Lenné Estate

Living the Dream, Vol. 2

Memorial Day weekend is always a big weekend in the Northern Willamette Valley and I am starting to think, an omen at Lenné.  Last year, I  was buying banquet tables the week before Memorial Day when I got the call. It was a friend who was doing some mowing for me and turned a corner and said he lost tension on the clutch. No problem I thought, must be a cable, after all, my little blue baby, otherwise known as a 60 hp New Holland TN75V, only had about 800 hours on it. Tractors are build like brick sh*#+t houses, or so the theory goes. And I had come to depend and trust, dare I say develop a real affection for that tractor. We had spent a lot of time together. That is me and baby blue in better times. 

That week, I had plenty to do to get ready for our first Memorial Day back in 2007. But when you are living the dream, sometimes the dream isn't like you dream about it. Over the next couple of days I spent about 14 hours under that tractor in the middle of the vineyard trying to install a new clutch cable and restore the tension.  But the only thing that was getting tenser was me and I finally had to  come to grips with the truch; my tractor done me wrong.

Well about a month and $4500 dollars later I licked my wounds and started rebuilding trust with baby blue. I still wonder about her at times, but so far so good. You wouldn't think a clutch would go out with so few hours, but stuff happens when you are living the dream.

This year was all different. We had a big tasting with our club members on a 95 degree day a week before the Memorial Day weekend. I released the 2006 Lenné Estate "Karen's Pommard" Pinot Noir. The wine represents our two best barrels from the 2006 Vintage and puts the o in opulent. You hear people say about wines, "oh it's a food wine." Well, I know what they mean and this is not a wine you would say that about. It is rich, textured and makes a lasting impression and judging by the sales that day, people agreed with me.

But I digress. A couple days before the big weekend I was feeling good, realizing I had already done much of the preparation for the Memorial Day weekend. On Thursday I decided to weed the landscape at the tasting room and give it a little bit of water. About noon, I noticed the water pressure starting to weaken. I jumped in my truck and drove up to the cistern at the top of the vineyard. Sure enough it was nearly dry. Back to the pump house to see what the problem was. Everything seemed okay, but didn't look like we had power.

Fortunately, I got a hold of my pump guy. When you own a piece of rural property, you have to have a pump guy. As luck would have it, he was in the area and stopped in a couple hours later. Yep no power, that was the problem. You also get to know a good electrician and fortunately, the guys who worked on the building initially were able to come out the following morning. That was good news considering I had a partner and his wife who were staying at the tasting room Friday night and probably would like a shower and the use of a toilet, not to mention the people over the weekend who might need the same relief.

But Friday morning, the electrician couldn't locate the break in the huge 4 0tt cable that stretched some 500 feet through the vineyard. I knew where the cable was as I trenched and buried it back in 2004, but the location of the problem was going to take some additional instruments. The electricians left and by noon on Friday I was a little panicky about the lack of toilets all weekend, but figured I could wire a generator into the pump house. I rented a generator and with a little help on the phone from the electrician, wired it all up and got water flowing to the cistern. Later that afternoon, I was feeling pretty damn smug,  realizing that I had reacted on the fly and learned how to wire in a generator and save the day, or at least the weekend.

About five on Friday I was waiting for my partner and his wife to arrive and turned on the faucet,-nothing. Up to the pump house again and I realized that the water was flowing into the cistern, but the immersible pump in the cistern wasn't bringing it out and down to the tasting room. I double, triple checked my wiring, called the pump guy who was probably halfway to Montana by now, being it was now six the Friday before Memorial Day, and when I got his answering machine, I did start to panic even more.

My partner and his wife finally arrived and we stared at it for a while until I finally decided to call it a night and left at around eight. I rigged up 50 gallons of water and a bucket so my partner and his wife could at least flush the toilets. I drove home wondering what the hell I was going to do the next day.

You always hate to get a guy out of bed at 6:45 am on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, but I thank my lucky stars the pump guy who's name is Phil, answered the phone, a little groggy, but answered nonetheless. By 9 he was at the vineyard installing a new panel for the sump pump which had probably fried in a power surge when the power went or when we got it back on. At eleven that morning, water came flowing down the hill and ten minutes later our first customers came in and happily used the toilet. My partner and his wife even got to get a shower in later that day.

I guess small miracles, a little luck and a good pump guy are all big when you are living the dream.

Smell is everything?

I used to think aromatics were everything with wine. But like all things, my perspective has changed. Perhaps it is a function of age as our olfactory sense diminishes with time. I sometimes also think that women have the best olfactory sense. Don't believe me? Just check out Katherine Cole's column for the Oregonian. Talk about Le Nez. I hope someday she sits down with with one of my Pinot Noir's and puts her nose to it, so to speak.

While it makes for great reading, wine is more and more about the palate to me. I need to sense the wine especially in the mid palate and finish. There is a fifth taste on the palate called umami and some wines give me an impression of this taste, though it is created by tannin and acid balance, not the chemical component of the umami taste. It is almost a savory taste you sense on the mid part of the palate. Increasingly, I am under the impression that this sense separates the merely good wines, from great wines.

Where does it come from? Well I think it comes from the vineyard. Sites with controlled vigor produce more concentrated wines and contribute to this impression on the mid palate. To me these are the most satisfying wines. Moreover, they may not be the ones that reveal themselves on the first taste. Generally people are pulled in by the aromatics long before the taste. But on drinking more than a taste, sitting with a glass, a bottle, the wine always reveals itself for what it is. The best wines make an undeniable impression on the mid palate and finish. Well at least that is my definition of great wine.

I had a local retailer tell me recently after trying a bottle of my 2006 Lenné Estate Pinot Noir, that he couldn't stop drinking it. I think the reason is that satisfying, almost savory quality on the mid palate. I get that impression from another wine I have recently had a fair amount of, the 2005 Yakima Red from Owen Roe. This is a wine that grows on me each time I taste it. It is maybe one of the most structured wines from Owen Roe, meaning it has a fair amount of tannin, but in a good way, a way that adds to the wine's richness. I can't wait to taste this wine in 10 years, as I think it has the stuffing to last.

Two other wines which I have liked very much lately, perhaps not as much of that mid palate quality, but nice wines nonetheless are the 2005 Abeja Cabernet Sauvignon from Walla Walla and the 2005 Siltstone Guadalupe Pinot Noir. The Abeja wine has some interesting smoky, almost chocolate like aromas and a soft, supple texture. The Siltstone is from a vineyard I pass everyday and has great aromatics, full of black and red fruit with a very fine tannin structure leaving the impression of velvet.

Does great wine go with food?

It is January and being bored, I organized a few tastings for my wine club members called the Rootstock Club. The first Saturday tasting featured a comparison of wines form the two main soil types in the Northern Willamette Valley. After a blind tasting we sat down to lunch. Two of my club members were sitting next to me and uttered the unthinkable, "we really don't like wine that much with dinner, we like it better afterwards."

It made me think about something Hatch, the winemaker at Fromm told me when we were in New Zealand. He said we are all trying to make great wines, but most days I just need a good wine with dinner. Sometimes I think that most great wines are destroyed by food. It's the perfect food and wine match that brings out the best in each other. But who has time to sit around and come up with the perfect food and wine match? In reality, it is the simplest of foods that works with great wine. We should probably have simpler wines with more complex meals or keep food simple when we are having a great wine.

The problem is none of us eats simply when we are out. I went to a very well know Portland eatery recently,  a place with well known chefs and a restaurant that has sadly lost it's mojo. Well, maybe food for thought for another blog on the life cycle of restaurants. But while the mojo was missing, the food was still good and the wine was great(if I say so myself), the 2006 Lenné Estate Pinot Noir. The wine is finally out of bottle shock and has opened like a rose, with amazing mid palate and finish. You will have to excuse my immodesty on this wine, but it really sinks into the mid-palate with an almost savory quality.

I suppose I look for length above all else in categorizing a wine as great. Not that wine can be reduced to one element, but I know that without length, I can't think of a wine as great. That length is almost always diminished by food. Perhaps I should re-think my definition of great wine, but I will stick to the idea that great wines can't be put down, they hold your interest after the meal is over. On the night in question, the wine was obliterated by a first coarse which included a garlic laden salad and a spicy curry soup with ginger. It was a good exercise in how to make a great wine taste bad. In a perfect world, I would have ordered an Alsatian wine or Oregon PInot Gris for the first coarse but, too many wines and such a small liver.

In any case, the wine went better with my duck and horrible with my wife's scallops. And yet, another problem with food and wine pairing, a wife who doesn't eat meat. I can tell you that by the end of the meal, the wine started to taste recognizable but it made me think about the kinds of wine we make and what their place is with food.

Matt Kramer had a good article recently about food and wine. I loved the line: One thing is certain: Food gives wine meaning. I know what he means and yet really have no clue. We spend a lot of money meticulously managing our vineyard to produce wines of depth, very perceptible on the mid palate and finish.  While wines always help clean food off your palate and these wines add to the overall meal, I almost always find them diminished by food. Sacrilegious! Probably, but thats why I keep that inexpensive bottle around, a little more restrained, higher in acid and perfectly good with dinner.

New Zealan, final impressions

We finally headed south to Central Otago and saw some great scenery along the way....at least until we came to the glacier town of Franz Joseph. We were lucky enough to walk up to the glacier and get some photos. Later that evening it started raining and rained the entire next day on our trip to Central Otago and we missed the spectacular(or so they say) scenery of the Southern Alps.

After a night in Wanuka, we made our way to Queenstown to explore the wines of Central Otago. We stopped briefly at Carrick and then moved on to one of the stars of the region, Mt. Difficulty. Mt. Difficulty sits on a hill with spectacular views. We sat out on the terrace and enjoyed the views and the booms of the bird cannons coming from the cherry orchards below. Most of Mt. Difficulty's single vineyard Pinot Noirs were sold out and the one remaining was about $80 New Zealand dollars which was close to the norm for single vineyard bottlings. With the exchange rate being so poor, it was a stretch to take a chance on something we couldn't taste. But we sat happily drinking a lower tier Pinot called Roaring Meg, named after the famous waterfall in a New Zealand state park, who's name escapes me at the moment.

After Mt. Difficulty we headed to Quartz reef and later to Felton Road. Danny Schuster had told us to stop in at Quartz Reef and see  Rudi  Bauer, an Austrian who had worked  several vintages at Sokol Blossor. I think Rudi said something that put Central Otago into perspective, that these were still young days for this winegrowing area. I liked Rudi's 2006 Pinot Noir as well as anyones in Central and I imagine his single vineyard wines were that much better. I think he is producer to keep an eye on.

Leaving Quartz Reef we headed to what I thought were the best wines we tasted in Central, Felton Road. Their wines were a little more balanced than most. My impression of Central Otago overall were of very high acid wines. I don't know if that was indicative of the 2006 vintage, or a preference throughout the region. But the ph on these wines rendered most of the wines hard and acidic to me. I can't say that I found much mid palate in any of the wines and when we left Central Otago, I wondered if some of these wines would ever even out in the cellar. But that is my impression of a lot of Burgundies I taste as well.

It remains to be see, I suppose, the ageability of New Zealand Pinot Noirs. Overall I was very impressed with the people, but more excited about the Riesling than the Pinot Noir. In Central Otago, the wines were more varietal in the nose than up north, but they lacked the suppleness. In the north, the wines were more supple, but had more secondary flavors, probably from the extended macerations that seemed to be the norm. My favorite wine was still the wine my friend Paul opened in Wellington, the 1999 Dry River Pinot Noir. Perhaps my second favorite was the wine from Danny Schuster, the 2006 Ohmi Hills Pinot Noir. I loved the wines of Neudorf, Ata Rangi, overall, my two favorite producers. And, I  just sat with a bottle of the Fromm Riesling last night with Thai food, a perfect match, I can't wait to taste the single vineyard Fromm Pinot's I brough back in 6 or 7 years.   I also came back a better knowledge of biodynamic farming than I ever had and an appreciation for how gracious wine people can be with our visit to Seresin.

I wish I would have brought back more Riesling, nearly every producer has them and most are good. It makes me think of how forgotten that wine is with the general population here, though in wine circles it is making a bit of a resurgence. I did bring a lot of Pinot Noir back to share with others as well as a sense that I will follow New Zealand wines more closely and return someday to see how far they have come. More importantly, I brought back images of the people I met, the information they shared and how great they were in general.

On the plane over, I talked with a young engineer who lives in San Francisco but is from New Zealand. He pretty much summed it up. "The difference," he said, "between us and American, is that we don't talk as much about what we are capable of or what we have done, we just go out and do it." I found that same understated attitude in all the wine people we met and that alone, is worth another trip.

New Zealand, Vol. 5

We left Nelson and headed towards Hanmer Springs, home of the thermal pools and the not so world famous Heritage Hotel. While sitting in thermal pools is someones else's idea of fun, the scenery alone is worth the trip. The fact that Hanmer Springs is about 40 minutes from the winegrowing area of Wiapara also adds to its interest.

After spending an afternoon seeing the sites of Hanmer Springs, we headed to Waipara and  pitched up at Pegasus Bay, a beautiful family owned and run winery in the heart of Waipara. We were greated in the tasting room Edward who is a family member and the marketing manager.  Edward tasted us on all the wines and we fell in love with the Riesling. It is amazing that nearly every winery produces Riesling and some delicious ones at that. I rarely found the minerality that you associate with Riesling in some areas, but the wines are full of great fruit and floral aromas.

Pegasus Bay is a beautiful winery in the heart of Waipara and besides making some nice wine, they have a fantastic venue for lunch. In fact, I would have to say that the lunch at Pegasus Bay, was one of our nicest meals in New Zealand. We selected the lunch platter for two with a glass of 2004 Pinot Noir and a glass of the Marlborough Savvy. The platter was as beautifully presented as any food we have had, with oysters, a great country pate and beautiful greek olives to name a few. We sat outside overlooking the small lake and the most difficult thing about having lunch here, was getting up to leave. It was really easy to forget time at this place as we sat in the garden and enjoyed the fresh oysters, the view and the delicious wines.

But leave we had to as we wanted to visit one more producer on our way out and it was nearly three by that time. We would have loved to visit Bell Hill, a small producer in the Weka Pass area heading into Waipara, but we had no way to contact them at that point and Bell Hill is an appointment only producer. There wines are highly sought after and their production is small. Instead, we decided to visit a producer named Daniel Schuster on our way back to Hanmer Springs.

Daniel Schuster sits on a hill with clay and limestone soils, not far from Bell Hill. The vineyard is beautiful, reminiscent of some our our own vineyards in the Northern Willamette Valley. We were greeted by Danny's wife Marie, who not only tasted through the wines with us, but sat with us on their beautiful deck overlooking the vineyard and told us all about the vineyard, their work in putting it all together and about Danny himself.

I liked the wines and I thought the 2006 Omihi Hills Selection Pinot Noir was one of the best Pinot Noir's yet, certainly the most concentrated we had tasted. After some time with Marie, Danny pulled up with a young Italian who grows Pinot Noir in Tuscany and was working the vintage with Danny, learning. And what a teacher he is. There are just times in the wine business where you feel lucky to be in the right place in the right time because you meet people that drive this business and make  you feel lucky to be a part of it.  Thas Sunday in Waipira was one of those times.

Danny Schuster is one of the more interesting people I have met in the wine business. There we were listening to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, drinking 2006 Omihi Hills Pinot Noir, soaking up some delicious bread with olive oil and just enjoying the beautiful setting. Danny is a big Bob Dylan fan and he even had a chance to sit and have dinner with Bob Dylan. What impressed me most about Danny is his passion for wine, Dylan and just life in general. He had perspective, talking about what he had built, that it was small, but now a vineyard sits where there was nothing before.

After a bit, Danny took us into the cellar and tasted through some of his 2007 Pinot Noirs and gave us his perspective of what makes a complete wine. We tasted three different Pinots and then blended them to get to that complete wine. When we finally left, four hours after we arrived, I felt a sense of home here. The size of the vineyard, the people running it and what they had created,  all made me think of Lenné and what we have done and are trying to do. I felt a real sense of connection to growing Pinot Noir and a little homesick as well.

Danny left us with a bottle of his 2006 Ohimi Hills Pinot Noir and a bottle to share with his friend Tony Soter. I have never met Tony, but he is recognized as one of the top producers in our area after having created Etude, a very succesful brand in California. Danny also left us with more than wine, a real sense of place and the people who make it so. 

New Zealand, Vol. 4

The following day, after our visit to Seresin, I was still thinking about their biodynamic approach to farming and the church of Seresin as I called it. The barrel room at Seresin is quite a place, definitely my kind of church. Maybe biodynamics is a bit like that, more spiritual than science, which reflects a bit about how wine is in general. Along with a great site, it takes a bit of spirit to make good wine and more than a little science to keep from mucking it up.

After Seresin we made our way to Nelson and a wonderful place to stay called the Wakefield Quay House. The old house sat right on the water with beautiful views of the Tasmin bay and the snow capped mountains beyond. I can't say I am generally in love with B&B's, sometimes it feels like you are invading someone's house for the evening. But besides the location and the great room, it was Woody Moore who makes this place the perfect place to stay. She is full of life and makes you feel as though you have known her forever. She also cooks a mean breakfast. She is English which made Karen feel right at home and encouraged us to come down for a drink after we put our bags away. She greeted us with fresh, raw snapper a friend had caught, with wasabi and soy sauce. On top of that, she served it up with a bottle of Neudorf Savvy, a delicious combination and made me look forward to our planned visit to Neudorf the following day.

After a great Woody breakfast, we headed into the vineyards of Nelson and Neudorf, one of New Zealand's top producers. It is hard to describe the charm of the place without actually seeing it. The old farmhouse has been restored to house a cellar door and winery and the gardens are beautifully done. The whole place looks like a natural extension of the vineyard which lies just beyond the garden. We were greated by the owner Judi Finn, who turned us over to winemaker John  Kavanagh. I am never more amazed with the hospitality of Kiwis. John was busy, but stopped and showed us the vineyard. I could see that the farming was spot on and after John talked a bit about the sandy loam over clay and gravel, I could also see what gives the depth to the wines from this Moutere Hills site.

After a bit of time, owner Tim Finn came and joined us. Tim is a man after my own heart in that he constructed a pizza oven on site. I would have loved to stay around the area and been involved in a little pizza cooking at the site. I could imagine sitting in the garden, drinking some Neudorf wines and making pizza. I could especially imagine it after Tim sat and tasted his wines with us. These were some of my favorite wines yet and I can say the Chardonnay, is the best New Zealand Chardonnay I have tasted. The Moutere Pinot Noir went to the top of the list as well. It has great depth, with plent of black fruit, black cherry, with a slight herbal edge or forest floor aroma underneath. I wondered with a little bottle age, if that herbal edge would turn to tobaco.

After Neudorf, we set off for the Monterey house for lunch. What a fantastic spot. You just never wanted to leave. We eventually had to to make our way to Rimu Grove , a winery owned by Yanks, Patrick and Barbara Stowe. Patrick is from Napa of all places and making some very nice wine, including one of the best Pinot Gris I have had yet on the trip.

Well, more to come, including a great discovery, Daniel Schuster Wines.

New Zealand, Vol. 3

After enjoying the beautiful, windy city of Wellington, we set off, with our host Paul, for a visit to New Zealand's largest wine producing area, Marlborough. Marlborough vineyards comprise 60% of New Zealand's wine production and is best known for Sauvignon Blanc, put on the map by it's international brand Cloudy Bay.

Luckily, the wind was placid in Wellington as we set off in our 12 seater Cessna for the town of Picton. I have to admit that I had never been on a plane as small, never a pilot so young and never landed on a patch of asphalt in the middle of a grass field.  But overall the flight was dramatic as we flew out of the north island, over the straights and dived between the green mountains of the south island and finally landed at Picton. We rented our car and made our way into Blenheim for coffee. Our first stop after coffee, was Fromm Winery where we were greeted by winemakers Hätsch Kalberer and William Hoare. Hätsch showed us the vineyard and talked to us about their philosophy of farming. The vineyard was right in the middle of bloom and from all indications it looked like a good one. Apparently this part of the world paralleled the Northern Willamette Valley in 2005 with a very poor fruit set. There is no  more critical time of year, save harvest, than bloom and growers and winemakers always breath a sigh of relief with good weather conditions during the fruit set.

Hätsch proceeded to show us how the vineyard was expressed in the winery with a barrel tasting of the 2006 Pinot Noirs from the Clayvin and Fromm vineyard. The Clayvin was more modern in style with black fruits and a long, rich texture. We tasted the same wine from several different barrels as Hätsch helped me understand a little bit more about how different coopers influence wine, something that could take a life time to learn. The fruit from the Fromm vineyard also displayed black fruit character, but with an underlying gamy aroma. The wine was leaner in a Burgundian way and built for aging.

This was one of my favorite visits yet. As good as the wines were, the fascinating part was to get another winemaker's perspective on making Pinot Noir. Hätsch has his own perception of what makes great wine and like any good winemaker, I didn't feel like it was fixed in stone. He said something that is so simple, but many people don't appreciate: the greatest wines are the wines that the last glass is the best. I know exactly what he meant. I loved our visit to Fromm because Hätsch was so generous in sharing his perspective. The wines were also very good, with a lean, Burgundian like Chardonnay that I had to have a bottle of and a gorgeous Spatlase Riesling that tasted more like Mosel, save the minerality, than any I have had.

After lunch it was time to head to Seresin Estate. Seresin practices bio dynamic farming on a large scale and yet makes wines like a small producer. We were greeted by General Manager MJ Loza who turned us over to the vineyard manager Colin Ross. is a big strapping Australian who taught me more about biodynamic farming in one day than I have learned in several years. Colin toured the various vineyard blocks and we were fascinated to see how they were farming, especially on one hillside Pinot block that was very stressed because they were having a hard time pushing water up to the top of the hill. I would have like to have seen a wine from that particular block isolated on it's own. I am sure it would have been very concentrated as you could almost feel these vines struggle in the dry Marlborough sunshine.

Colin proceeded to show us all the organic practices of the vineyard and let us smell the buried chamomile that is one of the ingredients in the tea that forms the vineyard spray. I can't say that I believe in biodynamic principles, the particulars of biodynamics, but I can say that the attention to detail in farming is a great benefit. I can also say that Colin was a very passionate proponent of this style of farming and the light footprint and sustainability is very appealing. At Seresin, biodynamics is part of the natural cycle of the place, seeming to just be a part of their culture on the way to reaching their goal of producing great wine.  I am sure that Colin will produce some great grapes for this vineyard as his farming is well along the way.

We returned to the cellar door and tasted some of Seresins beautiful white wines and had a quick taste from the barrel with assistant winemaker Carlos. I wish we could have spent more time with him, but Paul had to catch the plane back to Wellington and we were very pressed for time. The general manager MJ stepped in and had one of the guys run Paul back to Picton in short order, while we were off the other direction to explore the wines of Nelson.

What people at Seresin. You really can't say enough about the reception you receive in this part of the world. Not only did Colin spend the better part of an afternoon touring the vineyards with us, but MJ's offer to transport Paul and Jan's great restaurant recommendations for Nelson made us feel so appreciative. More on the perfect lunch we had in the wine country around Nelson later. Thanks Jan, MJ, Colin and Carlos for the great hospitality. Stay tuned as we make our way into the vineyards of Nelson and meet a Yank from Napa....

New Zealand, vol. 2

We pitched up in Wellington and were hosted by our friend Paul and Mary Terpstra who lived in a beautiful spot overlooking the harbor. In addition to being great hosts, Paul is a wealth of information on New Zealand winegrowing areas and their producers.

After a day of exploring Wellington, we decided to cook dinner for Paul and Mary and drink a wine I brought especially for Paul to taste, the 2006 Lenne Estate Karen's Pommard Pinot Noir. We only made two barrels of this wine and plan on releasing it sometime in May at the tasting room. The menu was a pork loin stuffed with a fig and olive tampenade and a farfalla pasta with lemon olive oil from Seresin Vineyards (a producer who we eventually visited that farms biodynamically on a large scale) with bacon, asparagus and pecorino cheese.

Paul brought out a 1999 Dry River Pinot Noir and treated us to our first taste of Pinot Noir from New Zealand. I knew Paul had set up an appointment at Dry River the following day, but really didn't know much about them. Well, the wine spoke volumes. The wine reminded me of a producers I have liked from the Central Coast of California, Chalone and Calera. It had generous black fruit and a beautiful aroma of a fine leather glove. The wine was no where near the end of its life, maybe not even to middle age and I was so grateful to be able to taste it as it was a wine that gave me an impression of New Zealand wine I am not likely to forget. Dry River was established in 1979 in Martinborough and now owned by El Molino, producers from Napa. Paul had set the bar very high with that wine and we had a wonderful meal that night with two great wines. The Lenne Pinot Noir is from the best part of the vineyard, the pommard block up top and has the best texture of any wine we have made to date. I think
Robert Parker would describe it as unctuous, a word that my wife contends is not proper use of English when describing something you like. Paul understood it, but he is a wine guy, just like me.

The next day Paul and Mary took us to Martinborough to visit Dry River and Ata Rangi. In between we stopped and had lunch at a gorgeous gravity fed winery called Alana Estate. It is typical for many producers to have restaurants at the cellar doors(New Zealand for tasting rooms) and many do it very well. I can't imagine trying to run a restaurant and make wine at the same time, but many seem to make it work quite well. The lunch at Alana Estate was delicious and the wines were all good, especially the Riesling. I started to realize that most producers make Riesling in this part of the world and do it beautifully. What a treat to sit with these fruit driven, floral wines, aromatic wines as they are listed on wine lists here.

After lunch it was time to visit Clive Paton at Ata Rangi, just down the road from Dry River. Ata Rangi is situated on the terraces, a gravelly patch of ground formed when earthquakes pushed an ancient stream bed to the surface. I love to find sites on stressed soil types and this was one of them. Clive was one of the originals in Martinborough, starting Ata Rangi in 1980 and I can only imagine the problems he must have endured in the early days. Like the other kiwi's we have met, Clive couldn't have been more gracious and toured the vineyard with us and tasted his wines, including a stunning late harvest Riesling called Kahu.

The next day we are off to Marlborough, New Zealand's largest winegrowing area. Stay tuned....

In New Zealand, vol. 1

Visiting New Zealand has been a life long dream for my wife Karen. While I never jump at the chance to spend 13 hours on a plane, if a wine growing area is involved, count me in. What surprised me is that after a couple of glasses of wine and a sleeping pill, the flight was nearly painless, much more so than the flights to Europe. You leave San Francisco in the early evening, have a glass or two of wine, take your sleeping pill and you wake up the next morning a couple hours from Auckland. The great thing is that you arrive in the morning, granted it is day later, but the jet lag is minimal.

Karen's best friend is a Kiwi who lives in Portland named Katie. Katie has a big extended family in New Zealand and we started out tour hosted by Katie's sister Gia who lives in Point Chev just outside of Auckland. The fantastic thing about New Zealand is the diversity of wine in such a small place. In the North, the warmer climates thrive and the further South you go the climate changes and cooler varieties make up a bigger part of the mix.

Our first day trip was taking the ferry to Waiheke island, home of nearly twenty small producers. The island produces a variety of wines, centered more around warmer weather varieties like Cabernet and Merlot. The island is a beautiful place, like most of the New Zealand we have experienced so far. In addition to wine, we saw a fair amount of olive groves, something increasingly popular in New Zealand
wine growing areas.

I wish I could tell you more about the various producers of Waiheke Island, but we decided to pitch up and have lunch at a producer called Te Moto Vineyards. It is very common for producers to have restaurants in the vineyard. And, lunch in New Zealand at the vineyard is an all day affair. So, while I can't tell you much about the other producers of Waiheke Island, I can tell you that after a bottle of  good Marlborough Savy(Sauvignon Blanc) and vertical glass pours of 99,2000 and 2001 Te Moto Vineyards Merlot, we were well on our way to getting to know New Zealand wines.

We left Auckland at the end of the weekend and headed to Wellington, to meet Katie's brother Paul and his wife Mary. Paul works for a New Zealand distributor called Eurowines. More later on the great trip to Martinborough and the wines of Ata Rangi and Dry River.

Those are picking numbers.

It is all about September in Oregon and sometimes about the first part of October as well. On the 24th of September, in the sun,  we took samples and were sitting at 23.6 brix on all of our blocks of Pinot Noir. Brix is a measurement of sugar and normally 23 to 24 is where we would want grapes to be with a ph of about 3.4, which are picking numbers. After a couple more nice days, I was sure our sugar was pushing 24. I was ready to pick. Not so fast.

David O'Reilly from Owen Roe buys fruit from Lenné  which goes into his Pinot Noir from the Yamhill-Carlton District called the Kilmore. He has been a great mentor and all he did after I told him we had picking numbers was smile and say, "rookies." The other thing he said is that we should pick when the grapes are ripe. The right sugar and ph numbers, doesn't mean the grapes are ripe. So David and I tasted through all the blocks on a sun filled Wednesday, deciding on which blocks to pick before the rain set in for good. After tasting through the blocks, David said go ahead and pick your grapes, but I will wait on mine.

That told me pretty much all I needed to know to make a picking decision and I agreed completely with his thoughts on when to pick. The block behind the tasting room was ripe because the vines are younger and didn't have as much fruit as the rest of the vineyard. That block was ripe and ready to pick and we did pick that on Thursday and got over 4 tons. We left the other 22 tons hanging on the rest of the vineyard. What we were waiting for was flavor development, we had enough sugar.

If you have looked at a weather map lately you can see that we have had a fair amount of wet weather. Our vineyard was ahead of almost everyone in terms of ripening because we are a warm site. I have always thought that in this part of the world, better to be a warm site than a cool one in spite of the global warming hype. I'm not saying that global warming is hype. But, it doesn't mean that much at the present and near future with respect to Pinot Noir unless our Septembers start getting as hot as August. Maybe global warming will mean wetter, cooler Septembers for us!

We certainly got our cool September this year with the first wet vintage in a decade. Some growers panicked, growers who were far less ripe than us, and picked before the rain. That is fine if you want to make an average wine, but our site is a site capable of making great wine, that is why we choose to let the fruit hang. We have some other advantages in that our site dried out quickly because of the wind, slope and soil.

We finally picked on the 7th and 10th of October, after a couple weeks of rain showers. It was muddy and my biggest worry was how we would get the bins out of the vineyard if we got much rain on picking day. But it all worked somehow. We still had the sugar we started with, but we had something else, flavor. The seeds had turned brown and the green astringency in the skins gave way to the kind of softness that produces velvety wines. I learned a lot about our site this year, how it can withstand some rain, how the wind and steep slope dries it out  and helps guard against water absorption and rot.

A lot of growers had rot and botrytis issues, not to mention under ripe grapes. This year will be a mixed bag for wine producers in the Northern Willamette Valley. There will be a lot of sugar consumed in Willamette Valley wineries this year. But, if anyone should make great wine from this vintage, we should. I will have a pretty good idea of that in January when the wines get through their secondary fermentation and we know what we have. But my guess is, I am damn happy I didn't pick by the numbers.