a quick primer, read my blog about natural wine bars (and restaurants with extensive natural wine selections), published in T: Magazine's The Moment blog. If you haven’t read Alice Feiring’s book The Battle for Wine and Love, you should. (For Alice Feiring’s definition of natural wines, see here. There is, so far, no certification process or label for natural wines.)

The Politics of "Green Wine"—and Added Sulfites

This post originally appeared on the Faster Times, generating dozens of comments. Clearly the subject of what does, indeed, cause a red wine headache is still controversial—and it's still up for debate.

A few weeks ago, I posted an article about natural wines—just one of the many "green" wines that are getting more attention (and accolades) these days. There's also certified organic wine. Wine made from organic grapes. Biodynamic wine. And—murkiest of all—"sustainable" wine.

A friend recently posted on Facebook that she'd finally come to the conclusion that she can't drink red wine anymore—she wakes up in the middle of the night with raging headaches. Several people (including me) posted that she's probably sensitive to sulfites and that she should give sulfite-free wines a try. (Another friend posited that it was the histamines in red wine that give people headaches—this actually seems more plausible to me since white wines typically contain more sulfites than red. Reds have more natural preservatives in the form of tannins.) 

A discussion ensued about which wines do and do not contain sulfites. Here's the scoop: all wines contain some naturally-occurring sulfites—they are produced by yeast during the fermentation process. In the U.S. any wine that is "USDA Certified Organic" cannot contain any added sulfites. Those organic wines that do contain small amounts of added sulfites are labeled "made from organic grapes." Winemakers with this label add no more than 100 ppm (parts per million) total sulfites—in the form of sulfur dioxide (known as SO2).

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

This recent radio program from KQED in California tries to clear up some of the confusion about all these different eco-wine categories, including this controversial issue of "added sulfites." Reporter Andrea Kissack talks to so-called biodynamic winemaker Tim Thornhill from Parducci Winery and also interviews skeptics who gripe that natural wines have an "organic funk." Towards the end of the segment, she quizzes Luc Erotran from San Francisco's Terroir Natural Wine Merchant who shuns winemakers who are trying to "surf the green wave" and gives his own definition of natural wines.

According to the Organic Wine Journal, the use of added sulfites is a subject of much debate in the organic winemaking community. "Many vintners favor their use, in extremely small quantities, to help stabilize wines, while others frown on them completely," reads the copy on the Organic Wine Journal's site.

While there's nothing inherently wrong with sulfites—they help wines with any kind of shelf life avoid premature oxidation or possible spoilage—they are a chemical and according to the USDA, 1% of the  population is sensitive to them. For more on the still-mysterious subject of Red Wine Headaches, check out this article by Marian Burros.

Big Wine and an "Omnivore's Dilemma" to Expose It

(This article was originally published in my Food Politics column at the TheFasterTimes.com.)

Thanks to the slew of recent books and movies about our food supply (led by The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food Inc.), more Americans than ever are aware of where their food comes from and what’s in it. Readers of this column also know that mass-made juice can be loaded with “flavor packs” and concentrates from up to 12 different countries.

But what about wine?

This may come as a surprise, but most of the wine sold in the U.S. today has been processed and adulterated beyond recognition by corporate growers who are intent on maximizing profits. Is nothing sacred?

Over the last 24 hours, I’ve been devouring Alice Feiring’s excellent book The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization and am quickly discovering that the wine industry in many ways mirrors the food industry. At many big wineries (both here and around the world), the life is processed out of the grapes even before they appear on the vines (with over-irrigation, which increases yield but also leads to shallow roots and extraripe fruit). Then, during the fermentation process, meddlesome winemakers add everything from industrial yeast, bacteria, and enzymes to tannins and microbial agents—all to “improve” the taste and mouthfeel of a wine, often so it will appeal to a mass-market palate. (OK: they also throw in these additives to speed up the fermentation and control the process. You know, to make the whole thing more scientific.)

Some winemakers are also brandishing hi-tech processes such as micro-oxygenation and reverse osmosis (also called “ultrafiltration”), techniques that allow them to further manipulate wines.

Fiering writes:

In today’s globalized wine scene, winemakers would like to make wine as standardized as possible. Adding industrial yeast to the wine helps. It ensures that fermentation will start and finish when the winemaker wants it to, not according to the whims of nature. This is extremely important when Costco is expecting its new shipment of wine from Gallo in April—plus, the retailer doesn’t want the customer to bring the wine back complaining that it doesn’t taste like last year’s model.

Today, there are hundreds of industrial yeast replicas, including one genetically modified strain that was recently approved for use in the U.S.

At issue here is not food safety or even nutrition (though I wouldn’t be surprised if organic, biodynamic and naturally-made wines turn out to cause less of a hangover and are proven to contain more antioxidants than their processed cousins) but diversity and complexity of flavor.

Feiring believes (and I agree) that these wines are uniformly bland and characterless—they are artificial, their unique terroir masked by the introduction of such “designer yeasts,” chestnut tannins, oak extracts, and other indignities. Often, as Feiring shows, scheming winemakers mess with their vintages solely to achieve a higher score from influential wine critic Robert Parker (which, of course, leads to a surge in sales). After Parker awarded Helen Turley’s rich, syrupy 1993 Zinfandel a whopping 95 points, for example, he started a trend that hasn’t stopped to this day. “The paradigm of a great wine shifted to one big, jammy, oaky fruit bomb,” writes  Fiering. “And the whole industry adjusted accordingly.”

To me, the central dilemma with Big Wine is actually one of transparency. Though I can choose to drink wines that are made in the natural Old World-style, there is no wine labeling law that requires that GMO yeast, tannins, or bacteria (or new-fangled filtering technologies) be disclosed. Even artisanal producers have begun using these “scientific” techniques—but it is unlikely, as Feiring points out, that they’ll divulge them on labels anytime soon.

Part of the pleasure (and risk) of drinking wine comes from savoring its subtle flavors and the ineffable qualities bestowed on the grapes by the terroir, the weather, and the irrigation (and cultivation) methods. Wine made in the Old World style is alive—it changes from year to year and even, once uncorked, from day to day. It has a sense of place.

Feiring’s book is an Omnivore’s Dilemma for the world of wine and winemaking. I just hope it raises the same level of awareness and appreciation for Old World winemaking techniques as Pollan’s book has for polyculture and sustainably-farmed, honest-to-goodness food.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to seek out small producers who create authentic natural wines—people like Oregon vintners Russ Raney of Evesham Wood, Brian O’Donnell of Belle Pente, Jason Letts at Eyrie, and John Paul at Cameron.  (These wines are at the forefront of my mind since I’ve just returned from Oregon. Know any amazing natural wines from other regions?  Please share them below.)

Manure Mix=Floral Bouquet? Polyculture at an Oregon Vineyard

(This article was originally published in my Food Politics column at the TheFasterTimes.com.)

The wines at Belle Pente (beautiful slope), a 70-acre farm off a dusty road in Carlton, came highly recommended by Russ Raney. The grapes here are organic and the winery is biodynamic; winemaker Brian O’Donnell is a recent member of the Deep Roots Coalition. Coincidentally, I’d read a brief article in the Oregonian a few days earlier about how Brian and his wife Jill have begun diversifying their vineyard by raising goats and Highland cattle.

Below: Sheep and chardonnay at Belle Pente

Belle Pente is not easy to find, nor is there a tasting room, per se. But we had called ahead and so Brian was expecting us. As we drove up a gravel road, we sped past the O’Donnell’s farm and cellar, it turns out. (After visiting a few of the bigger area wineries that day, we’d come to expect a sign, if not a parking lot.) It wasn’t until we’d reached the crest of the beautiful slope (from which we had a magnificent view of the valley) that we realized Brian had been waving us down from his tractor.

“Vineyards are inherently a monoculture,” Brian told us, as he poured us a glass of dry Muscat from 2007. He and Jill are trying to change that by adding livestock and native plants to their winemaking repertoire. They’ve had the goats for fifteen years—they got them originally to clear the land of broadleaf weeds so they could minimize the use of herbicide, but they also milked them, making cheese for home use. Whereas the goats prefer broadleaves, the sheep like grass—so both animals help maintain the vineyard, while also adding to the “manure mix.” Ultimately, the grass-fed sheep are sold at auction for their meat. “They turn our pasture grass into food for humans,” said Brian.

The chickens, which are a relatively recent addition, eat the annoying cutworms (which had been nibbling on the tender new growth of the vines at night)—the eggs, said Brian, are a nice side benefit. (They sell the surplus to neighbors.)  The Highland cows are also brush eaters; their manure goes into making some of the biodynamic preparations, so the O’Donnells have no need to import it. (Eventually the cows, too, will be sold for meat.) In an attempt to restore as much of an indigenous natural habitat of the region as possible, he’s also begun planting native grasses such as Blue Wildrye, Tufted Hairgrass, and Slender Wheatgrass in the aisles between the vines. Brian also supplements the animals’ diet with white grape skins, which aren’t fermented.

This sort of integrated farming is a key tenet of biodynamic farming. It’s also a smart prevention strategy. “Introducing (or restoring) biodiversity is a key to maintaining a healthy, thriving vineyard environment that will ultimately require fewer costly interventions in terms of pest and disease control,” Brian said.

The Muscat was crisp and floral. Belle Pente is one of only three Oregon winemakers to make a Muscat, a wine that’s typically found in Northern Italy (sometimes in the Alsace). The grapes for this vintage come from a vineyard down the road in the Yamhill-Carlton District, where the vines go deep into the soil, past thick stones and marine sediments.

We tried a 2007 Pinot, which had a minerally character, and a 2006 pinot gris reserve, which, Brian told us, had a a more Alsatian style. Next we sipped the Murto—a jammy pinot that’s sourced from an estate in the Dundee Hills where the soil is volcanic. It had a spicy kick and a deep earthiness; I could’ve easily had a full glass. Or two.

Since I wasn’t driving, I also wasn’t spitting as my boyfriend and Brian so elegantly were. (I have yet to master the art of elegantly spitting. Plus, when a wine is so delish, spitting seems like a travesty—even if it is early afternoon and you haven’t eaten lunch yet.)

So forgive me, because this is where my notes lose their precision. I did scribble in my notebook that we talked about the principals of biodynamics, which include lunar cycles, preparations (spraying the vines with silica and highly concentrated compost) and integrated farming techniques. I asked Brian how a New Yorker like him ended up on a remote vineyard in Oregon (he fell in love with wines while working for Intel and HP in Mountain View, California in the 80’s), and, as we tasted more wines—an Estate Reserve Pinot Noir with dark black fruit and an excellent estate grown Chardonnay that had just the right balance of oak (it’s barrel fermented but with old oak—a 50/50 mix of French and Oregon oak)—we discussed other risk-taking winemakers such as Branco Cotar in Slovenia and Gravner in Italy. (Gravner, Brian said, is “pushing the envelope.”)

Though there is something exceedingly romantic and right about drinking a wine in the region where the grapes are harvested, I had to ask: where can I find Belle Pente wines in New York City?  Surprisingly, they are distributed to 15 states—including New York. Among the NYC restaurants who carry it are such foodie destinations as Cru, Gramercy, and 11 Madison. Still, unable to resist, we bought a few bottles for friends and family before thanking Brian and bidding him farewell.

The Belle Pente Vineyards at Dusk (courtesy of Belle Pente)

Evesham Wood and the Importance of Deep Roots

(This article was originally published in my Food Politics column at the TheFasterTimes.com.)

Last week, while visiting my family in Salem, I made a stop at Evesham Wood (one of my favorite U.S. wineries) to talk to owner and winemaker Russ Raney.  (Full disclosure: he and his wife attended the same church as my folks so I’ve been a champion of their wines since they founded Evesham Wood in the mid-1980’s.)  I was eager to taste his certified organic pinot noirs and French-style chardonnay but also to hear how the recent heat wave had affected his vineyards and the grapes.

I’d noticed, as we drove up the sloping hillside towards the Raney house (the wine cellar, which is modest in size, is appropriately tucked under the Raney home), how green and lush the vineyard looked. It was a hot, dry Oregon summer day and there appeared to be no sprinklers or irrigation pipes anywhere in sight.

When I asked Russ his secret, he launched into an animated discussion about the importance of not irrigating. It turns out Evesham Wood is a charter member of the Deep Roots Coalition, a group of Oregon growers who spurn artificial irrigation for environmental reasons but also because it affects the resiliency of the vines and, ultimately, the taste of the wine.

“If you irrigate, you can’t taste the difference in the wine from year to year,” Russ said. (Which is sort of the whole point of making and drinking wine, if you think about it: a wine’s unique taste comes from its particular terroir and each vintage is different.) If you don’t irrigate, the vines are forced to go deeper into the soil to find water. They also find minerals there that add to the grapes’ complex flavors.

“The roots grow shallower if they’re irrigated, and they get used to the water,” Russ explained. Whereas, during the week of 105-degree-plus weather, Evesham Wood’s vines—some of which reach as far as five feet down—were just fine because their roots are getting adequate moisture from the soil. By comparison, irrigated vines in the Willamette Valley reach only 14 inches below the surface, tops.

This is why wines from places like Walla Walla, an arid wine region in eastern Washington, are suspect (and, it turns out, controversial)—not only from a water conservation perspective but also from an old-world winemaking point-of-view. Deep Roots purists (the practice is also known as “dry farming”) believe wine should not be grown in dry regions, period.  The vines that get watered with drip irrigation remind me of humans’ reliance on antibiotics: the more we take indiscriminately, the more our bodies require to wipe out serious bacterial infections such as MRSA. Whereas people whose immune systems are strong from years of taking good care of themselves don’t need antibiotics when they get a simple sinus infection or bacterial infection. Their roots are deep.

We tasted some wines directly from the barrels, including a French-style (unoaked) chardonnay and several pinots, discussed the merits of screw caps (best for young whites and rosés, says Russ, not so much for anything that’s red or aged over a few years), and got Russ’s recommendations for other Oregon wineries who are making phenomenal old-world style wines. One of these was Belle Pente Vineyard in Carlton…