Steve Doerner is Winemaker Emeritus at Cristom Vineyards in Oregon.
Steve discusses his shift from being a Biochemistry Major at UC Davis in the mid-1970s to his first Job working for Josh Jensen at Calera Wine Company. Steve arrived at Calera for the 1978 harvest, the first vintage for Pinot Noir at Calera. Josh had begun making wine at Calera in 1975, first planting a Pinot Noir vineyard in 1974. Josh hired Steve after a blind tasting test that included tasting a La Tâche. Steve worked at Calera for a total of 14 years. During that period of time, Steve met some of Josh's peer/friend group in Burgundy, a circle of people that included Jacques Seysses of Domaine Dujac.
Steve recalls his early years working at Calera in its limited facilities, working highly physical harvests that left him questioning if this was really the career path for him. He talks about his early days tasting wine, mostly Zinfandel from California. He also talks about utilizing different fermenting techniques in response to certain winemaking tools, and his growing knowledge of the techniques being implemented in Burgundy by the likes of Jacques Seysses and others. Steve comes to the conclusion that in California in the 1980s, Pinot Noir was often treated like Cabernet in the wineries. He also concluded that this was problematic, and began teasing out the nuances of practical meaning from adages he heard in Burgundy.
A serious accident left Steve questioning his relationship to his job, but his perception of his worked changed after his first trip to Burgundy. Steve encountered Jacques Seysses as an outsider to Burgundy who was actively experimenting with different ways of doing things with his winemaking. Steve developed a friendship with Christophe Morin, who eventually worked for many years at Domaine Dujac, and who later died in a motorcycle accident
Although Calera was in an isolated location, Steve tasted fairly regularly with other top American vintners, including Dick Graff of Chalone, Jeffrey Patterson of Mount Eden Vineyards, and Ken Wright. Eventually Josh and Steve began to make white wine at Calera, including from Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, and Viognier. Josh brought back Viognier from France to the United States. And Steve recalls going to France to speak with vigneron in the Rhône Valley about Viognier. For the red wine from Pinot Noir, they contended with very low yields from the Calera vineyards, with limited access to water.
Steve leaves Calera and transitions to working at Cristom Vineyards in Oregon from 1992, encountering a supportive winemaking community in Oregon. He recalls his early days at Cristom, and his first harvests there. He talks about planting vineyards at Cristom, and how they went about it. He also shares his realization that over the years the ripeness levels in the vineyards have changed, and that he has been rethinking vineyard planting decisions that were made in the 1990s. He also believes it is now possible to achieve ripeness at higher elevations in their vineyards. He further asserts that keeping the vineyard yields low, with a lot of thinning, is less necessary than it once was.
Steve discusses where Cristom is located in the Willamette Valley, inside what is now the Eola-Amity Hills AVA. He talks about the influence of wind from the Van Duzer Corridor, and also the Columbia Gorge. He asserts that lower humidity in the area implies lower disease pressure, and points out that due to the wind, fruit typically gets dry on the vine after rainfall in the vineyards. Steve notes that the soils at Cristom are primarily volcanic, and that they retain water due to their clay content. He contrasts this situation with the sedimentary soils that are found elsewhere in the Willamette Valley. Steve goes into detail about the ripeness levels in the vineyards, and how they have changed since the 1990s. He notes that more extreme vintages have occurred more recently. He talks about the differences between vineyard designate Pinot Noir wines from Cristom: Louise, Jessie, Eileen, and Marjorie.
He talks about using less whole cluster for Pinot Noir at Cristom than he did at Calera, and how this affects the taste of the resulting wines. Steve speaks at length about different aspects of whole cluster use, including specifics of stems in the vineyard, in the fermenter, and in the taste of the final wines. He also considers the fashion for whole cluster winemaking more recently. He also addresses approaches to slowing down a Pinot Noir fermentation, and why that is important. He touches on cold soaks, and what they do to microbial activity. He notes that he is opposed to cold soaks, and also opposed to inoculating with yeasts. He explains his winemaking philosophy in approaching phenomenon like reduction. He talks about his approach to racking Pinot Noir, and how he tries to leave Pinot Noir alone during maturation in the winery.
Steve talks about making Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, and Viognier in Oregon. He addresses how the climate during the vintage year affects the Viognier grape. He talks about flavor and ripeness vs. alcohol level in finished wines, and about alcohol levels of the wines at Calera and at Cristom. He generalizes about the climate conditions of Oregon and California, and draws a contrast between Burgundy and the growing conditions in both of those states. He also advises keeping in mind that “Burgundian” encompasses a wide array of winemaking techniques, as wine is made in so many different ways in Burgundy.
He notes that there was a global fashion for wines of power and bigger fruit, but points out that elegance has become more embraced by wine drinkers, while at the same time Pinot Noir has become more and more popular over the course of his winemaking career.
This episode contains a segment recalling the relationship of Josh Jensen with Jacques Seysses of Domaine Dujac, as well as also recounting the work of Christophe Morin in the vineyards of Domaine Dujac and elsewhere.
This episode features commentary from:
Jacques Seysses, Domaine Dujac
Jeremy Seysses, Domaine Dujac
Jean-Pierre de Smet, co-founder of Domaine de l'Arlot
The interview with Steve Doerner was originally recorded in June of 2018.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
[00:00:00] Whenever I visit France, I see lots of top bottles for sale, but when I get back home,
[00:00:05] those same bottles can be much harder to find. If not impossible. That's why I use idealwine.com.
[00:00:13] At idealwine.com, I can buy wines directly from France for delivery directly to my home.
[00:00:20] They have new auctions every week and the fixed price selection is equally awesome.
[00:00:25] Clujard, Chateau Réas and Ulysses Cologne as well as many more grates from all of France
[00:00:31] are regularly available on the website. Best of all, it is simple and hassle-free to buy them.
[00:00:38] Idealwine handles all the customs and logistics hurdles for you and for me,
[00:00:42] wines are ordered with a couple of clicks and then they arrive. It is simple. Check out idealwine.com
[00:00:49] for more information that's idalwine.com to find what you'd like to be drinking.
[00:01:00] I'm Levi Dalton and this is all drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the wine business.
[00:01:20] Josh Jensen, an American who would later found the Clujard wine company in California,
[00:01:28] was on his way to India in the late 1960s when he first met Jacques Seiss, a young Frenchman
[00:01:33] who had recently begun Domain du Jacques in Burgundy. Josh is on his way to India with
[00:01:43] both again Minibus and we found the same interest for wine. When he comes back from India,
[00:01:54] I remember very well. He goes to Paris by two bottles of Chateauille came and two or three pounds
[00:02:03] of Faguar and arrived in Selma at Bickey. He wants to share that with the French. I'm
[00:02:13] Zé Obert, and we share that. French Vigneron meeting with a young American with an interest for wine
[00:02:20] at Becky Wasserman's house. Honestly, that could describe any number of people who did something
[00:02:25] similar over several decades. But what made this meeting more unusual was what happened next?
[00:02:32] In 1970, Josh Jensen participated in the harvest at Du Jacques.
[00:02:38] He comes to my place at Arves to help me. I remember this Minibus next to my one-way.
[00:02:44] And he at that time he said, I want to make Piedon-Wa one day.
[00:02:52] When I go to California with my future wife, I'm the future. I visit him and he organized
[00:03:02] lunch with Dick Kraft. Dick brings a bottle of 69 from Shalom, and I have a bottle of 69 too.
[00:03:15] We drink and discuss wine and become friends. At that time, Josh was writing a page of the
[00:03:27] Chronicle about a restaurant and for the Sunday page on restaurants. He had to visit
[00:03:35] to restaurant today to be able to write his page on Sunday. So he had the need to do a lot of
[00:03:41] jogging to bring to burn calories. But he had the decision. And I thought he was completely
[00:03:47] crazy because he spent, say, one year or more on the geological map to find the right place
[00:03:56] to grow Piedon-Wa. His idea was limestone was major. He found a place
[00:04:02] on these people to sell him land there. And I remember later visiting him.
[00:04:11] He has a big camping car where he has a baby and a wife and he's planting vineyards there.
[00:04:24] And I thought it was completely crazy, but successful.
[00:04:30] Jaxseis was unusual in Maurice Antony especially during the period of the 1970s
[00:04:35] in that he welcomed foreigners and Frenchmen from other regions of France for the Burgundy harvest.
[00:04:40] And this became a bit of a signature of a doujac harvest and one that continues to this day
[00:04:46] as described by Jaxson, Jeremy Sace. There's youth there. There's a bunch of people who are
[00:04:53] really into wine who've traveled from Australia and New Zealand, Californian some cases,
[00:04:58] and other places who come with a ton of questions and a ton of passion.
[00:05:02] But in addition to working a harvest together, Jaxseis and Jaxchensin developed a friendship
[00:05:07] that spanned decades. And they bicycle the cross-french wine regions together with a group
[00:05:11] of other venters as Jampier de Smet recalled. Jampier is a member of the same cycling group and he
[00:05:18] worked a number of harvest with Jaxseis at doujac before founding Domando Larlo in New-Easy.
[00:05:23] And he's a great friend of mine George. Speaking with Jax and the past, it really seems like
[00:05:28] it was a group of friends. Definitely yes. Yes, a group of friends.
[00:05:34] And you did biking together? Yeah. Yeah, all of us
[00:05:39] and more and more because in Burgundy's era is a good group of skiers and bikers.
[00:05:46] And so we did celebrate this year the 30th anniversary of Tour de Vignorant,
[00:05:54] which is a Vintner tour by biking. And so 30 years on the road, we are biking always around
[00:06:01] the 1st of May, 3 days biking and drinking, of course, our producers.
[00:06:09] So there was some Americans and they're like Jaxchensin? Yeah.
[00:06:14] Jaxch was at the beginning of this tour the first years and in, well,
[00:06:22] wiki hate something like yes. The cycling trips allowed an opportunity for the Vignorant to speak
[00:06:29] to one another about why making technique as Jampier alludes to end this comment about Jean-Louis
[00:06:35] Gryppa, another cyclist and also someone who made wine in Theron Valley. He's a part of the group
[00:06:42] of the Tour de Vignorant and so we are cycling. So we are meeting at least once a year,
[00:06:47] once cycling together. It's interesting. There are people like Jean-Louis talking
[00:06:55] together about why he's fascinating. He is such an experience of the Vignards
[00:07:02] and the wine making is a great person talking with. And yes.
[00:07:09] This is the milieu that Jaxchensin who has since passed away once participated in France
[00:07:16] and getting the opportunity to speak with and learn from a number of different Vignorant about
[00:07:20] why. But the conversation about wine making also went the other way as this memory from Jaxks'
[00:07:28] Attas too. And Jaxchens introduced me to Paul, Paul Draper and we did go together at
[00:07:37] there were some meetings of neurological meetings, annual meeting in Los Angeles I think.
[00:07:46] You used to have a group together with Ken Wright, Dick Graff, Paul Draper, Jaxchensin
[00:07:53] and yourself and used to communicate about wine making technique.
[00:07:56] Yeah. And we discovered that my favorites wines from California were made by people using
[00:08:06] wild yeast. The was Paul Draper, Jaxchensin digraph was a few people using wild yeast.
[00:08:15] And so that's pushed me in recognizing that I had started to run the rejection.
[00:08:24] Jean-Marre Pôtel of Poustore had encouraged Jaxks' taste to use native yeast to dujac
[00:08:29] and then tasting with Jaxch and other American ventiners in the United States reinforced that idea
[00:08:35] for Jaxch. Jaxchensin made a further contribution to dujac which was highly significant when he
[00:08:41] recommended Christophe Moran to work at dujac in the vineyards. And when did you meet Christophe Moran?
[00:08:49] I met Christophe Moran when he was coming back from California. Christophe Moran worked for
[00:08:59] Jaxchensin at Carrera. I would say what are two use and Jaxch called me and said that guy is great,
[00:09:09] you should I am. And I could not afford a chef to export the culture, a vineyard manager.
[00:09:20] So I helped him to find a job in Ruyi but a few years later when I was making enough money
[00:09:29] to have vineyard manager I called him and he came to work with me.
[00:09:36] Eventually you stopped the use of herbicides and then moved to organics with your stuff.
[00:09:41] Exactly. And what was that conversion process like?
[00:09:46] It was natural for me I was concerned by nature and I think Christophe sold me the idea
[00:09:58] they were all in the fall. Christophe Moran worked at dujac from 1987 until his death in 2001 and
[00:10:06] during that period of time the interest around stopping the use of herbicides and implementing
[00:10:11] organic farming practices at dujac would increase as Jeremy says described.
[00:10:18] You know the the 60s 70s were the chemical days. It was erosion was an issue on some of
[00:10:27] some of the slopes, how do you manage the vineyard? You're just going to do hand hoe everything.
[00:10:32] It's a ton of work very expensive for wines that aren't that easy to sell at the time
[00:10:36] and very effective molecules that could with one spray mean you never had to put the tractor
[00:10:42] again for to control the grass. It was sold as well we were sold on it as just this is not going
[00:10:47] to be especially polluting because it's got a very short half-life and so on.
[00:10:51] Well, we know we're finding stuff in the water table everywhere in the world from stuff that
[00:10:56] was sprayed 50 years ago and it's still somehow there even though they had a half-life of six
[00:10:59] months apparently. So I think there's much greater skepticism in burgundy in general but certainly
[00:11:05] in our household there's huge skepticism about what is promised by the people who produce these
[00:11:10] things and there's also more of an understanding what happens in terms of soil chemistry
[00:11:16] and I think we've got much more consciousness of the fact that
[00:11:20] we aren't exploiting the land. We are stewards of the land and we have to treat it as a very finite
[00:11:25] resource that once we've screwed it up just the rebuilding or the reconstructing of a soil structure
[00:11:31] of a soil ecosystem is not so simple. We're fortunate that actually they are somewhat forgiving
[00:11:37] the great soils of burgundy because of that clay structure that is not there's a lot of clay but
[00:11:40] it doesn't compact very much plus it gets worked over and we cold winter works the soil in a big way.
[00:11:46] But still we were keen to move away from that system. People were looking at cover crops at
[00:11:53] the time in a way that push the roots deeper, bring down vigor generally and bring down yields.
[00:12:01] So with young vines this was definitely something that was of interest as we were replanting as I
[00:12:05] mentioned at the time. So we started doing cover crops in the row but we didn't we hadn't
[00:12:10] didn't yet have a solution for what's happening between each mine and around around the vine so
[00:12:14] under the row we were still using herbicides and we wanted to move away from that but we were waiting
[00:12:21] for some tractor equipment to be developed and they were really perfecting it fast at the time and
[00:12:25] when and we also needed an extra tractor driver and we need to find the right person to be
[00:12:30] attentive because a hoe that goes between vines is great as long as it's going between vines but if
[00:12:35] it's not adjusted properly it's taking the grass out and the vines and that's a that's a problem.
[00:12:41] So in 98 we moved to full of zero herbicides I think it was in 98 and no regrets. I mean it was
[00:12:52] a great thing to do and you know we talked about going organic and clodal fleshtriles about organic versus
[00:13:00] non-organic were we're really compelling and really interesting. It really asked a lot of questions
[00:13:06] that the differences were striking and so that that certainly played around our mind and
[00:13:13] shouldn't do it because it's you know because you're going to sell your wine worries I mean that's
[00:13:17] one reason but you've got to do it when you're ready these are things that are big decisions because
[00:13:22] it's like when you're on the trapeze and you're going to I'm not that I've ever been on a trapeze but
[00:13:26] I imagine now we're going to do it without the net and you've got to be confident about your ability
[00:13:33] to read the diseases in the vineyard. So in 2001 we decided to move organic and so Christophe
[00:13:41] Mohan was did that first year. It was a big step to move organic and Christophe Moran is somebody
[00:13:48] who pushed that move forward in the dujak vineyards with the support of the Sates family.
[00:13:53] What I learned with my dad when you have someone you feel is really good. You have to trust him
[00:14:01] and give him confidence the day Christophe was there I did never never said a word about
[00:14:07] what we should do in the vineyard. The Christophe she do what you feel should be done
[00:14:13] and if he sat on a Sunday Monday and if you want to go play on on Thursday and Friday you do
[00:14:20] but looking for is the best fruits the day of harvest. But Christophe Moran had already participated in
[00:14:30] an organic vineyard conversion at the Mendo la Loe with Jumpier de Smet and DDA for Neural.
[00:14:36] When we arrived and we both included the Mendo la Loe while the property there were no stock,
[00:14:44] no one bottled in the cellar, no files, no clients, nothing but a team of people working in the vineyard
[00:14:55] and DDA was the chief of the team so he had three people working with him and then he became my
[00:15:05] vineyard manager assisted by Christophe Moran who was the vineyard manager at Domain du Jacques.
[00:15:17] Well I would like to talk about Christophe because Christophe was a great, great person,
[00:15:23] great guy and he has been helping us a lot because his knowledge about vineyard was great
[00:15:31] and we shared a lot of things together and I at this time I knew almost more or less how to make
[00:15:41] a wine but I was not that good for the vineyard. I have ideas, general ideas but not specific ideas.
[00:15:49] My background was definitely not in the vineyard so I was lucky enough to have Christophe as a
[00:15:57] consultant let's say but spending a lot of time with us and giving advices and sometimes working
[00:16:07] with us as well to show how it was so unfortunately Christophe passed away in a motorbike accident
[00:16:17] but he was a great great person yes. While he was there you converted the estate over to organics?
[00:16:25] Yes, yes I have to say it has been not with Christophe it has been with Christophe but it was not his
[00:16:38] idea it was my it has been my idea the first year so we started in we bought the domain in the late 86
[00:16:47] and so the first year has been hesitating and learning a lot and in 88 we started the organic
[00:17:00] culture and so it has been not 100% the first year at all but we started the process in 88 and at
[00:17:08] the beginning Christophe was not that fun of this not of organic but it was such much more work
[00:17:21] in the vineyard he thought the team won't accept and it was different it was difficult once it told me
[00:17:30] but your team won't accept to plow by hand the vineyard I said let's start and let's
[00:17:43] test and we'll see but we'll have to go that way it's so important and so afterwards he did
[00:17:53] and he managed the organic culture definitely but at the beginning it was not not that fun of that
[00:18:01] it's worth pointing out here some of Christophe's strengths as a vineyard manager which
[00:18:05] give you an idea partly of why people remember him with such fondness and respect still today
[00:18:12] Christophe was somebody who knew a lot about vine material like in different clones
[00:18:16] and he knew a lot about pruning oh yes yes he was really yes and I have to say we started
[00:18:26] the selection of a cell with Christophe we did the work with Didier for the role but it has been
[00:18:32] with Christophe that we started that he was very very good in the vineyard yes he knew definitely
[00:18:41] very well how to work in the vineyard and he knew the materials and so the first plantation including
[00:18:46] the whites we mentioned in the Claude Larlo have been planted with clones because
[00:18:51] I was not ready with my selection of a cell and I started planting our own selection of a cell
[00:18:59] in 2000 in the Claude Larlo and it has been a good success and afterwards every plantation has
[00:19:06] been done with with our selection of a cell yes and how did Christophe approach the pruning with
[00:19:11] our law? Christophe was very concerned by the by two things as much leaves as possible
[00:19:21] and as much air as possible we could seem contrary to it but it could work depending on the
[00:19:31] the way you are pruning and so we did experiment a new way of pruning with Christophe which were
[00:19:40] definitely not common at all in Bergen in these times that was in the late 80s and in these times
[00:19:46] that was a gruyo sample or gruyo duble at least and that's it or very few people were
[00:19:54] we are pruning differently and with Christophe we started testing other ways and
[00:20:02] and and I have to say I was very pleased yes so what did he do?
[00:20:08] horizontal it was horizontal yes it was horizontal I mean there were leaves everywhere branches
[00:20:15] and leaves everywhere all along the wild along the wires and there were no holes
[00:20:21] between the plants even though the plants are planted one meter from each other
[00:20:27] in the gruyo sample very often there is a lot of leaves together and then a hole with nothing
[00:20:38] and and the other plant a lot of leaves and a hole with nothing and so we developed the leaves
[00:20:44] and the branches all along the wires and so there were less leaves together more air going through
[00:20:53] and so to me it was a good progress yes another Christophe's strengths had to do with limiting yields
[00:21:02] as Jock says acknowledged he was very focused on pruning I was focused on the vineyard
[00:21:09] everything yeah so one of the things Jeremy said is that Christophe made young vines act like old vines
[00:21:18] by bringing down yields and would you agree with that or yes I would agree yeah
[00:21:25] Jeremy says further expanded on that concept of making young vines act like old vines
[00:21:31] and what that meant at Domain du Jock
[00:21:34] what you tend to get with old vines though is as a whole they produce less they become a little
[00:21:38] less vigorous when they become sometimes it takes 30 years to have that drop in vigorous sometimes
[00:21:43] it takes 50 or 60 years and then when you get you frequently get a bit of virus in old vines so
[00:21:48] you have those small shot berries Mildredage and that other than bringing down your production also
[00:21:54] makes for really great juiced to skin ratios a lot of skin and and you get a texture to old vines
[00:22:01] that 2012 it's like everything was old vines because we had that poor flowering so everything
[00:22:06] was meal whole day so you get that sort of intensity and juicy extra slightly thicker texture but
[00:22:13] you don't get the weight and that's the wonderful thing about it so very old vines there's just
[00:22:17] this intensity of wine into that comes there and with young vines they can make great wines you
[00:22:22] I mean after they've turned 10 you usually already have very good sight expression and very good
[00:22:28] the sense of place that toe wall comes across on the other hand
[00:22:32] they're regular in terms of yields they might produce a huge a huge yield one year the next
[00:22:36] year they're a little tired because they went so there's kind of start stops sometimes to them
[00:22:41] because they're more vigorous and produce more compact bunches because they're usually virus-free
[00:22:47] you might get a bit more betritus than them as well so we were looking to calming down that vigor
[00:22:52] and to also forcing down the roots it's deeper into the soil people say vines have to suffer it's a
[00:22:58] common cliche in the wine business I'll call it for what it is it's total bullshit vines
[00:23:03] must not suffer on the other hand vines must work you can't put them in a pool of water nitrogen
[00:23:10] phosphorus and so on they've got to go get it and they've got and that's that's where you get
[00:23:14] the best expression so drought years where vines actually do suffer usually the wines aren't that good
[00:23:19] you frequently get the hard tenons because they didn't ripen properly because there was water stress
[00:23:24] but a vine that works so it was a question of trying to get them to push them in terms of work
[00:23:30] as the making them behave like old vines so cover crops have their role because they compete with
[00:23:34] a vine if you have a cover crop that's too aggressive you're going to stress that vine but if you have
[00:23:39] the right cover crop and it might take change because the first year it can take a very light
[00:23:43] competition the second year can take a little more so we start with cover crops and then we let
[00:23:48] come back what wanted in terms so we became a much more eco broader ecosystem richer ecosystem as
[00:23:55] natural weed would come and repopulate the area that led to some competition and a drop in vigor
[00:24:02] Jeremy also spoke about that change in the pruning technique that Christoph Moran introduced
[00:24:09] the other thing was changing the pruning system we we put a lot of double cornedole
[00:24:14] the spur pruning because with dispersal mechanism the vine the further it's away from
[00:24:20] from the foot of the vine and its roots the more fertile those buds are which makes sense as you
[00:24:25] can imagine if a vine is growing on trees in a jungle and it wants to go go forth and multiply
[00:24:32] far away from itself and so the spurs which are very close to the root is a good way of dropping
[00:24:39] your figure it was also a good way of aerating the canopy and doing away with having less
[00:24:44] peritious pressure things like that so the the change in pruning system and the cover crops were
[00:24:49] two big things in terms of trying to get them to behave like old mines. Christoph Moran's work had
[00:24:55] a big impact on demand du Jacques and Christoph's death in a motorcycle accident also led to changes
[00:25:02] that du Jacques as Jeremy Sace made clear you know two after Christoph Mohan after he passed away
[00:25:09] I felt like I had to take a whole bunch of responsibility that he the things that that Christoph
[00:25:13] our vineyard manager but also celimaster had been covering and that led me to to take on to shoulder
[00:25:22] certain number of decisions. Jeremy became more involved with du Jacques the family winery after
[00:25:29] Christoph's death and you can grasp by hearing these people speak in succession now how a chance
[00:25:36] meeting at Becky Wasserman's house changed the course of several people's lives and work over
[00:25:41] the next several decades and to hear further about that period and more from an American perspective
[00:25:49] please listen to the interview coming up after the break. I talk to winemakers all the time
[00:25:56] and something they tell me is that oxygen management is a key to aging wine. Finding a right balance
[00:26:04] is crucial and that's why I recommend DM's revolutionary cork closures with DM
[00:26:11] corks winemakers can achieve precisely controlled oxygen management after a bottle leaves the winery
[00:26:18] ensuring a wine that matures gracefully and reaches its full potential. With over two billion DM
[00:26:24] corks sold each year it's clear that winemakers worldwide trust DM for consistent results
[00:26:31] and DM has recently expanded the permeability options for their popular DM 10 and DM 30 closures
[00:26:38] providing winemakers with even more flexibility to choose a cork that will guarantee the kind of
[00:26:44] wine life they envision. Banished surprise dot bottles and embrace DM closures your customers
[00:26:52] will thank you. In North America DM products are exclusively distributed by G3 enterprises
[00:27:01] ready to ensure the lifespan of your wines go to DM dash closures dot com forward slash I
[00:27:08] d TT to learn more that's D I am dash closures with an s dot com forward slash I d TT for more information.
[00:27:28] Steve donor the winemaker emeritus at christm vineyards in organ on the show today. Hello sir, how are you?
[00:27:43] I'm very good. Thanks for having me. So I mean you go back a long ways and you were originally studying
[00:27:48] biochemistry at UC Davis. That's correct. I guess I started in 1974 and majored in biochemistry with
[00:27:56] idea that I was trying to go to medical school to start with so that's kind of why I chose that
[00:28:02] major but I realized pretty early on that that was not the path for me. But the path for me didn't
[00:28:09] appear right away either so I was just kind of hanging out there finishing up school and it took
[00:28:15] me till you know final quarter basically spring quarter my senior year to start really thinking
[00:28:20] hard about what it was that I thought I wanted to do or what I wanted to do when I grew up.
[00:28:25] And I think that my first plan was to go back to school for another quarter and take some classes
[00:28:31] that I hadn't had a chance to take just because biochemistry program is pretty restrictive and maybe
[00:28:36] go to graduate school but I kind of realized that both those were just to buy time to hope that
[00:28:42] something that would just fall in my lap like it ended up happening actually but so I was kind
[00:28:47] of just at the right place at the right time and I had a vague curiosity about wine and I
[00:28:54] don't really know where it came from. I mean my mom's side of the family is French both my grandparents
[00:28:59] on her side were immigrants from France not from a wine region but you know they there was
[00:29:04] little bit of that culture at our house but it was never talked about or we just had wine around
[00:29:11] but it was usually in that you know gallon jug and left out on the counter till it was consumed and
[00:29:16] it might have taken a week to get through it or something you know or it could have been just
[00:29:21] the proximity of Davis to the wine country because you know we go they're just friends and stuff
[00:29:26] to taste but it was more of a social activity just something to do rather than I was that intrigued
[00:29:31] with it. It was and then maybe through just osmosis being at Davis that had this world famous wine
[00:29:40] course there although I never took a class from that department nor did I even know anybody that
[00:29:44] was in it I just kind of heard about it through the grapevine that you know Davis was known to
[00:29:49] have a good wine school but for whatever reason I was curious enough about it to approach one of my
[00:29:57] biochemistry professors and asked if you know the wine industry ever hired you know biochemistry
[00:30:03] says well your chances would have been much better had you taken anology kind of you know so great
[00:30:10] you know so I'll keep thinking about this for a while and in the meantime just serendipitously
[00:30:15] he got a letter that came across his desk from a small California winery turns out it was cholera who
[00:30:21] was specifically kind of looking for either biochemistry major or microbiology and to come apply
[00:30:29] for a job and so this professor remembered that I had asked him about it and kind of haunted me down
[00:30:36] showed me the letter and then I felt obligated to go interview for that job and ended up you know
[00:30:42] working for Josh Chenson for 14 years and that was really the early days of cholera yeah that was
[00:30:49] 1978 and Josh had made some Zinfandel I think his first one was 75 actually from purchased fruit
[00:30:56] and he made it over at Shalon so 78 was a first vintage of anything being processed at the cholera
[00:31:03] site and it was the first Pino Naur vintage although ironically even though that's Josh's whole
[00:31:09] goal was to make Pino Naur that for that first year I remember specifically just because it was my
[00:31:14] first year and it was memorable but that we I think we processed about 98 tons of Zinfandel
[00:31:20] yeah from different vineyards and one and a half tons of Pino Naur so it was
[00:31:25] minuscule amount of Pino Naur that we started with and and it really took forever to even ramp it up
[00:31:31] he had planted the vineyard in 74 I think was the first acre and then the rest of it was in 75
[00:31:40] so you know the first very first vintage was 78 so that those were the early days although you know
[00:31:44] Josh had made some wine before I got there but his reasoning for not wanting someone from
[00:31:52] you know trained anologist or something was you know at the time Davis was kind of teaching
[00:31:58] you know sanitize filter basically make the wines standard and he thought that he wanted to
[00:32:05] make wine in a very old world style you know he had lived in in France for several years and
[00:32:11] primarily in Burgundy although he traveled around a lot but he became friends they were all kind
[00:32:15] of his peers from some of the you know what we think of as the iconic wine makers over there now
[00:32:21] so he had these relationships and they were all telling them you know that first of all you
[00:32:25] lead limestone that was his biggest lesson I guess and and and then just how they were making the wines
[00:32:32] and stuff so when I got there I did have what he wanted in terms of being able to lab work because
[00:32:37] he he was very smart and went to some Ivy League schools and stuff but he didn't study any
[00:32:42] sciences so I don't think Josh really knew what a pH was at the time so he he wanted that
[00:32:47] background that way I could do some lab work and stuff for him and he at the time he had a consultant
[00:32:55] who actually developed this new enzymatic assay for less of things but it was primarily there
[00:33:01] to measure malach acid and it had not been you know marketed as a kit or anything and this guy's
[00:33:08] Leo McClausky was his name he was over at Felton Road over in Santa Cruz so that he was recommending
[00:33:15] to Josh that he needed someone to do this test because then you could monitor the malachic
[00:33:19] fermentation much more accurately than the old kind of wet chemistry method that people used at
[00:33:24] the time and so in that sense Collar was quite modern because we we bought this little spectra
[00:33:31] tomber even though the lab was in a trailer and that was our office and everything for the whole time
[00:33:35] I was there and so it was pretty rustic in most cases but this one little piece of equipment was
[00:33:42] something that most wineries even larger than us didn't have at the time and so anyway that was
[00:33:48] one of the impetus for finding someone like me but also I think it was just so that he wouldn't
[00:33:53] have to untrain me or you know change my biases he wanted someone that was unscould about wine
[00:34:01] so that he didn't have to untie them exactly and because I had no wine background I didn't have to
[00:34:08] you know this slate did not have to be wiped clean one of the things that just came to my mind though
[00:34:14] my interview with Josh which was kind of interesting and I really didn't know much about wine
[00:34:19] and one of the things that I had to do for him was rank some wines in order of preference so
[00:34:26] it was like this blind tasting and I even know what a blind tasting meant you know if you'd said
[00:34:30] that to me I would have thought I had to put a blindfold on or something but anyway he made
[00:34:34] it pretty easy but I was still pretty intimidated because I had never done that and I can't even
[00:34:39] remember the fourth wine but there was a Clair's in Fendel that Josh had made there was a neighbor's
[00:34:45] I think it was in Fendel as well then from down the street and the fourth wine was a Latash
[00:34:53] and of course I never heard of a Tash I didn't even know really that Burgundy was where Pinot Noir
[00:34:58] came from right so we were weren't even comparing the same varieties in most cases I think there might
[00:35:03] have been three Zinfendels in this Latash anyway he had me taste them and so I'm going oh boy
[00:35:09] this is great my job depends on it although I wasn't all that invested anyway because like I said
[00:35:15] I had sort of taken that as a because my professor had told me but anyway I got I ranked him in
[00:35:21] Latash first and the Clair's in Fendel next and I don't remember what I did with the other ones
[00:35:26] I think Josh didn't even really like his neighbor so he didn't care that I may put it last or something
[00:35:31] but I don't know if that had anything to do with me getting the job but I think it just demonstrated
[00:35:36] to Josh that at least I was malleable you know and could learn hopefully or had enough of a palette
[00:35:42] that I could distinguish those two obvious differences so I thought that was kind of funny because I
[00:35:46] started my tasting career kind of at the top and had nowhere else to go what was he like back then
[00:35:53] Josh Jansen he was very nice he was very busy I think part of what he needed somebody
[00:35:59] immediately he actually wanted me to start working before even graduated because he was desperate
[00:36:04] to have somebody come to the winery and just do day-to-day you know topping and we had one
[00:36:10] seller that had just been finished and he needed someone to move barrels around and he was out trying
[00:36:14] to sell the first Zenfendel that he had made so he was on the road a lot and he did hire somebody else
[00:36:22] to work with me for a little bit that summer just to show me how to wash a hose and basic basic
[00:36:29] stuff you know I didn't even know why it's needed to be topped but the wines that he'd already had
[00:36:34] there were in an outdoor it was a bonded area but it was just a chain link fence on gravel
[00:36:41] and they were outside in Halster is a pretty hot spot you know so it was very challenging to
[00:36:49] make wine in those conditions you know because we used garden hoses we didn't have built-in plumbing
[00:36:54] and no drains it was it was pretty rustic but anyway that's kind of how I started out and I didn't
[00:37:01] really know anything different at the time but I did spend that first summer you know trying to
[00:37:07] move some barrels from outdoors into this seller that had been the only place it had a roof on it
[00:37:12] finally and that was maintained that way for quite a few years anyway but I kind of got off the
[00:37:19] track about what was Josh like you know but he seemed he was very nice in everything but he was
[00:37:25] kind of busy I got to feeling he was very busy he had a lot on his mind he was late for the first
[00:37:31] time I met him you know I driven down from Davis and he was still like an hour after I was there
[00:37:36] and stuff so things like that which you know I just noticed but he was very serious he took
[00:37:44] the wine making very seriously you know I mean I remember him telling me that he had a guy helping
[00:37:51] him one time and he says hey do you want me to move this shit from here to here and he looks at me
[00:37:56] very sternly and just don't ever call this one shit and I all stick that to heart so I never did
[00:38:03] and that was probably a good thing to hear before I made that mistake myself but yeah he was quite
[00:38:08] quite personable um he actually wanted me to as I said he wanted me to drop out of school and come
[00:38:14] help him right away and and I said well you know I'm not sure this is going to stick at
[00:38:19] least what I get my degree right and so I finished school but I did end up working for him for
[00:38:24] a couple weekends even before I actually was officially hired or started it was almost part of
[00:38:30] the interview process I think just to wash some barrels and stuff like that so I think he was just
[00:38:35] trying to get some free later let's do a little test yeah he was he was at it's funny just I never
[00:38:42] really knew where the money was coming from or not coming from but there were periods where we
[00:38:47] were you know he was just scraping by and other periods where it seemed like we you know had money
[00:38:51] despair so I don't know what the situation was exactly with the financial thing but in the beginning
[00:38:57] it was you know very little pay very little of anything but he did he was he was quite generous and
[00:39:03] he wanted to educate me one of the things that was surprising even though I felt like it wasn't
[00:39:08] being paid very much was he gave me a little winery budget to go spend on buying wines because he
[00:39:14] realized that I hadn't done that really and so that was kind of nice because I you know I didn't have
[00:39:19] a lot but I could go out and buy some balls of wine and taste them just to get educated a little bit
[00:39:25] so that didn't last forever but you know for that year or so I was able to experience some lines
[00:39:32] and I mostly bought Zinfandel's because that's where most of the first of all they were more affordable
[00:39:37] although funeral war wasn't as expensive as it became but it was still Zinfandel were pretty easy
[00:39:43] to get to and and I was I was trying to learn what I had more responsibility for so anyway that was
[00:39:51] my impression of Josh and he was he was around a lot but he was also gone a lot like that that
[00:39:55] first summer especially he was off trying to sell wine so he was doing his own marketing and everything
[00:40:00] and and there's a little house well actually Josh actually lived in a trailer at the time before
[00:40:06] the little house on the property was but he had a place in San Francisco and then he would come down
[00:40:10] and so he was there three or four days and gone three or four days and because he was doing all
[00:40:14] the market he was gone an awful lot too so I was alone a lot that first year was tough on me
[00:40:20] actually I hadn't gotten the bug the wine book like you weren't a serious wine guy I was not this
[00:40:27] passion oh my god I got to do you know first I think a lot of people get into it because they love
[00:40:32] wine and they make some in their garage and pretty soon they start doing that all the time and
[00:40:37] you know they just end up quitting their job and starting a winery which wasn't me so you know all
[00:40:42] my friends were back in school and going to parties and they all took a trip to Europe that summer
[00:40:47] when I was working my butt off and so it was it was a difficult first harvest for me the we
[00:40:54] actually you know crushed quite a bit of fruit for being that new and small you know we had about
[00:41:00] close to a hundred tons as I mentioned it was almost all zinfin dhal and then this one and a half
[00:41:04] tons of pinon ore but still quite a bit of wine and we pretty much had to do it ourselves
[00:41:09] I remember one other little experience from that first year that was kind of interesting is we were
[00:41:14] buying zinfin dhal from basically three locations but one around temple tin which is right next to
[00:41:22] pass the robes down there was was from these two widows these two Italian women one of them was Mrs.
[00:41:28] Martin Nellie and the other was Mrs. Grove and they were like right next to each other but they hated
[00:41:32] each other and neither one I think would have sold us grapes if they known the other one was
[00:41:38] so enough so I had to go pick up the grapes and they were picked but they were out in the vineyard
[00:41:45] in wooden picking boxes you know like 40 pound lug boxes at the ends of the rows but just left
[00:41:51] out the vineyard so I was down there in our flatbed truck and had a bar all the farm pickup truck
[00:41:57] to go around and load each bin onto the pickup truck get on the truck stack them up drive it to
[00:42:03] the flatbed start then unloaded them and put them on the truck and then somehow do the same thing
[00:42:09] at the other farm pretending that I don't know where those grapes came from or that they didn't
[00:42:14] come from your neighbor that you don't like you know I mean they were I was supposed to somehow
[00:42:19] pretend like they didn't know that the other one was getting fruit but the thing that I thought
[00:42:23] about when I got back to the winery and started dumping each of these bins into the de-stemmer
[00:42:28] well actually yeah the crusher de-stemmer at the time we were crushing food back then was that I
[00:42:33] picked up every one of those boxes at least four times and it was it was only five tons but I
[00:42:38] mean that day I I lifted 20 tons worth of fruit but you know I was young and it didn't really
[00:42:44] dawn on me at the time but I mean that was just a typical thing that I just didn't know that you did
[00:42:49] and so it wasn't all that much fun you know without having that kind of passion but anyway that
[00:42:54] was one of my days that we had we speaking of equipment I don't know if that's relevant or not but
[00:43:02] we had a relatively brand new de-stemmer that Joshua just imported the year before he bought it
[00:43:08] into 77 and it was supposed to be pretty good it was called the demo sea but the fruit was crushed
[00:43:14] before it went to the de-stemming part today's most crusher de-stemmers if they even have crushing
[00:43:21] at least for Pino Norse kind of rare now but they usually do the de-stemming first and then
[00:43:25] the crushing with this crushed before the de-stemming and later on when we did experiments with whole
[00:43:31] cluster for example we found or at least I think there was some odd instances where you got more
[00:43:38] stemmingness out of the de-stem stuff than you did the whole cluster stuff and kind of my hypothesis
[00:43:44] was you know we were getting rid of about 90% of the stems and then 10% of them were getting
[00:43:48] mashed up so much that it it actually gave me more of a vegetable kind of a quality in the stuff
[00:43:54] that was de-stemmed so that was one of the reasons I think because we did experiments that we ended
[00:44:01] up you know going so much to a whole cluster program there besides our mentors were doing that as well
[00:44:07] but we wanted to try it out for ourselves and certainly this infantile was completely de-stemmed
[00:44:14] you know well I've definitely had some 80s like early 80s calerapinos that I thought had some
[00:44:20] greenness and I couldn't tell you if it was what you were referring to there or if it was
[00:44:25] whole cluster but it was part of the signature of that era right well and they're and you can get
[00:44:31] that with even without de-stemming anything of course you can get stemminous and that's the fine
[00:44:37] line that you're always kind of treading when you're using whole cluster is how do you get the positive
[00:44:42] stuff from it and without the negative which there are some negatives sometimes you know so
[00:44:47] but I don't remember what year it wasn't an abrupt transition from de-stemming everything to
[00:44:54] 100% whole cluster but over a period of time for sure we ended up at 100% whole cluster
[00:45:01] and it was it was pretty early on that that took place you know but you know back then in the
[00:45:07] late 70s and early 80s there were not a lot of peers who were making Pinot Noir in kind of
[00:45:14] that old-world style I think Shalom probably was the one that was doing the best job and there were
[00:45:19] some others too but I mean the general recipe for Pinot Noir was it was a red wine so you made
[00:45:24] it like you made Cabernet you know there was not the specialization whereas the different varieties
[00:45:28] you treat it completely differently and so a lot of people would just rack it frequently de-stemmit
[00:45:34] you know pump it over whatever to try to mimic Cabernet and interestingly it seems like at
[00:45:41] the time two color was a big focus you know everybody wanted the Pinot Noir to look like Cabernet too
[00:45:47] which was almost impossible to achieve but the darker you could make it the more people thought
[00:45:52] it was real wine and that if it was a light like a Pinot Noir then there's something wrong with
[00:45:56] it you know so it was an unfortunate focus on color you know so that was one of the things that
[00:46:05] my first trip to Burgundy kind of taught me was that first of all some of the things that we thought
[00:46:10] we were doing to make the wine were not correct for what Pinot Noir should have been.
[00:46:17] It's worth bringing in here comment from John Pierre de Smet who we heard from before and
[00:46:22] who worked a number of harvests with Dracces at Domain du Jacques before going on to found
[00:46:27] Domain de Larlo in New Orleans in George. I have to say that making eight vintage
[00:46:35] over ten years with Jacques Cess I was convinced and making so many tests with him with
[00:46:46] a world cluster or 100% this time that I was definitely convinced when arriving at
[00:46:52] at Larlo that world cluster was more the style of wine I loved and I wanted to produce and so it's
[00:47:01] even more and much more important to have the grapes not not touched not scratch not as
[00:47:14] as they are on the vineyard it should be in the in the vat and because if scratching the stems that's
[00:47:24] terrible. So one of the reasons you liked whole cluster was that it also meant whole berry because
[00:47:30] you weren't messing up the berries when you're pulling out the stems.
[00:47:33] Definitely the point is not the stems no it's the whole berries it's the process of
[00:47:46] starting the fermentation inside the berries and then opening and it makes the process of
[00:47:53] fermentation much smoother than if you have have the vat with juice in that case we have maybe
[00:48:03] 20% or less or 10% of juice underneath the grapes that let's fermentation start and then it's
[00:48:12] start inside the berries and at the point it's not the fact that having the stems the stems
[00:48:18] have no interest in the contrary the stems take acidities they take color so as they take alcohol
[00:48:28] so it's not the stems are not good. The interest of the world cluster has to have the world
[00:48:36] berries will return to the interview with Steve Dornor after this message from a sponsor.
[00:48:43] I've been lucky enough to try some amazing wines while traveling over the years.
[00:48:48] Unfortunately I found that some of those same wines are really hard to find here in the United
[00:48:53] States whenever I run into trouble finding a favorite bottle I go to ideal wine.com and they have
[00:49:00] what I'm looking for whether it is a hard-dissourced bottle of burgundy or a micro-production natural wine
[00:49:05] like I need the sun by Domain de Miroir I know there's a chance that ideal wine might have it
[00:49:12] available and ideal wine's entire Paris inventory is available to American customers with just a click.
[00:49:20] The process is seamless the site is easy to use and orders are shipped directly to you head over
[00:49:26] to ideal wine.com that's idalwinny.com to see for yourself what you could be drinking
[00:49:37] like this focus on color one of the things was heat you know you have to have a hot fermentation
[00:49:42] to extract more color and that was everybody's big focus and so when I first got to burgundy
[00:49:48] and started asking questions and I'd say do you need a hot fermentation to make pino-noron it's oh
[00:49:53] yeah you must you must ferment hot yes that's correct you know and size it okay but then I get
[00:49:59] around to finding out what hot was and they say well you know sometimes it gets to 30 centigrade
[00:50:04] and I'm going oh that's different than california hot you know because we were getting to 38 or
[00:50:12] something sometimes so I realized that the definition of hot in one place is not the same as a
[00:50:17] definition of hot in california and so that was one of the kind of generalities that I came back with
[00:50:25] was that you have to interpret things from a different perspective because you often had to get ice
[00:50:32] right to control the temperature in the early days yes especially that very first vintage I can't
[00:50:40] remember yeah I think it was just the first vintage actually because josh had set up this little one
[00:50:44] again he he it was bonded area it wasn't in a building so it was a chain link fans grab a floor and
[00:50:50] we had a sump pump that we put water and ice in and and just garden hoses to some jacket it takes
[00:50:56] primarily for this infant del because there was very little of the pino yet but that brings up
[00:51:02] another story if you will near the end of the 78 harvest you know it was again it was pretty hot
[00:51:08] and it was a sunday and we needed to go get some more ice usually we'd go to holster which is about
[00:51:13] you know 25 minutes away so it was you know close to an hours round trip just to get the ice from
[00:51:18] there but the ice manufacturer in holster wasn't open on sundays so that particular sunday I had
[00:51:27] to drive all the way to selenis to get some ice and we had this old flatbed truck with sideboards on
[00:51:33] it and so I'd go down there and pack in these 300 pound blocks of ice as tight as you could make
[00:51:38] them so that it was pretty secured but being a hot day and stuff I was coming back and had a blowout
[00:51:46] in this old flatbed truck and ended up rolling the truck three times on highly 101 just outside
[00:51:53] of Watsonville kind of area and there was ice scattered all over the road and I luckily was
[00:52:00] helped out of the vehicle it kind of ended upside down and oil and gas was dripping on me plus
[00:52:04] I was a mess from just harvested you know near the end harvest so I was tired and raggedy and then
[00:52:12] I was dirty from you know working in the winery and then plus I had oil and gas all over me so I
[00:52:17] was I was a mess but anyway the goods marathon jumped into cab with me and helped get me out of there
[00:52:22] because it was kind of scary I thought the thing might catch on fire anyway long story short I
[00:52:28] ended up in hospital had knee surgery and got a staff infection so the surgery was very successful
[00:52:34] but the infection was very persistent and actually didn't get rid of it for about a year I mean
[00:52:39] I was in the hospital for about a month and then they put me on you know oil and about
[00:52:43] X for about six months after that and then the following harvest just when I again got kind of run
[00:52:47] down and tired and the infection came back and they actually surgically had to scrape it out again
[00:52:52] to get rid of it but this overlining was that you know that that first finish as I said I was
[00:52:58] pretty depressed and I had made a commitment to Josh to work for him for a couple years and
[00:53:02] his commitment back to me which seemed normal to me at the moment was that if I wanted to leave
[00:53:08] after two years I could and you know thinking back as well that wasn't really a commitment now I mean
[00:53:13] I would hope that you could leave whenever you wanted to right so anyway we hadn't signed any
[00:53:18] contract anything but it did have this verbal agreement and so it was kind of weighed me down
[00:53:21] because I wasn't as happy as I had wanted to be but that time in the hospital gave me a lot of time
[00:53:25] to think and Josh came over and visited quite a bit and he you know he took care of me he was good
[00:53:30] but after having that sort of hard-to-hard talk with him and he said you know you can't you can
[00:53:36] leave whenever you want I mean I didn't mean it to be an indentured servant or anything and so
[00:53:42] it just took that kind of weight off of my shoulders and then I had the ability you know that I
[00:53:47] didn't I didn't feel stuck so it things start getting easier and easier in terms of just my
[00:53:53] appreciation for what I was doing but it still didn't still took me to probably tell
[00:53:58] my first trip to Bergen until I really felt like wow I can't understand it now you know it was
[00:54:03] just such a different experience when I first went to Bergen to and that was an important trip because
[00:54:09] it changed my outlook I think you know it was not just a job it was the whole culture
[00:54:14] and it was very honorable and you know the wines are great I mean I just I just felt
[00:54:19] love with Bergen D and it was my first trip to Europe and you know it was a smart move for Josh
[00:54:24] just said me there what year was that that was in 1981 so it was summer of 81 when I first went
[00:54:30] I had I had three images only you know and the amount of Pinot Noir that we had made up to that
[00:54:35] point really wasn't that much because we had ten and a half and 78 and I think we got seven and
[00:54:39] a half tons and 79 and probably ten or twelve and I don't remember exactly in 80 so this was
[00:54:46] before the 81 harvest and we had gotten an intern that year that actually showed up in January I
[00:54:54] believe 81 and that was Christophe Moran who was working in at Demendolafoli which is I think it's
[00:55:01] in Chani or close to there and so that's very close to Obert de Valencia House and so Christophe
[00:55:07] had asked Obert if he knew of someplace where he could work and so Obert introduced him to Josh
[00:55:14] and so we hired Christophe that year to come and work with us so he lived with me we were roommates
[00:55:20] so Christophe sort of held down the fort while I was gone because it really was a small operation
[00:55:25] and so I went there in the summertime and had you know it's only there for a couple weeks it wasn't
[00:55:31] that long and I did a little bit of visiting but mostly spent most of my time in in burgundy and
[00:55:36] I got to I stayed at Obert de Valencia House for a little while I stayed at Jacques Saises House
[00:55:44] for a little while and those two guys especially were people that Josh knew well so I was very
[00:55:49] fortunate to have those introductions and they treated me you know very well I mean one of the things
[00:55:55] Josh wanted me to do was bring our tiny little production of some penal warrants over the three
[00:56:00] different vineyards that we made in half bottles a 78 vintage was all made in half bottles he wanted
[00:56:05] me to take these and do a tasting that Jacques helped organize of you know eight or so of
[00:56:13] burgundy and wine makers and get all their feedback you know which was pretty intimidating again
[00:56:18] here and and the wines I have to say in 78 were they're pretty good but they weren't great I mean
[00:56:24] they're very extracted you know that those kinds of yields you can imagine that one and half tons
[00:56:28] was not off of an acre it was off 24 acres so there was a cluster on a vine here and two clusters
[00:56:36] on a vine there and so it was it was very low yields and so it was it was pretty intense you know
[00:56:43] pretty extracted and stuff from my perspective anyway now looking back but they were all very
[00:56:48] kind and you know I got the feedback that Josh wanted to hear and stuff and so they're very kind
[00:56:53] to me but I think Josh must have been well liked because they were all very friendly and everything
[00:56:57] some of those guys are a whole cluster guys right obviously Josh Ais was 100% whole cluster by
[00:57:04] then I think he also experimented a lot you know he was kind of an outsider to begin with he
[00:57:08] he you know was from Paris his dad owned a big part of Nabisco or something of huge bakery so he grew up
[00:57:15] with fine wines had a great seller I mean a shock head you know he was very worldly when he got
[00:57:20] to Burgundy everybody was making Piano Roi and they tasted their own wines and maybe a couple
[00:57:25] of their neighbors if if even that but a jacquered wine from the new world from Bordeaux from
[00:57:31] all sass from Italy you know he had a great great seller a jacquist quite quite open-minded and
[00:57:38] he did a lot of experiment in early years I remember him talking about trying to use just on
[00:57:44] a laboratory scale like an ultrasound machine that would clean jewelry and stuff to see if he could
[00:57:49] get more extraction from this little vibrating thing and of course he'd never used it commercially
[00:57:55] that I know of but you know he was curious enough that he would he would try lots of stuff and
[00:58:00] ironically I think he came back to what I think they were doing Burgundy hundreds of years before
[00:58:05] because he did a lot of reading and and stuff and and kind of tried to reinvent things in a way but
[00:58:10] he I think he ended up making wines in a very traditional way in the end even though he was open-minded
[00:58:16] about new technologies and trying all kinds of stuff that's kind of what I think I admired
[00:58:21] about him in comparison to a lot of other Burgundians who were often making wine the way their dad did
[00:58:27] not that there was anything wrong with that but you know you'd ask him a question and here I was
[00:58:31] kind of a scientist so I was saying why do you do this and often they couldn't answer they just
[00:58:36] as well this is how we do it one of the things that I remember specifically that just kind of
[00:58:41] puzzled me was that this was prior to silicone bung use right there were a few people in Burgundy
[00:58:47] they were ahead of us in California that were using silicone it was a guy at Pustor for example
[00:58:53] but most people still had these wooden little short little wooden bums with burlap and that's what
[00:58:59] we often saw when the wines got or the barrels got shipped to us is little burlap holding this little
[00:59:06] wooden bung in there in California at the time we had wooden redwood pegs that were you know eight
[00:59:12] inches long we had a mallet and you hammered them down and then if you wanted to get them out you just
[00:59:16] tapped on the side and loosen them pull them out and the red would be in softer it just kind of
[00:59:21] conform to the bunghole made a pretty good seal but when I asked people why the burlap was there they say
[00:59:26] well that's how we get it out because otherwise we couldn't get the bung out but I saw wicking going
[00:59:32] on there was like often I mean they change it every time they top but sometimes there'd be mold and
[00:59:37] stuff growing on that burlap because the wine was being sucked out almost like a candle wick you know
[00:59:43] out out into that bung and so I just couldn't really figure out I thought well maybe they're trying
[00:59:48] to oxidize it or somehow but you know the only explanation was that this is what they all did
[00:59:55] and they thought it was to be able to get that wooden bung out but it just seemed to me because I
[01:00:00] was used to having these long ones you just use them out why not just get a bump that you can tap
[01:00:05] out instead of having it so short that you had no leverage on it and had to have that burlap in
[01:00:10] there and so I really didn't know that that was the reason and but it just struck me that they
[01:00:14] weren't really sure either they just were doing it all the time and that's what they had but then
[01:00:19] very shortly after I think everybody started using the silicone bongs but that was one thing that
[01:00:25] puzzled me I think you probably ended up meeting some people who have subsequently passed away
[01:00:32] well Christoph Maureen who I mentioned earlier who had stayed in California and lived with me for
[01:00:38] about nine months ended up ultimately working for Jacques Sais as his vineyard manager I think he
[01:00:44] started in 85 there as full-time vineyard manager and he also of course knew Obert de Venca
[01:00:53] because he had worked nearby he was Christoph was actually from the Loire Valley and I think he
[01:00:58] got into school in Bordeaux but I'm regressing I'm thinking of a story about Christoph's family
[01:01:04] because my first trip there in 81 he had written ahead his family to if I made it over to the
[01:01:10] Loire Valley take good care of me and so I you know I wanted to go visit his family once there so
[01:01:15] I just took a weekend and overnight train and you know it's hard to get across France to go from
[01:01:21] say Burgundy over to Solmier is not an easy route and so anyway I ended up getting into Solmier like
[01:01:28] it for in the morning hadn't really slept at all and didn't want to bother his mom and dad
[01:01:34] at that time of days so I just walked around the city for a while and then when I knocked on his
[01:01:38] parents' house it was just a whirlwind of two and a half days of like we'd see like eight
[01:01:44] chat toes and eight wineries both days everyone's trying to give me wine so I've like had
[01:01:49] cases of wine and dragging around and I remember very little that trip because I was so tired
[01:01:54] and they were just so gracious you know they were introducing me to everybody and sightseeing and
[01:01:58] weeks you know we snuck in enough to last a week or two and in those two days and so it was
[01:02:04] such a blur because I was I was just exhausted but that was thanks to Christoph's riding ahead
[01:02:10] and telling his parents that you better show him a good time but anyway yeah it was tragic
[01:02:14] that Christoph was killed on a motorcycle in 2000 that's the only time I've been to
[01:02:20] Burgundy in the fall or in the winter time was I guess it was in November that his funeral was
[01:02:25] so I just flew over to go to the funeral and that was about that was about the extent of it so he was
[01:02:30] you know my closest French friend just because we had lived together and he was he was very very
[01:02:35] nice guy I mean I miss him still but it's funny because I didn't even know he had
[01:02:41] ridden a motorcycle and I surprisingly had just acquired a motorcycle habit myself
[01:02:48] I was questioning whether I should keep riding or not because he you know lost his life to it
[01:02:55] and I couldn't decide that winner whether I should keep riding or not obviously in the winter time
[01:03:00] it didn't ride very much anyway so I had about six months to think about it and I decided I would
[01:03:05] ride in honor of him instead of learn from his mistake it in a sense it wasn't his mistake it
[01:03:10] was it wasn't his fault and then about a year later I got into a motorcycle accident and then I
[01:03:15] definitely gave it up because I said wow I got a second chance and he didn't so that was the last
[01:03:21] last time I've been on a bike and made a vow I wasn't going to get back on one you were a clara
[01:03:26] for over a decade how did it shift over that period of time I mean what did you see well we were so
[01:03:34] isolated that the one thing that kept it quite interesting I think was there's a small group of
[01:03:39] people I mean it was a group put together by Dick Graff primarily from Shalone and it was called
[01:03:44] a small winery technical society and so there was a lot of really high quality wineries involved in
[01:03:50] that little thing and we we tried to meet every couple months but you know we were pretty far apart
[01:03:56] and so it was quite a good group of smart people and there was the intention was to exchange
[01:04:04] information and learn from each other it kind of turned into a little bit of a social thing we
[01:04:09] always have a either go to a great restaurant or someone to cook and everybody'd bring some wine
[01:04:14] and stuff but there still was an intent to be very focused in the early years it was quite that way
[01:04:19] I remember Dick's brother Peter Watson Graff did a super long kind of research on SO2 and
[01:04:28] but it's used for how to use it you know just just a very in-depth look at that SO2 for example so
[01:04:33] he said a pretty high standard that first time I think but um you know all the Shalone wine
[01:04:38] reason ran so that was Akasha and Navelle Carmanet there was Sandford was in it I met Ken right
[01:04:46] there first first time I met Ken Wright was down in that group of people and this must have been
[01:04:51] about 1980 when the group started Jeff Repatterson from Mount Eden and you know other peers of
[01:04:59] of Josh and Dick Graffs were but he wasn't really part of the group was Paul Draper from from Ridge
[01:05:06] you know so he was kind of in the mix at the time so even though we were very isolated physically
[01:05:13] you know we did get out a little bit although there wasn't a lot of Navelle influence so the
[01:05:18] Carmanet was up that area and of course the case she was in Kernarrel so there was some of that but I
[01:05:24] mean you know never had to tell somebody I was in the wine business they all just assumed that I
[01:05:28] was part of the Navelle culture which we were way far away and there wasn't much around us in the
[01:05:34] anyway but in terms of evolution like I said you know we started making some white wines
[01:05:40] in I think 83 we started making a little shardinay we had planted some shardinay and we also planted
[01:05:49] Vioñe and that year we didn't make the Vioñe till about 85 I think we made a Shannon Blanc one time
[01:05:56] we also started purchasing you know other Pionlar so we started making a central coast Pionlar
[01:06:02] just so we had some volume because the yields were so low there I remember doing kind of just a
[01:06:09] spreadsheet to show the yields and in my entire 14 years that I was there our average yield
[01:06:15] off of the estate vineyards was a ton and a half our high water mark I think was 87 we got 2.2 tons
[01:06:21] to the acre or something so a ton and a half of yield over a 14-year period so it was very
[01:06:27] unsustainable if you will water was all as an issue we tried to irrigate but there wasn't enough water
[01:06:33] to even put on the plants it was quite stressed and a Josh's you know theory about limestone he
[01:06:38] insisted on having limestone and that's what we found or he found but it was very infertile
[01:06:45] and so it was part of the style I think of Claire was you know obviously there's limestone
[01:06:50] involved there's whole cluster involved but just those extremely low yields is going to
[01:06:56] influence your style as well so I think if everyone made wines that yielded between a ton and
[01:07:02] a ton and a half that would have something to say about the style of the wine so it wasn't all just
[01:07:08] the site although the yields were part of what the site delivered to us you know how were they trained
[01:07:15] they were on cordon primarily although I think it evolved into into cane pruning but unfortunately
[01:07:23] because I don't want to say Josh didn't know anything about viticulture but he did but I think
[01:07:29] he was so desperate to get yielded that he was actually bonicing our vineyard manager by how much
[01:07:36] he could produce and so while everyone else was trying to think about keeping the yields under control
[01:07:42] he we were all trying to beef them up and the plants just weren't ready for it I don't think we
[01:07:45] were always pushing them to the limit of what they could produce and I think we would have been
[01:07:49] better off to try to prune them back and just but just keep the yields where they are comfortable
[01:07:54] for the plant rather than trying to push them because I think they just never never got you know
[01:07:58] healthy at least you know it took a while we also had some trouble with oak root fungus
[01:08:05] we were pretty lucky that I'd not be I think conscious effort but most of the material that Josh
[01:08:12] got were planted on St. George rootstock when most people were using AXR1 and it was sort of the
[01:08:19] second rootstock that people were using at the time and of course it is resistant to
[01:08:24] philoxer whereas AXR1 turned out to not be so a lot of people had to replete 20 years later
[01:08:30] or whatever but I'm not sure philoxer would have survived in those soils anyway but
[01:08:34] there was one on rooted parcel right it could be that first acre I don't remember as far as
[01:08:39] I knew they were all on St. George I don't think they were on rooted so he used to get
[01:08:44] france welfare right we started with france welfare and and Sarug was also one of the
[01:08:50] coopers that we used at cholera you know back in those early days you didn't have nearly the
[01:08:57] choices that you have now and I don't think we would have had the choices except most new world
[01:09:02] why makers want to control everything and so you know he says oh I really like your girls but
[01:09:06] I wish it weren't so toasty or vice versa and so you're trying to tell them how to do their jobs
[01:09:10] and I try to avoid that as much as I can but it's harder and harder today when you order barrel
[01:09:15] to just say well give me your house barrel here what you're proud of and they go well do you want
[01:09:21] toasted head do you want it three-year air dried do you know what forced you out from it's like
[01:09:25] I just want your barrels you're proud of you know and they don't almost they almost don't know what it
[01:09:30] is anymore so you kind of have to tell them what their style had been although that's not necessarily
[01:09:36] true but on that line you know I've always tried to sort of focus on burgundian coopers just with a
[01:09:41] thought that if they were trying to develop a style they would have kind of tried it out with the
[01:09:46] varieties that we were using and therefore it made more sense than to you know buy barrels from someone
[01:09:51] from Konyak or something like that but in reality the wood can come from the same forest and
[01:09:57] you could make barrels pretty similarly although where they're dried you know how much rainfall
[01:10:02] it's gonna get etc can certainly influence it but it just it was one way for me to weed out some of
[01:10:08] the some of the sales people that were coming from all over the place sell on barrels but
[01:10:13] Josh was making a little vineyard right yeah he was one of the first people I think the first
[01:10:19] vintage we had of Vio Nier was 85 and there was four people that same year that made Vio Nier
[01:10:25] and those are the only ones that I know of in the country at the time it was Joseph Phelps richy
[01:10:30] creek la Hota and cholera and so you know as far as I know that was pretty much it outside of
[01:10:38] Kondria you know obviously a little bit in a southern part of the world but there was probably
[01:10:43] couple hundred acres of Vio Nier in the world at the time and it not that it's exploded but certainly
[01:10:48] it's shown up in places that you wouldn't expect it you know Colorado and Virginia and stuff like
[01:10:53] that so yeah the Vio Nier was quite interesting because it was so unique in fact that was
[01:11:00] the primary reason for a second trip to Bergen 8 well not quite true I went twice in 81 it's
[01:11:06] another little quick I jumped over there during harvest at that time in 81 now I'm sorry again
[01:11:13] I'm not in chronological order but Josh had to take it to go to Bergen 8 and he couldn't make it
[01:11:18] and it was just after our harvest was done and so he just handed it to me and I had been there
[01:11:24] that year so I kind of knew my way around and it was a very quick trip but it was really
[01:11:28] fortuitous because it was the only time I've been to Bergen 8 when I still there's still some fruit
[01:11:34] hanging so I got to witness some harvest and production not for very long but at least I got to
[01:11:41] see it you know a lot of people because I bring up to Jacques a lot think that I really worked
[01:11:44] there a lot or something and you know I did my day or two just helping out on visits but I never
[01:11:50] did a vintage there I really got to work one of my favorite things that I was lucky to do was to
[01:11:56] break some rocks in Kloelaroche they had their replanting little section they'd you know unearthed
[01:12:02] some big boulders that were too hard to really manhandle out so we just took sludge hammers and
[01:12:06] broke them into manageable pieces but I thought that was kind of romantic to have broken rocks in
[01:12:11] Kloelaroche vineyard you know so I don't know that I have anything to do with it but some of
[01:12:17] those little rocks there were big rocks at one time as Jacques sees reminds us the word roach in Kloelaroche
[01:12:24] prefers to rocks. Well his name is Kloelaroche and it's it's right because they have three few inches
[01:12:33] of the earth and rocks rocks rocks. Coming up after the break Steve Dorner makes a big move.
[01:12:42] It's not enough to make great wine you also have to reach the consumer that appreciates that wine
[01:12:48] and that's where offset is an incredible asset offset is an independent brand design and commerce
[01:12:54] technology company that connects with wineries on a human level to help them connect with consumers
[01:13:01] on a human level. Offset is based in wine country and staff by creative strategists and technologists
[01:13:08] who are superb at helping create and evolve wine brands through visual identity and package design
[01:13:14] developing the look feel and tone of your web content as well as building beautiful and effective
[01:13:20] websites powered by their proprietary e-commerce platform offset commerce that's why leaders like
[01:13:26] Frogsley Grace family vineyards and rain winery already rely on offset. Reach out to the brilliant
[01:13:33] team at offset at offset partners dot com that's OFF SET partners with an s dot com offset is
[01:13:43] focused on the wine industry and can embrace the nuance needs of your wine brand.
[01:13:48] Anyway, getting back to my sort of next plan trip was in 88 so a bit of a stretch but I did of course
[01:13:57] I went back to Burgundy but then I also went to the ron and started you know focusing a little bit on
[01:14:03] Villanet in particular we weren't making any syrup or anything but you know I went through
[01:14:09] and tasted and primarily spoke a lot with George Verne at the time you know and he was making
[01:14:14] quite a bit of Vianier I think he might have been the largest producer of it at the time but
[01:14:18] you know visit Gigaal and some others and kind of try to wrap my head around Vianier.
[01:14:26] Everybody's you know was struggling with Vianier in the vineyard it just seemed to be kind of
[01:14:30] finicky to grow I don't think we've ever had trouble with it ourselves here but that was kind of a
[01:14:35] normal reaction was that it seemed kind of difficult and oh maybe it was a clonal selection it was a
[01:14:42] mess you know it was just a mixed clone and some of them just were low producers or something and
[01:14:46] this stuff we got was pretty good but the story was that Josh smuggled some Vianier into the country
[01:14:53] most of the time it would die he did it more than once but he also sent some to Cornell
[01:15:00] to get cleaned up and in fact that's where our cuttings came from because again the stuff he kept
[01:15:05] from himself did die so how did it go that you transitioned from California to Oregon?
[01:15:12] Well again after being there about 14 years it seemed like the right time to move on and
[01:15:20] you know there was Josh and I had a few little friction issues they weren't bad but you know
[01:15:26] there was just we kind of outgrown each other's company let's say perhaps well 14 years
[01:15:32] long time it is a long time he Josh had gone through a divorce and I guess I could make it
[01:15:36] public now or we can edit it out if you want but um he had actually put the winery on the market for a
[01:15:42] while and decided that he didn't really want to sell it but I was trying to facilitate that sale
[01:15:47] and when it was very close to happening Josh changed his mind and sort of and that's that's kind of
[01:15:52] where I think I may have lost a little respect for Josh and he kind of might have thought that I
[01:15:57] was no longer a yes man because I was working for the sale and not for all his wishes but I was
[01:16:03] trying to be a good employee that's that he put it on the market so anyway I was ready to see
[01:16:08] what the next chapter was and I again because I hadn't chosen why making as a career I wondered
[01:16:15] at that moment you know if that's what I still wanted to keep doing you know I had enjoyed
[01:16:19] all my time at Claire I mean it was fun to build a brand and learn a lot and I ended up
[01:16:25] wearing lots of hats because you know we were so far removed that I was the plumber and the electrician
[01:16:30] and the ditch digger and got to dress up and go to fancy tastings and stuff so I liked that diversity a
[01:16:37] lot and I realized that in myself that I needed something like that and that I didn't want to just
[01:16:45] do one thing um and do it all the time I liked the seasonality of the wine business you know
[01:16:50] harvesting is not the same as bottling is not the same as the middle of winter where you're just
[01:16:55] trying to get malacted to go and a lot of waiting in that sense but so I kind of identified a few
[01:17:01] things that I thought I wanted to do and I couldn't think of another career that allowed me to
[01:17:06] have that kind of diversity and seasonal variation and whatnot so I wanted to maintain that and I
[01:17:13] thought you can really only get that in a small company because you know if you're in a big place
[01:17:17] you're going to be a cog in a wheel and you'd be the third analogist of the white wine program in
[01:17:23] some big production place or something like that and because of all the time I'd spent with
[01:17:29] Pinot Noir I wanted it to keep going with Pinot Noir I mean basically we didn't have a lot but I
[01:17:34] had made it every year I was there so I you know my Pinot Noir production is solid through
[01:17:39] well from 1978 so anyway so those are the two things that I I was kind of looking for I didn't know
[01:17:46] it was Oregon that I would end up in again a little bit like my first experience I hadn't
[01:17:52] thought that far ahead to exactly what it was that I did want to look for so I was looking everywhere
[01:17:58] and coincidentally Paul Gary was a big fan of Clara wines and he had heard through the great
[01:18:05] vine that I was leaving there and he didn't know that I had been making the wine so I mean he
[01:18:11] thought Josh was the wine maker and you know Josh certainly often was considered to be the
[01:18:16] wine maker he was the owner and he was a founder and it was his vision and but you know he was
[01:18:20] off sell in the wines and it's so much easier to just say yeah I'm the wine maker because everybody
[01:18:24] wants to talk to the white maker and so there was never a conflict with that you know I was happy to
[01:18:30] either take second fiddle or whatever but my title was wine maker but it wasn't something that
[01:18:35] was widely known and you know I was I was the guy on the ground doing it but whether I had the
[01:18:41] teller not didn't really matter but anyway the point was that Paul had never heard of me but he loved
[01:18:46] the Clara wines but he heard that I was leaving and that you know where I had that title and so
[01:18:50] he started courting me and you know it took me a long time to make up my mind actually or you know
[01:18:56] a couple months at least two or three months and I just didn't know as much about Oregon as I should
[01:19:02] have known I think I met David let a couple times you know we know Josh used to put on these
[01:19:08] tastings where he compared the Clara wines to Burgundy and to Oregon and David was often
[01:19:15] the comparison as was sometimes Jacques Sace and even sometimes O'Barris wines but anyway you know
[01:19:23] I just I just wasn't sure if it was for me or not so I came up and interviewed with Paul and saw
[01:19:27] the facility which was very rustic you know Kristen when Paul bought it was very kind of fallen apart
[01:19:34] a little bit you know it was a small little pole building and the vines were on their own roots
[01:19:38] and whitespaced and kind of raggedy looking at stuff but he fell in love with the sight and bought
[01:19:44] it himself just earlier that year which would be what we'd call margaries now oh well margaries
[01:19:50] what's left so you couldn't even see margarie from the road there were other vineyards right around
[01:19:55] the winery that were there that we pulled out eventually but that first year they were still there
[01:20:00] and you know the whole place was just sort of small that didn't bother me I just wasn't sure
[01:20:07] that that's what I wanted to do but you just told him I'm not going for any ice but I don't mind
[01:20:13] small but no exactly no ice luckily it was a cooler place I don't think we needed it and there
[01:20:18] was actually refrigeration there which is you know in a lot of ways it was a step up for what I'd
[01:20:23] come from in terms of you know the facility I mean the whole time I was there we the the bathroom
[01:20:29] we had was in a trailer we didn't even have indoor plumbing to speak of so it was it's changed a
[01:20:35] lot at claris and since then you know this is quite nice they have beautiful caves and everything now
[01:20:40] I mean it's beautiful but anyway after I'd given it a lot of thought and realized you know that they
[01:20:45] could offer me all the things I was looking for you know diversity small build a brand Paul seemed
[01:20:49] like a really nice guy he was asking for me I mean who doesn't want somebody that wants you right so
[01:20:55] it wasn't too hard I don't know what I was waiting for to be honest but I think the last time
[01:21:01] Paul called me he was he was expecting me to say no because I've been so reluctant and he was
[01:21:06] kind of getting desperate and said you know I'm there's lots of people who want this job or I want
[01:21:11] you to give it a lot last chance but you know are you gonna take it or not and I said no I don't know
[01:21:17] but I'll give it a try and so he his reaction was really like he really didn't expect me to
[01:21:25] to say yes I must have really given him the cold shoulder or something but when I got here it was
[01:21:30] I don't know what I was thinking it I just loved it it was easy it was everybody was so open
[01:21:37] about helping out I mean I was getting people coming out of the wood we're just offering
[01:21:44] to help anyway they could I didn't expect that you know I didn't expect to get the cold shoulder
[01:21:50] but I just didn't feel like people were going to go out of their way to welcome us and make us
[01:21:56] feel at home and you know do whatever they could for us success in that attitude of you know all
[01:22:01] boats rise with the tide they they it was genuine it wasn't like well let's make this guy think he's
[01:22:06] welcome and it wasn't phony and and you know that's one of the best things about our industry up here
[01:22:12] there's this true commitment to each other and to raising all boats you know um you came up in 92
[01:22:20] 92 vintage which was a warm vintage uh for for Oregon at the time you know it was pretty warm so it's
[01:22:25] good transition vintage and again that when I had left Claire I think we're about 20,000 cases
[01:22:30] is of wine and the first vintage at christmas 2000 cases and there was no wine to sell so you know
[01:22:37] once once harvest was done in in 92 I had the whole winter to go visit people and you know it's
[01:22:43] just it's seemed like a vacation in comparison to what I was doing not that 20,000 is is undoable it
[01:22:50] was a whole different ballgame and not having any of the wines in bottle to worry about and stuff
[01:22:55] and try to sell it it seemed like I had a year off you know but that first vintage was kind of warm
[01:23:01] I think I spent the whole budget that Paul had given me on on our press and a de stammer and and barrels
[01:23:08] so the fermenters were pretty sparse at the time so most of the fermentations were done in
[01:23:14] very small little plastic tanks but I think in retrospect it was just lucky because um it was a hot
[01:23:20] vintage and those those little fermenters actually kept the wine I think from being too extracted
[01:23:26] because they were smaller and they didn't get as warm perhaps we didn't have a way to chill them
[01:23:32] it's easily there was a chilling system into sort of the stainless tanks but we weren't really using
[01:23:36] them much I think we did actually use a semi-close top fermenter for part of it just because we didn't
[01:23:41] have enough room for stuff but we started buying some more fermenters and subsequent years
[01:23:46] but that first year was pretty small but we did have some nice equipment you know so it was a
[01:23:52] totally different experience second second job in terms of enjoying my first year you know
[01:23:57] which was a little bit challenging in California and it was pretty easy up here I mean I felt like
[01:24:03] even though physically we were still kind of out in the middle of nowhere we were so much more
[01:24:07] involved in the community that it felt really good and and I again I loved putting the brand
[01:24:13] together and being an electrician and didn't even need to as much here because we were not quite as
[01:24:19] isolated as we had been down in California but there was just nobody to call down there in terms of
[01:24:24] servicemen stuff so you just got to know how to work on stuff and enjoy that part of it
[01:24:29] and the vineyard had been planted in 82 so you have about 10 year old lines
[01:24:34] just in the margitry that vineyard I think it was all planted in 82 but we like as I mentioned
[01:24:39] we tore out most of the vines that were there we ordered plants that year in 92 so the what's now
[01:24:46] like the Louise and the Viennier and the Shardinay that we have our PinoGree as well were all
[01:24:52] planted in 93 so once the plants had been ordered we finally got them so Mark Feltzer vineyard manager
[01:24:59] at the time had torn out those plants and so he spent his first year you know getting ready for
[01:25:05] planting and then we had to kind of recover margitry because it had been abandoned I believe
[01:25:12] I was planted 10 years before but I don't think that it had been harvested for a while there really
[01:25:16] wasn't much of a troll system and there was a lot of poison oak and blackberries very wide spaced
[01:25:22] you know 12 foot wide rows six feet between the plants that's kind of how they were doing it back
[01:25:26] in we had to farm that for a couple years before we really got our first crop off of it even though
[01:25:32] it was 10 years old we did get a very very tiny amount of fruit in 93 and Paul wanted to write off
[01:25:39] the vintage so we technically made a margitry vineyard that year and never was commercially available
[01:25:46] and there wasn't even enough to fill a barrel so we topped it up with something else and
[01:25:52] called it margitry but it was mostly something in fact I think it was mostly seven springs and a
[01:25:58] little bit of margitry in that one barrel and we just hand wrote on the labels margitry on it
[01:26:03] I don't think anybody ever bothered to find out if we made wine that year but he just wanted
[01:26:08] something that he could say that we we had some production so anyway starting in 94 that vineyard
[01:26:14] started to produce and then the vineyards that we had planted Louise we released in 96 so kind of
[01:26:23] went every two years with one of the estate vineyards anyway we started planting with you know
[01:26:28] rootstock for one thing and we had we used three different rootstocks 101 14 3309 and riparia
[01:26:35] and one of the things that we were told and I kind of felt although 92 was a warm vintage by
[01:26:42] comparison to a lot of the other vinges in the 90s was you know that the key to success was to
[01:26:48] get things to ripen as quickly and early as you could so we kind of went out of our way to do
[01:26:54] what we thought we could to accelerate ripening again this is some a different era so we had pretty
[01:27:00] tight spacing you know we went with about 2300 vines to the acre which for Oregon was pretty dead
[01:27:07] certainly even today 2300 vines to the acre it's pretty pretty dense so we kind of went as tight as
[01:27:13] we could with between the road tractor versus a stradmin tractor so our rows are like five foot eight
[01:27:20] I think and and we had about a meter between the plants which in that dimension what's kind of matches
[01:27:25] burgundy but the canopy was pretty tall for having row spacing that that tight again we're just
[01:27:31] trying to maximize leaf area most of the rootstocks we were we're quite restrictive
[01:27:37] especially riparia you know accelerates to ripening quite a bit I don't know that and that's
[01:27:42] it's made I mean that that one especially seems to be quite a bit earlier than the other side I
[01:27:46] think that has more to do with ripening than the clone does but you know if you fast-forwarded to
[01:27:53] this era you know we're planning more vineyards now and we're loosening up the density and not
[01:28:00] not worrying about the accelerated ripening for example like I lean when we bought that property in
[01:28:07] 95 I believe it was you know it topped out about 750 feet and and we only planted a portion of it
[01:28:16] until just recently in fact it's still not completely planted and the stuff that's not planted
[01:28:20] is the highest elevation stuff because we were afraid that that was too high 750 feet oh my gosh
[01:28:26] never gonna get ripe up there you know so that whole thing has turned around I think high vineyards
[01:28:31] now have a very good potential for getting ripe and maybe even better than lower stuff just because
[01:28:38] it might be a little cooler up there later anyway and that should get you into a cooler part of the
[01:28:43] season when ripening happens so so there's a different way of thinking than what we were but
[01:28:48] so that's kind of how we developed vineyards and we were quite adamant about keeping the yields really
[01:28:53] low and did a lot of thinning it's kind of sad in a way that at that density you know and
[01:29:00] trying to keep low yields you've got canes without fruit on it which just doesn't seem balanced to me
[01:29:08] you know so I think that we're trying to get to a point where you know we don't have cut as many
[01:29:13] buds and maybe not have to do that much thinning you know where exactly in the Willama Valley was
[01:29:22] the property so christian it's kind of in the middle of the yola amity hills avia now it wasn't an
[01:29:30] avia then and that in itself is about midway in the entire Willama Valley we're kind of at the
[01:29:37] southern part of the northern half of the Willama Valley there's there's some vineyards and some
[01:29:42] wineries that are south of us in the valley but not much we are on the east side of the hills so we
[01:29:51] kind of face the morning sun so are you near the van dueser corridor or when not as close as some
[01:29:57] of the others but we are directly opposite there so it's sort of the west side of our hills gets
[01:30:02] the broad of it it kind of comes you know screaming through that that gap and then splits north
[01:30:07] and south so that cold air kind of comes through right exactly that's a big feature of the
[01:30:12] entire Willama Valley but there are some sites that are more influenced by it than others
[01:30:17] conversely you know when that's the normal prevailing wind is from the west but when we occasionally
[01:30:24] have an opposite scenario set up there's a high pressure system say over eastern washington or Idaho
[01:30:31] occasionally you get this east wind and just the opposite the clumbie gorge acts as the
[01:30:37] final instead of the van dueser corridor so you've got this hot dry wind coming from the opposite
[01:30:42] direction and those are the conditions I think from oh three that were pretty severe it was it
[01:30:49] lasted for weeks and you know I think that in that year there was a lot more dehydration and we're
[01:30:56] used to and we actually added a little irrigation after that vintage to where we identified some spots
[01:31:04] that could have benefited from it so we don't have to use it every year but we at least have it
[01:31:09] in those spots that the soil was very shallow and we kind of learned the hard way that
[01:31:14] we should have put that in those places when we planted versus waiting does a lot of wind
[01:31:20] you know help with the prevention of mildew or yeah the wind will definitely dry things out
[01:31:26] and so that you know humidity is what a lot of diseases like the humidity is not very high
[01:31:33] out here in general and so even after a rain or something you know if you get that wind coming in
[01:31:38] pretty good it'll it'll dry things out especially during harvest you know I've with one exception
[01:31:44] I've never harvested wet fruit because it's the best place to dry the fruit out is out on the vine
[01:31:50] you know you've got it separated and hanging and it's like a clothesline and any kind of little breeze
[01:31:56] doesn't take long to dry it out so we're lucky enough that we almost always have a little break even
[01:32:02] if it's in a wet season where there's going to be a little bit of a drying period even in
[01:32:07] 13 when we had like seven inches and 10 days you know we we did have to pick pretty quickly after
[01:32:13] that rain but we still at least got the fruit dry so it does help a lot with with that effect
[01:32:20] of dried it out but yeah it just keeps keep things cleaner you know the diseases like like moisture
[01:32:27] so what do you see for soil type for your set of vineyards?
[01:32:31] well we're primarily volcanic we have no kind of old marine sediments on the property
[01:32:38] there are some of those on on the west side of the old hills because it kind of got tilted up
[01:32:44] you know on the west side so some of the old marine layer that's under everything in the
[01:32:48] line of valley was re-exposed over there but on our side it's it's all volcanic and it's really
[01:32:54] just a question of depth of how jory versus wet solos are kind of the two extremes we do have some
[01:33:02] sedimentary soils but they're from the mizoua floods they're not marine sediments they're from
[01:33:08] east of us that came more recently through the last ice age you know when there's some flooding
[01:33:14] huge amounts of water came rushing down the Columbia Gorge and flooded the Wilhelm Valley and
[01:33:19] deposited a lot of waterborne silks and stuff on our site it's it's the lower altitude vineyards
[01:33:27] primarily our peanut gree has some of the old sedimentary soils but as you move further up the hill
[01:33:33] you know it pretty soon that goes exclusively to volcanic so there's kind of a line on our vineyard
[01:33:38] that I kind of call the lakefront that would have been a lake back when those floods were happening
[01:33:43] and it wasn't a flood it probably happened hundreds of times but we think that that point is the
[01:33:49] high watermark because there's no no none of that sedimentary soil above that point I've
[01:33:54] you think the volcanic affects the flavor profile well there's there's some clay in it that I think
[01:34:01] helps to hold water a little bit better than some of the marine soils they're very deep soils some
[01:34:07] of those marine sediments but they don't hold as much water even though they're deeper you know
[01:34:12] so it kind of depends on the season if you will which which one gives you the best idea you know
[01:34:17] the best fruit but I think I think of how it affects the fruit in terms of how much water there is
[01:34:24] and therefore when it ripens you know and so you've got the jory version of volcanic which is quite deep
[01:34:30] and therefore it holds more water naturally we're not talking about irrigation right now so I'm
[01:34:36] assuming we're talking tri-farming so those if you were to pick them all at the same time say you
[01:34:42] jory soil and say a shallower volcanic soil on sedimentary soil if she picked them all at the same
[01:34:47] time the sedimentary soil would probably be a little bit riper in the deep volcanic soils wouldn't
[01:34:54] wouldn't be so ripe so you don't have to pick them on the same day so it's a bit of a theoretical
[01:34:59] thing anyway but I think you get kind of those strawberry lighter redder fruits in the in the
[01:35:06] soils that have more moisture but if you waited long enough you could move that into sort of the darker
[01:35:12] fruits you know and vice versa you get kind of the darker fruit or more rustic things in the
[01:35:17] in the soils that are dried out a little faster but we all try to pick at the ripe meaning that we
[01:35:23] want and you don't have to pick them on the same day the cold wet finishes might have an there might
[01:35:30] be an advantage in those years to be on sedimentary soils because they're going to ripen a little
[01:35:33] bit earlier and faster so I like to think which one makes the best one is very dependent on the
[01:35:40] season you know if you have a very hot early season then maybe some of the deep volcanic soils that
[01:35:48] hold more water are going to have the advantage and vice versa if you have a cold wet ear you do want
[01:35:55] to accelerate ripening and so you're better off to have a very well-drained soil that is maybe going
[01:36:00] to promote ripeness and you might get it off before the season ends and so it's not one's better
[01:36:06] than the other it's just they're both useful in a changing climate especially when we get all
[01:36:11] these extremes because we've had some ups and downs in terms of vintage is some have been really hot
[01:36:17] and some have been very ramey yes so you in the 90s as I mentioned earlier you could say that
[01:36:24] the name of the game was to get things to ripen as soon as they could so I feel like the 90s was
[01:36:28] typical organ finishes and then the 2000s came along and they were mostly hot um
[01:36:34] and I think of that as the global warming vintage is that whole decade
[01:36:39] 2010 was the latest vintage that we'd ever seen until 2011 which is even later and cooler that
[01:36:46] was the coolest one on record and then just you know four years later 2015 um we had the very
[01:36:52] hottest earliest vintage all within that time frame we also had the wettest vintage thrown in
[01:36:58] there so we had three extreme vinaiges in four years and so and so now we have to sort of just
[01:37:06] learn how to adapt better so I think that you make a different style and in one of those years
[01:37:12] definitely um and there is vintage variation but we're not afraid of it I think I might have been
[01:37:18] when I first came here you know thought of rain was just you know not part of what we had to think
[01:37:23] about and it was very scary at first but I've kind of learned to embrace it now and in fact I often
[01:37:30] prefer the cooler vinaiges and the late vinaiges and having some water at the right time is a blessing
[01:37:36] often you know 13 would have been the vintage I would have thought that I wouldn't ask for again
[01:37:41] and I still may not ask for it but after having weathered no pun intended that vintage
[01:37:47] I feel like we can pretty much handle anything because if ever there was going to be a
[01:37:51] vintage that was going to kind of wipe us out that that should have been it but the winds turned
[01:37:54] out quite nice and the water didn't wash us away so to speak you know even though that was
[01:38:01] way more water more than twice as much as we'd ever seen before at least during harvest you know
[01:38:06] for us it hit us right smack in the middle of harvesting so we had a lot more difference between say
[01:38:12] la Louise vinaigre and the Eileen vinaigre that year just because they normally might be
[01:38:18] a week to 10 days of difference in ripening but we just wait that a week or 10 days and they
[01:38:23] kind of both reach the same maturity level but in 13 you know the la Louise mostly was harvested
[01:38:28] before any of that tropical storm rain and Eileen had to weather almost all of it so stylistically
[01:38:35] there was a lot of separation between those vineyards that year that we don't get in a normal year
[01:38:41] because we kind of just get to wait you know what should I understand is the differences I mean
[01:38:46] you've explained a little bit about the site but in terms of the winds between la Louise, Eileen,
[01:38:52] Marjorie's, Jessie which are all Pino. All right they're all Pino they're all other than marjorie
[01:38:57] being planted in a different format and there was less clonal diversity and marjorie to begin with
[01:39:03] but we've now got that same clonal diversity most of the differences are subtle admittedly that's
[01:39:10] why it was kind of fun and as I mentioned in 13 to have such a wide difference between them because
[01:39:16] you don't get that all the time and even amongst ourselves we don't always we're not always able
[01:39:22] to pick the mountain of line tasting. I think there's more difference between the same vineyard
[01:39:27] from vintage to vintage even then there is between the vineyards in the same vintage but that being said
[01:39:35] la Louise does tend to ripen all earlier so it can be sort of the most extracted but there's also
[01:39:43] that little tiny piece of it in the lower part that's on the sedimentary flood soil that
[01:39:49] might be the reason for that you know it could it could explain a little bit of that
[01:39:54] resticity that that sometimes gets conversely the Eileen which is higher up and does tend to
[01:40:01] be a little bit later ripening can often just have a little bit more red food and very focused
[01:40:07] food I think in the Eileen. Jesse is sort of between those two in terms of elevation and
[01:40:14] ripening dates instead it's our steepest site it's also got the most maybe soil diversity between
[01:40:21] very deep and very shallow and so you know that that may also contribute to its sort of maybe
[01:40:28] complexity I always find that there's a little bit of a tiny floral influence in Jesse which I
[01:40:35] don't find any others as much and it's some kind of a blue flower I think but not everybody gets it
[01:40:41] and like I said I can't always get it either. It's the one that stands out for me when I taste
[01:40:46] them I mean there's I'm not saying that they taste the same I'm just saying that the Jesse seems
[01:40:50] a little bit more off to one side than the other three. Let's literally off to one side it's
[01:40:55] separated by a ravine but yeah you know when people ask what's your favorite it's hard to
[01:41:03] choose because it depends on the vintage and when you're trying them and how they're evolving often
[01:41:09] it's Jesse however but you know when I when I tease people and say well what's your favorite child
[01:41:14] and then people come back at me and say well that's easy am I I like my son today and I like my
[01:41:19] daughter yesterday and that's kind of the way it is with the vineyards too you know it's so we
[01:41:23] we might have a general leaning towards one of the other but then we're surprised and like when
[01:41:28] that we don't like as much that year or that particular moment so I really feel like you know
[01:41:35] they're all pretty equal in terms of their general quality and it's just kind of a personal preference
[01:41:39] of what what you're looking for perhaps and then marjorie is again the anomaly in a sense just
[01:41:46] because of it had a lot more old binds and it was onrooted in very wide spaced but in terms
[01:41:53] of the site itself I think that it's again it's it's below I lean but not by a lot and it's
[01:41:59] it's up a little bit higher than then Jesse and a little bit higher than Louise so as time moves forward
[01:42:05] I fully expect that's going to be again one of our favorite vineyards because I think that with
[01:42:12] global warming we're gonna we're gonna want some stuff that's a little bit later and stuff like
[01:42:16] that so one of the things that you've kind of shifted from the protocol you were doing at
[01:42:22] Calera is you've dialed back the whole cluster on the pino summit christm so whereas before you
[01:42:27] might have been doing a hundred percent whole cluster you typically do about 50% on the single vineyard
[01:42:32] pino's for christm right yeah that's good point I didn't I didn't talk about that much but yeah
[01:42:38] in the earlier years I did quite a bit of experimenting again at earlier years here at at
[01:42:44] a christm and starting in 92 you know I did a lot of no whole cluster 50 percent whole cluster
[01:42:49] 100 percent whole cluster trying to just figure out if it worked as well here as it did for me down
[01:42:54] there and I think I mentioned earlier that part of the issue may have been we didn't have that
[01:43:00] grade of a de-stemmer I don't know if that's true or not but I if I had ever gone back there
[01:43:04] would've been fun to try a more modern de-stemmer to compare and see if in fact I might prefer
[01:43:11] even a little less whole cluster than I was using at the time I mean the clear ones are pretty
[01:43:16] rustic and they take a long time to come around so anyway having done that quite a bit I just felt
[01:43:22] like the hundred percent whole cluster was just pushing it too far the wines I think they would
[01:43:27] still have made really interesting and great wines but from a commercial standpoint I think they
[01:43:33] just wouldn't have been accessible enough for the average consumer to get behind especially when
[01:43:39] you're trying to build a brand and you know most people were drinking the wines on their way home
[01:43:42] from the liquor store they weren't given a much time to age ironically you know if I had the
[01:43:48] average consumer in the seller and we're doing a barrel tasting on those three say different
[01:43:53] whole cluster components I'd say 60 70 percent of the population liked the de-stemmed completely
[01:44:00] the most it's fruity or it's more developed it's you know who doesn't like fruit and so they
[01:44:07] they really were attracted to that kind of readiness in the seller but you'd get some french people
[01:44:12] in there and they tended to go for the hundred percent whole cluster because the wines not supposed
[01:44:16] to be drinkable what are not undrinkable I mean the ones not ready when it's in the barrel and
[01:44:22] yes it needs some time but there might be more complexity there and and they could relate to that
[01:44:28] you know it's tighter more preserved little backwards so I kind of went for that middle ground
[01:44:35] I like whole clusters a lot but I also you know don't age my wines long enough on in general and
[01:44:42] so I just think that that middle area gives me what I'm looking for in terms of the dynamics
[01:44:48] of the fermentation without it being overly stemmy you know the whole cluster use is not just
[01:44:53] the flavors of the stems that's one of the important factors to to think about but I also think
[01:45:00] that there's a role in the rate of fermentation you don't know how the variety that likes to ferment
[01:45:07] very fast and so almost everything I do at harvest is to slow down that fermentation it's one of the
[01:45:14] reasons we use native east if we're going to acidify we do it very very early like day one try to
[01:45:21] get the pH down first to make it harder for the fermentation to speed through if we're going to
[01:45:27] shop the lies we do it late in fact we'll even take whatever the total amount is and split it into
[01:45:34] three parts and and add the sugar over three different days near the end to try to again get as much
[01:45:40] to extend the ferment stand fermentation time it just likes to ferment quickly also likes to
[01:45:45] spoil quickly it's it's everybody likes penal aren't including the organisms you know so the whole
[01:45:50] clusters if you think about where the east are they're in the environment outside of the berry there
[01:45:56] they could be on the skin and stuff but they're not inside the grape and so as long as that
[01:46:01] that grape is intact and it's attached to the stem fermentation doesn't really begin on
[01:46:07] that grape until it's broken open and so it's a way to kind of feed the east over the course of
[01:46:14] many weeks instead of having it all available up front and even even good de-stemmers that will
[01:46:19] give you a lot of whole berries if the stems pulled out that's that's a little it's not as easy as
[01:46:24] if it's crushed but there's still a little bit more access to the grape going through that
[01:46:29] hole than if if the stem were left on so it's it's the best way to get intact fruit into the
[01:46:35] fermenter so that's that's the other reason that I like it but I think at 100% whole cluster there's
[01:46:41] just the stem component can be a little too much you know it's just a lot of extraction
[01:46:47] I do think that the stem tendons though are different than seed tannins and barrel tannins
[01:46:53] and skin tannins so there may be more total tannin but it's a different one and I think it kind of
[01:46:58] coats your mouth differently and if they're work well you get a spiciness almost a clovey cinnamon
[01:47:06] kind of thing when they don't work so well then that's when you get into that sort of
[01:47:11] edged-told stemmy awkward phase where it's it's a it's a disadvantage you know so it's kind of a
[01:47:19] fine line most of the time even though the goal is 50% the wines as as they're bottled end up being
[01:47:26] less than that because for one reason or another there was a reason to sort of use less whole clusters
[01:47:31] if you have a poor set and you hold up a stem and there's only two thirds of the berries that there
[01:47:36] might be in another year obviously there's more stem for the amount of solids and juice that you
[01:47:41] have than if if it were a normal set and you had a lot of grapes on there in 13 for example I cut
[01:47:48] back pretty much across the board at least on the stuff that got in the rain done not because I didn't
[01:47:54] think the stems were ripe but because there was such a high disease pressure year that again
[01:47:59] the Easter not the only things they're on the surface of things and so there was a lot of
[01:48:04] rots and mildews and stuff that were just you know a problem and I just felt like if I
[01:48:09] used as many stems as I normally would I'm just adding to the inoculum of those bad guys so
[01:48:15] I more or less cut it back about to about 35% on average which is for me quite a bit less than
[01:48:23] I normally use but every year we I hate having two fermenters side by side without doing something
[01:48:29] to them so if say I have two fermenters that are otherwise identical usually one will be 65%
[01:48:35] whole and the other be 35% whole so my average is 50 but we've got lots of lots in the cellar
[01:48:40] that are a whole range of different things so when we put the buns together we can kind of
[01:48:45] flow around with the extraction in a way just by which barrels we choose and stuff like that
[01:48:50] so that's the primary reason why I didn't didn't go with 100% is it and we often have a fermenter
[01:48:57] or two that is 100% and sometimes those are delicious you know it's not it's not unheard of
[01:49:04] it's not like 100% can't make some delicious wines I just felt like it's not for your faint of
[01:49:11] heart kind of it's funny you know a lot of people try to base their whole close to use on what they
[01:49:17] look like or how they taste you know I've heard lots of different arguments and I've had a hard
[01:49:22] time making any correlation I mean if I were to base how many whole clusters to use based on
[01:49:29] how they tasted I wouldn't use any because I've never tasted a stem that I like you know and
[01:49:34] other times you know they can be pretty fluorescent green and still work and vice versa the ones
[01:49:40] that look like they're pretty dignified and they're going to be ideal sometimes they can
[01:49:44] taste kind of stemmy so it's kind of hard I don't know if it's just intuitive or I've gotten
[01:49:50] lucky or what but we seem to just get pretty good results when that we're in that middle range
[01:49:56] I think you do have to kind of balance the tannic structure with just the style of the wine so
[01:50:02] in a vintage that's going to give you bigger more alcoholic even just more of everything then they
[01:50:08] probably can handle a little bit more of the stem component than if you're going to have kind
[01:50:13] of a lighter more delicate vintage but it's interesting because the stems to me especially as
[01:50:20] a age a little bit tend to provide what I call perfume you know they're aromatic I think that
[01:50:28] that is something that I was especially attracted to and the dujacquins is they had this perfume
[01:50:34] that to me was very identifiable as dujac you know it was their signature and they're 100 percent so
[01:50:40] I certainly you know have no illusion that 100 percent whole cluster can make delicious wads
[01:50:47] you got in on a period of clara where they were taking inspiration from dujac and drc about stems
[01:50:54] but then stems kind of got really unpopular for a long time in California and then to some degree
[01:51:00] in Oregon like there's some prominent Oregon wine makers who never use stems right and now the
[01:51:06] the fashion has swung back the other way where a lot of people are interested in stems yes but I
[01:51:11] feel like you saw that whole sweep that kind of whole pendulum swing and you were here using stems
[01:51:16] and I bet a lot of people are like I don't believe I reuse stems mark velocity didn't use stems
[01:51:21] right can can write hasn't used stems you know there's a lot of people that don't I mean that
[01:51:26] like you said I think that was phenomenal and again even going back further on other rid varieties
[01:51:31] most of them had been de-stamped you know traditionally but you know there's more than one way to
[01:51:37] do anything and it's not a right or a wrong I mean I think that they are styled differently
[01:51:43] a little bit with with stems but it has it has become quite popular and and you know I've always
[01:51:51] again because of the bias that I attained when I first started in the business I'm always trying
[01:51:57] to do things that I feel like they've done for historically I have to rephrase that a little bit
[01:52:03] in the modern era because of the natural line movement um we will add acid if necessary we will
[01:52:09] shop lies if necessary I do use SO2 we use barrels and not amphora and etc but you know were they
[01:52:18] were they picking off the stems by hand before they had mechanization historically I don't think so
[01:52:24] I think they probably used a lot of whole clusters you know and were they inoculating with the east
[01:52:30] hundreds of years ago I mean Louis Pasteur or I lived in the 1850s and he was the first person that
[01:52:35] discovered the existence of yeast you know um or I should say the use of yeast in winemaking they
[01:52:40] didn't know what the process was that's very very recent when you think of wine in terms of its
[01:52:46] history so now I have to modify my winemaking say it's based on why making has been done for hundreds of
[01:52:53] years not not thousands of years well as an example you don't do cold soak because you feel like
[01:52:58] that's not really the old school way exactly exactly I think that there was plenty of lots that were
[01:53:04] made in cold seasons that were cold soaked by accident in fact I believe that Gia Cod he was kind
[01:53:11] of a consultant in burdeny kind of um liked some of those wines and he started doing it intentionally
[01:53:17] versus it just happening because you know there was a cold cold harvest and things took a long time
[01:53:23] to get started he he started sort of identifying that well these are some nice wines I think Henry
[01:53:30] Giair was the guy that practiced that quite a bit you know and so that became the standard and
[01:53:36] surprising how many people booed do it um not everybody but I've tried it a few times but maybe
[01:53:41] because I'm not a big believer it hasn't tasted to me as well but you know sometimes your bias
[01:53:46] just in fears with your experimentation even though you try to do a very accurate job on that but
[01:53:52] the few times that I've tried it I just didn't see what it brought to the table you know
[01:53:57] I think if if you want to go down that rabbit hole the real difference is is about the microbial
[01:54:03] activity that's going on because you know all reactions are temperature sensitive so if you cool
[01:54:09] down the the soaking it's going to take longer to get that extraction um so you have to let sit
[01:54:16] there for a longer period of time versus a little bit warmer temperatures you're going to get
[01:54:20] the same extraction you would at the colder temperatures even because it's a little warmer it's
[01:54:25] going to happen a little faster so even though it may not be sitting there for quite it's long
[01:54:29] you're probably going to have the same amount of stuff that you're trying to get out of the
[01:54:34] skins and seeds and and stamps and stuff but at the slightly warmer temperatures what's going
[01:54:40] on microbiologically is is definitely going to be accelerated whereas you've kind of frozen not
[01:54:46] that not literally frozen but you've kind of stopped the micro organisms in their feet by having
[01:54:51] it in the low forties or high thirties or something there's not going to be a lot of activity so I
[01:54:57] think the way it's used by some people anyway is you know they keep it very cold and then they
[01:55:02] inoculate and warm it up right away so that the saccharomyces the whyneast are the only things
[01:55:08] that really have a chance to really get don't one so they really favor the yeast the the whyneast
[01:55:14] by raising the temperature quickly and by putting these in there and kicking off fermentation right
[01:55:19] away so even though there may have been a week where the fruit was just sitting there wasn't much
[01:55:23] activity happening whereas in my case say I'm in the low fifties or something the microorganisms
[01:55:30] and they're not all one factors very few whyneast in it at that moment can can survive and actually
[01:55:36] metabolize some things and often that's VA which is what everybody doesn't want I'm not really
[01:55:42] afraid of it at that stage anyway because most of that's going to get blown off during fermentation
[01:55:48] because you're using open top we're using open top for manners and you've got two or three weeks
[01:55:52] of CO2 pushing all those things away usually but whatever little bit might be remaining it's not just
[01:55:59] VA that they metabolize they're doing other things and I think it adds a little bit of complexity
[01:56:04] to the wine a little bit of earthiness a little bit of something else and versus having a
[01:56:09] monoculture in there and even with the whyneast that's why I don't inoculate and I'm hoping to get
[01:56:14] multiple strains and different things going on to gain some complexity you know so that's one
[01:56:21] of the reasons that I'm not a big fan of the cold soak is that I don't I don't want to get rid of
[01:56:26] that microflora that is contributing hopefully in a positive way riskier perhaps I mean most
[01:56:34] people who try whole clusters some reason there seems to be a lot more volatility in those tanks
[01:56:40] and that when they're early is that true it seems like it you know and so it's hard it's hard to
[01:56:45] just sit there and let it happen and have faith that it's going to clean up you know you think that's
[01:56:50] because of the pH like do you think that's because the potassium drop with the clusters well there's
[01:56:56] certainly a phenomenon with whole clusters that's another negative there's no doubt that your pH
[01:57:00] it's very will rise a lot if you don't do something to mitigate it because of like you mentioned
[01:57:06] the potassium that's in the stems that certainly could be I said whole clusters which is also true
[01:57:12] but I feel like there's a little bit more volatility within you're not doing a cold soak because
[01:57:18] it's obviously there's stuff in there trying to grow at those temperatures and that's what I think
[01:57:23] a lot of people have a really hard time leaving it alone whereas I've sort of so used to it that
[01:57:30] it's it's kind of part of what the fermentation is just like oftentimes you'll get a point at which
[01:57:36] you might get a little bit of reduction in in a fermenter and we don't encourage it or like it but
[01:57:42] we don't prophylactically feed any of our fermenters and if if we get a little bit of that that's when
[01:57:49] we might put in a little bit of nutrient for the yeast or something normally like in last
[01:57:55] couple years we've had over 100 different fermenters and we might have fed four or five of them
[01:57:59] and it's based just on how they smell a little bit but often those things if it's not
[01:58:04] if it's not overpowering and depending on the stage at the fermentation we we won't do anything
[01:58:08] we'll just let it go through that phase because I know most of the time they'll fix themselves
[01:58:15] so I try not to react to stuff whereas I think a lot of lawmakers want to react that's what
[01:58:22] they feel their job is is to you know fix it when it starts to break and certainly I have a
[01:58:27] threshold where I need to do that as well but I think it's just a little bit broader and
[01:58:33] I try not to react unless it's really bugging me and I guess that's everybody's
[01:58:39] motto it's just where's your threshold one of the things that we had to learn early on about
[01:58:44] Pinot Nora that's different from most red varieties is it's very fragile and so when we've done
[01:58:50] things often we felt in retrospect that it owes a mistake and often if you just leave it alone
[01:58:57] it'll come around one of the biggest things I learned was about racking I mean you know everyone
[01:59:04] racks their cabernes every three or four months you know and we were not doing it that frequently but
[01:59:10] we were moving it around and we started doing experiments with you know no racking one racking two
[01:59:16] rackings etc and less was more we got more interesting wines when we left them alone because it's
[01:59:24] a fragile it's a fragile grape and now it likes to likes to oxidize and it likes it you know it doesn't
[01:59:30] take handling well I don't think and so that's all in the back of my mind is how do we minimize
[01:59:36] what we're doing with yeah you want to fix something but you also I'm trying to make the wine
[01:59:42] as pure as you can another example was the 98th energy you know I mentioned to you off mic that
[01:59:50] I love 99 and 98 was a little bit less not my favorite finish when I was making it was a very
[01:59:58] short growing season it was hot low yield I think we only had about 85 days of hang time so
[02:00:04] philosophically I already didn't like the vintage from this get co because you know we had to pick
[02:00:09] because it was quite ripe and then we had a huge amounts of sulfite for us in the in the cellar
[02:00:15] so we tried all kinds of things to get rid of it we used copper of course we used silver which
[02:00:21] you're not supposed to use and it does the same thing copper but we're trying out we use pure
[02:00:25] oxygen try to bubble it through we did some racking get it off the leaves and we left some alone you
[02:00:31] know as a control I figured where we got to do something was try to learn something and again what
[02:00:36] I learned was the stuff that we hadn't done anything to turned out in the end to be pretty good
[02:00:41] and certainly the wines showed nicely even though we had manipulated a lot of them quite a bit
[02:00:46] that advantage with various things because we had a pretty pervasive reduction issue wines don't taste
[02:00:52] reduced it now but I don't believe it was because of most of the treatments we use they just were
[02:00:58] at that stage and they tended to they they came around so maybe it's just based on experience and
[02:01:05] I I can get unlucky too and leave something alone and have it come back to bite me but so far
[02:01:12] we've been pretty lucky you know you make reasling pino green chardonnay and so whatever your
[02:01:18] experience has been with those diverse white grapes well when we first moved if there of course
[02:01:24] we were told by a very nice industry that was very helpful to us that pino green was the white
[02:01:32] grape of organ and that we would be foolish not to try some pino green and so we listened to them
[02:01:39] primarily and I had never made it before I hadn't got a lot of experience with it hadn't had any
[02:01:45] bloomy way to be honest but we planted about five acres of pino green we first got here simultaneously
[02:01:53] we planted quite a bit of chardonnay too and also the vigny we planted all three of those varieties
[02:02:00] no reasling back then the pino green took me a little while to really warm up to it you know it
[02:02:07] always had a little bit of an edge to it that was something I wasn't as familiar with but over time
[02:02:14] I learned to enjoy it and embrace it and I think it is very versatile like it's you know pino
[02:02:21] mar is very versatile it goes with a lot of stuff but I still have a little bit of a bias against it
[02:02:28] I guess unfortunately it just again I don't think I've had any that have just totally turned my head
[02:02:34] and you know I haven't had one of those memorable moments with all of my on if I could only make
[02:02:39] pino green like that you know but still it it was for the time you couldn't get people to
[02:02:46] try the chardonnay sometimes I mean we had a really hard time convincing people that chardonnay
[02:02:51] was worth trying from Oregon and so we actually tore out almost all of our chardonnay and we used
[02:02:56] to make three different ones in the 90s we we had a an estate it was actually named after my
[02:03:02] grandmother at the time and then we had one we called Mount Hood which was the counterpart to the
[02:03:07] Mount Jefferson Pinot Noir and then we had a solilo vineyard a vineyard does which was actually
[02:03:12] the only vineyard doesn't yet that we had been made up until recent times that we didn't grow
[02:03:19] and that was from the Columbia Gorge solilo vineyard quite interesting very very good chardonnay I think
[02:03:25] but when we decided to cut back you know it didn't make sense for us to tear out all of our fruit
[02:03:30] and keep buying chardonnay so we unfortunately got rid of the purchased fruit first and even grafted
[02:03:36] away most of us so we only kept a half an acre of chardonnay and we're just again recently
[02:03:42] planting more so that we're we're going to get back into the chardonnay game a little bit more than
[02:03:46] we have been so I'm looking forward to having the opportunity to kind of join the rest of the
[02:03:54] valley with the enthusiasm for the chardonnay you know and then of course the Vigny as I maybe
[02:04:00] alluded to earlier I was against even planting to begin with but it's actually turned out quite
[02:04:06] nice and I now prefer it over the stuff I think I was making in California and I mean I don't mean to
[02:04:14] pat myself on the back but I prefer it to most Vigny I just I think a cooler climate for that
[02:04:20] variety is really what it needs um I think it's a tough variety in a lot of ways because it's kind
[02:04:27] of a paradox you know it's got this very aromatic floral almost feels like it's going to taste light
[02:04:34] and yet it's got this kind of big viscous body that you don't expect from having to smell
[02:04:41] it so it's a bit of a contradiction and you know the aromas don't remind you of the flavors I mean
[02:04:47] now that we're kind of had more of them or kind of used to expecting the Vigny to taste like it will
[02:04:51] because of our memory but if you'd never tried it before you wouldn't expect it to taste like it
[02:04:58] does after smelling it but so many of them are I think kind of over the top with that you know
[02:05:04] mouth feel it's just so massive you know so I've always felt that it's a little bit harder to match
[02:05:09] with food and things like that you can pick it earlier which isn't a bad idea but it doesn't have
[02:05:16] rightle character until it's kind of late in the in the bricks ripening cycle anyway so the one
[02:05:23] vintage that I think that didn't get ripe was the 2011 and we made a wine out of it and it was
[02:05:29] successful and people loved it did not taste like Vigny it just had no variety of character it was
[02:05:34] almost more like Shebhli or something it had lots of acidity and you know it was bright and so
[02:05:40] you know doesn't sound like Vigny and so it was kind of a surprise and it even made me wonder if
[02:05:47] we shouldn't make it in that style I can imagine that being really popular actually it was
[02:05:54] but the people that liked that didn't like Vigny and so it's possible to do and maybe that's
[02:06:00] maybe that's the way some Vigny should be but it also is so unbridled or unclassically
[02:06:06] vital I mean how can it be unbridled even though it's from that variety you know
[02:06:11] so I kind of feel like you know I've gone back to thinking well if it says Vigny it ought to taste
[02:06:15] like Vigny and so we've been making it where it gets ripe but I think the advantage of having
[02:06:22] it a little bit in a cooler spot compared to where it's often grown is that you just have a little
[02:06:28] bit more time to nail it when it finally tastes like Vigny to pick it right away and the
[02:06:34] warmer it is the faster that that curve is moving and it's harder to pick it you know one day makes
[02:06:40] a big difference and three days makes a huge difference and so if it's if it's right me a little
[02:06:45] bit more slowly you just have a little bit better chance of getting it when it has rightle character
[02:06:52] but it hasn't gone over the top but even here it's tricky I'd say a good percentage of our Vigny
[02:06:57] is over the last 20 plus years have been over 14% alcohol so knowing that that's not my goal
[02:07:05] it's just that's where they seem to get right is that the highest alcohol wine you make?
[02:07:11] No there's been some hot finishes where the pianos have gotten over 14 as well
[02:07:15] you know most finishes were I'd say we're we hover around 135 well in the cooler
[02:07:23] finishes we can we can increase the alcohol to that level so in that sense they often get
[02:07:29] to that point but you know I'd say most of the wines that we've made are between 135 and 14
[02:07:34] actually and it's but there have been certain certain vignages where you know they're between 14
[02:07:40] and 14 and a half you know I've made some zinfin d'olves in california that were 157 right and they
[02:07:46] still didn't taste overly alcoholic but Josh I thought was pretty clever that he labeled a couple
[02:07:54] well quite a few vignages were just called table wine and that was an alcoholic designation it
[02:07:59] just meant it was between 11 and 14 because people who focus on alcohol so much you know even then
[02:08:05] and even more so now and so they look at a label I don't like I don't like wines that are over 14
[02:08:10] percent alcohol you haven't tasted it how do you know that you don't like it? No I just know and
[02:08:16] so the table wine thing threw everybody off because they said well that these wines are pretty
[02:08:20] expensive if they're just ordinary table wine but it was really an alcoholic designation that
[02:08:25] meant the same thing as 12.5 because at the time well still you have a point and a half of leeway
[02:08:31] so if you put 12.5 on it it means it's between 11 and 14 which is exactly what table wine meant but
[02:08:36] I thought that was kind of a fun way of getting around the whole alcohol thing and or people were
[02:08:42] so focused on it but anyway so yeah we've had some vignages where you know it was hard to keep the
[02:08:48] under 14 percent again I think there's certainly a trend for trying to pick with a little bit lower
[02:08:56] sugars and stuff but I still argue that you want ripeness and it's harder to get ripeness in a
[02:09:02] really hot finish because sugar is outpacing the flavors but if you pick when there's no flavor
[02:09:07] have you really gained anything yes you're now you have a wine that's balanced without flavor so
[02:09:12] is that better? I don't know I still think you need to you need to have flavor and ripeness so
[02:09:18] it's a little bit tricky even in like in a wet year just the opposite thing is happening you know
[02:09:22] you could say well we we picked before the rain but again if you don't have flavor I'd rather have
[02:09:27] some flavor that gets diluted by the rain than to never have had the flavor to begin with so
[02:09:33] you have to wait for that and sometimes you know you might actually have more alcohol by picking
[02:09:39] it before rain but if you don't have flavor what's what's the point so I'm still a little bit old
[02:09:44] school in a sense that I do want to wait for that moment obviously overripe is not good but underripe
[02:09:51] isn't the solution I mean I even try to tell some of that up and coming guys that don't claim you
[02:09:56] pick early you pick perfectly right you pick when it's ready for you don't call it early because then
[02:10:02] you're admitting you missed the mark you know so you don't want to say you pick late either you
[02:10:07] you pick when you think it's right but those terms can be used against you so you know so
[02:10:13] anyway yeah alcohol is a big focus these days as it as it should be you know nobody nobody
[02:10:19] wants to intentionally make wines that have more alcohol but I do sympathize with
[02:10:24] places that are already planted and they're getting warmer and warmer and warmer and
[02:10:29] you can't knock somebody for using some new technology even to help them make balanced wines
[02:10:35] unfortunately I would say that if you have to do that every vintage then
[02:10:40] you should maybe think about a different variety or or something else but to fix an
[02:10:45] aberrant vintage I can't argue with somebody who wants to do that I think it's a bit of a
[02:10:52] why-makers job to make a one that's balanced and so just to pick it before sugars get high
[02:10:58] doesn't necessarily solve the problem because if you don't have the maturity of flavors and
[02:11:03] than all of a sudden then that's I don't think any better than having a wine that
[02:11:08] is a bit more alcoholic but it's got more flavor too so it's just a bigger wine. It's not like
[02:11:14] there's a magic line at 14 where 139 would have been good and 141 is going to be bad
[02:11:20] you know it's a continuum and sometimes if you've got a lot of other things going on the wine
[02:11:24] I mean it's infantil with that it's a good example and some of those alcohols are outrageous but
[02:11:29] there's also lots of flavor and other things and acidity as well that made the wines balanced
[02:11:37] even at higher alcohol so but it's a challenge. The warmard gets I think it becomes a challenge
[02:11:43] it's easier to get balanced in a cooler I think as long as you do wait long enough to get flavor
[02:11:49] in terms of drinkability of the different single vineyard pinoes when do you start to open the bottles
[02:11:56] well you know I think a little bit of time is always is going to help them you know we try
[02:12:01] to explain to people that it's not a straight line the ageability of a wine it's not like a 15-year-old
[02:12:07] bottle is much better than a 14 year old bottle but one year old older wine is is better than a
[02:12:14] brand new wine in the earlier years so I think short term aging isn't talked about as much you
[02:12:19] know people feel like either drink it right now or you have to let your grandkids have it you know
[02:12:24] and there's a lot in between there so ideally you know a few years it makes a lot of difference
[02:12:30] and so I would like the window for me is anywhere from you know a couple years to 10 years is
[02:12:36] what's wrong with that and I used to think people didn't age their wines long enough and certainly
[02:12:41] they can get better for or wines can get better for another 10 years maybe but the return on
[02:12:46] investment is as much less I think and now I feel like I'd rather taste a wine while it's still
[02:12:53] on the uphill side then starting to taste it on the downhill side you know you invested all that
[02:12:58] time and hope and energy into it and then just say ah I should have had it last year you know I'd
[02:13:02] rather have it the year before you say that you know but there's a big long plateau too you know
[02:13:08] it's not like they're always getting better nor do they just fall off a cliff usually
[02:13:13] I find that the Oregon wine makers have historically over the last 50 years been a little closer
[02:13:20] to some of the Burgundian producers whereas some of the California producers maybe started off
[02:13:26] close to the Burgundian producers but then there was a real vogue for kind of bigger more California
[02:13:32] centric fruit in Pino and California and so I feel like you kind of segwayed at the right time
[02:13:40] into the Oregon milieu because you kind of came out of that early heavily affected by Burgundy
[02:13:46] California school and then right when California was moving in the 90s the more that lusher style
[02:13:52] you came up north where there's a lot of connection with Burgundy producers.
[02:13:57] Well I think that the original connections were both genuine and real but also there is a
[02:14:04] marketing aspect to it I think that you know anyone that made Pino and War was obviously connected
[02:14:09] to Burgundy because that was its home and where the standard was made you know but I would argue
[02:14:15] that even in Burgundy I think that there was a little shift in the style so you know what's
[02:14:20] Burgundian is kind of a loose term you know like we can do anything and find somebody in Burgundy doing
[02:14:25] it you know you can find wines that are pasteurized and everything else and so you know you can point
[02:14:30] to somebody doing it because that's where they do everything and so I think that there was a whole
[02:14:35] industry kind of shift into the bigger more modern style Pino and War and again I don't want
[02:14:41] to blame anyone but that's sort of the parkourization I mean I like Robert Parker he all he did was
[02:14:47] identify what he liked and told people about it he didn't try to change anybody's style or anything
[02:14:52] and so but there was this you know and it's kind of an American thing that bigger is better right so
[02:14:58] more is always more but sometimes more is less so yeah but I think that segue for me was good
[02:15:05] and I understand that it wants to stay connected with Burgundy I mean I love it as a region
[02:15:12] and I love their wines but I think we are fortunate that we have a little bit it's easier for us to
[02:15:19] sort of mimic their style a bit I think I think California has a lot more fruit very ripe fruit
[02:15:25] driven style I think Burgundy again these are big generalizations and I'm not seeing the whole
[02:15:31] state of California makes their wines that we are all boring he does either but they're more in the
[02:15:35] earthier realm you know a little bit more backward and rustic and earthy again in a generality
[02:15:43] and we have we're kind of in between those two but I also kind of laugh at the comparisons between
[02:15:50] us and Burgundy we're always trying to find what's similar but I think there's a lot more differences
[02:15:55] than there are similarities our soils are completely different they've got limestone you know
[02:16:00] we haven't got any of it really there's a couple little dots on a geologic map that they have
[02:16:05] some on the coastline or something but I don't really know of anybody that has limestone in their
[02:16:10] soil sedimentary soils for sure you can find seashells and stuff but it's not the same kind of
[02:16:15] marital stone and stuff that they have in Burgundy and we say you know we're at the same latitude
[02:16:20] really they're a little bit north of us they have a very continental climate we've got a big ocean
[02:16:25] right next to us you know there's a lot of differences and so it's you know again the vine densities
[02:16:32] not even close for the most part you know we're just pushing over half and our dense planning
[02:16:38] with the exception of some of drew ends although I don't know that they still plant in that
[02:16:42] high-density fashion that they started with just because they want to try it out you know
[02:16:47] it's they had I know in the earlier they held a lot of mildew pressure because their plants
[02:16:52] are so close together and stuff but for the most part we feel more connected I think to Burgundy
[02:17:00] because we're closer latitude and things than California maybe but we're still very different
[02:17:05] and I try not to make comparisons to Burgundy as much as I was used to doing it because I think
[02:17:12] we're making wines that are Oregonian and they're separate not better worse they can't make
[02:17:18] Oregon wines any more than we can make virgin Jewines you know in AstroCalifornia too I think
[02:17:23] they have their own style and certainly now that the ones that are standing out are not the stereotypical
[02:17:30] overripe and hot and one-dimensional I think that the people have grown sophisticated in their
[02:17:37] palettes as well and they they recognize quality more than they did and you know some of the
[02:17:43] coastal regions the cooler regions are are the ones that are getting more and more attention so I
[02:17:48] think that we've all evolved together as it surprised you just how popular Pino and O'R has become
[02:17:56] over the course of your career yeah I guess I never thought that even wine consumption would out do
[02:18:02] beer consumption at any time you know but it does I mean to me it's always been on the rise
[02:18:09] so I don't feel like certainly there are certain events or times when it seemed like there is a
[02:18:14] little bit of a lift you know that everyone says all sideways was what did it or whatever but to me
[02:18:20] it's always been a bit of a growth thing that people you know recognize Pino and O'R for what it
[02:18:26] was because I've always I've been lucky that I started there like I said the first blind days
[02:18:30] ever did had a lot of passion it's like how do you how do you go back from that you know
[02:18:35] it's just that there's been a sweep of market popularity for Pino and O'R that would have
[02:18:40] been hard to predict when you first started in 78 absolutely you're right 78 there was not that
[02:18:47] many people in the game and the style that was favored I think were the ones that were the
[02:18:52] big even that and it was bigger style you know San Cruz Mountain vinyard Hoffman Mountain Ranch
[02:18:59] you know they had a lot of alcohol a lot of color and that was kind of hard to achieve with Pino
[02:19:05] O'R so they thought that was good and I'm not saying those weren't good wines but I mean there's
[02:19:09] just a different different understanding of the variety now I think that is getting people excited
[02:19:17] I mean you know there was a period where everything had to be bigger is better and I've always
[02:19:22] appreciated Pino and O'R for its femininity if you are the ability to be feminine and the
[02:19:28] epitome for me is is wines like the douchebag that had both power and yet they were silky smooth
[02:19:34] and had finesse at least when they had a little time on them and that to me is my goal all the time
[02:19:39] and unfortunately I think often power and weight is is preferred over that elegant style and
[02:19:47] I hope that the pendulum for the whole industry goes back to appreciating that elegance that I
[02:19:54] think Pino and O'R does better than almost any other variety you know the iron fist and the
[02:19:58] velvet glove is how you describe great Pino and O'R the way I like to describe it too this is not my
[02:20:04] quote but someone said that great cabernet based wines will blow your socks off but great Pino
[02:20:10] and O'R will slide them off gently so I thought that was a good comparison you know I think now is
[02:20:16] kind of undisputed although I'm sure people would argue with me that it's it's the best food wine I
[02:20:21] mean in terms of matching with a variety of things than anything else so I mean as food and wine
[02:20:27] have become more popular obviously Pino and O'R is on more rest hot lists than it ever has been
[02:20:32] and you know it may not be the perfect match with every dish but if you're out of table eight and
[02:20:36] everybody's buying something different what one wine will match all that and I can't think of
[02:20:43] anything more than you don't know are you know so again I have a little bit of a narrow focus though
[02:20:49] my thoughts are a bit biased things have always been on the rise for Steve Dorner at
[02:20:54] christm vineyards in Oregon thank you very much for being here today oh my pleasure it's been fun
[02:20:59] Steve Dorner of christm vineyards in the Willamette Valley of Oregon
[02:21:04] all drink to that is hosted and produced by myself levy Dalton editing on this episode was done
[02:21:10] by Justin Helstrom Aaron Scala has contributed original pieces editorial assistance has been provided
[02:21:17] by bill kimsey the show music was performed and composed by ramousse and Thomas Bartlett show artwork
[02:21:24] by elisha to noyan t shirt sweatshirts coffee mugs and so much more including show stickers notebooks
[02:21:30] and even gift wrap are available for sale if you check the show website all drink to that pod
[02:21:35] dot com that's i l l drink to that p o d dot com which is the same place you'd go to sign up for our
[02:21:42] email list or to make one of the crucially important donations that help keep this show operating
[02:21:49] you can donate from anywhere using paypal or stripe on the show website remember to hit subscribe
[02:21:55] or to follow this show in your favorite podcast app please that's super important to see every episode
[02:22:01] and thank you for listening
[02:22:13] this episode was made possible by the willamette valley wineries association that's the same
[02:22:26] association that organizes the annual willamette the pinnacle or auction and organ penal camp for more
[02:22:33] information please visit willamette wines dot com that's willamette with two else two ease and two
[02:22:41] tease wines with an s dot com the interview that you heard was Steve donor was recorded several years
[02:22:50] ago and the reason it was never released is that there was a technical problem with the recording
[02:22:55] that an audio professional had to correct and i'm not an audio professional while hiring one to fix
[02:23:01] the issue was expensive enough to mean that this episode would be released for a loss monetarily
[02:23:08] which is exactly why donations to this program are so important and why i can say that because some
[02:23:14] of you donated to the success of this program this episode became a reality otherwise it wouldn't
[02:23:21] have been viable thank you if you'd like to see further releases like this occur please consider
[02:23:28] donating funds to the program today i've unfortunately found and i don't want to blame anybody for
[02:23:37] it but there seems to be kind of this international style almost where there's a lot of convergence i
[02:23:43] think we're getting away from it now but um there's a time when you know everybody was trying to
[02:23:48] make the wine for the average person and there's no average person then you're never going to get all
[02:23:53] the consumer so why not make something that's kind of unique you know i'm a little critical sometimes
[02:23:58] when i have a lineup of 12 wines from organ or something and you know it's hard to know who's
[02:24:04] who's i mean there may be some difference between the wines but there's not a defined style so much
[02:24:10] that you can pick that wine out of a lineup every time and well i can't do it into my own wines
[02:24:15] even so i'm not being critical the taste is i just mean it's um there it just seems to be uh this
[02:24:20] uniformity that is good but it can be boring too you know and it's almost better to have something
[02:24:27] that is a little bit distinctive so that you can have a style that is is your own you know