Riesling Out West: Oregon Beyond Pinot Noir

Class transcript:

Add record, thank you, sir! Um, all right, uh, let's release the hounds. Welcome one and all, happy Father's Day to everyone in the viewing audience. It is a pleasure to have you all with us as always, um, we have a another distinguished guest today, uh, one of uh, the finest, uh, producers of recently, um, in the United States, um, and turning out really special wines, um, in uh, Oregon, of all places, which is a place that people um, associate with Pinot Noir, uh, for good reason, uh, but Oregon has so much more to offer, uh, than just Pinot, uh, Oregon um, does many things well, uh, as a winemaking region and uh, we are grateful for Rustic Soyuger, so many. Of you have seen our great fight called 'of this garden' that is unparalleled um to celebrate um kind of an underdog uh grape uh for the sake of Oregon wine um in Riesling, today um is the first full day of summer, the equinox uh was yesterday uh today is the first full day of uh summer and uh it is also of course.

One and the only John House will be joining us very shortly. I don't see him in the mix at the moment. Sarah Thompson is with me as always. Say hello to the people, Sarah Thompson. Hello. This is Sarah's final voyage with Wine School as moderator for a little while. I'm hopeful that, you know, you might make future guest appearances, but we love you and you will be missed. But you will always be a part of this family, Sarah Thompson. At any rate, I'm here. I'm going to get things started here. Is that John House? Yes. You can't see me? We can see you and you're outside. Beautiful. You're looking great. Fine headphones. Say hello to the assembled masses, John. Hello. Excellent. And you have a fine product placement on the wine there as well.

I'm trying to do my part to, you know, exactly to keep you famous on this side of the country. You're getting your, like, brunch, you know, kind of Father's Day lunch drink on today. That's right. Yes. Sunday. Fun day. Nice. Excellent. I feel like every day is having a bit of a Sunday, fun day vibe these days. For sure. But it is actually Sunday and actually Father's Day. So thank you for taking time out to joining us, to join us today. Off of courageously making pancakes for this morning. Brilliant. So without further ado, we are going to kick it off here. I'll have a few people trickle in at any rate. Happy Father's Day to you all. Congratulations as well. We have two wine school regular attendees, Nuwala O'Connor and Peter Bass, who are tying the knot virtually today, this afternoon.

So, you know, I don't know if anything happened virtually through wine school, but, you know, we're celebrating them and cheers to the two of you celebrating remotely. As always, we are going to kick things off here with a bit of verse. And my bit of verse today, naturally dedicated to my father, who I hope is listening from home, 47,000 Overbrook, the kindest soul I know. And my family's original sommelier, the original Jensen sommelier, William Ferdinand Jensen III. Just a bit of verse to kick things off. This comes from the one, the only Wendell Berry, who is one of the great farmer poets in the world. And this is one of his most anthologized poems. It is called The Peace of Wild Things.

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drapes rest in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives for thought of grief. I come into the presence of still water and I feel above me the dayblind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free. And, you know, that is a piece that, you know, we all need, you know, at all times. But, you know, I'm searching for it. Especially these times. Riesling is a subject at hand today.

For the sake of our lesson. It is the first full day of summer and we celebrate summer with Riesling here at both Reveilleur's Hour and Tale of Goat. That is, by no means, a novel, you know, creation this Riesling summer. That is the you know, creature of one. Paul Greco amazing James Beard-winning at terroir in New York started that tradition and we are happy to uphold it because Riesling is one of the great wines in the world one of the most versatile wines in the world one of the most terroir expressive grapes in the world and for those of you just joining us we have a John House with us and John and his wife Ksenia Ksenia I blew it I'm sorry no worries they're both winemakers and they make wine with a couple sites throughout the the state of Oregon and we're gonna talk over Riesling in Oregon briefly and I'm gonna talk over kind of the geology the state and then we're just gonna turn things over to John because he is a wealth of wisdom on a topic and has much more to say about these wines certainly than than I ever could so without further ado obviously I think to the extent that anyone thinks Oregon when it comes to wine you the first thing that comes to mind is Pinot Noir and rightly so they've had a Ton of success marketing Pinot as you know, really the the kind of not a noble grape of the Willamette Valley, but it does happen that Riesling has quite a history in Oregon and a longer history than I, than I realize, that John, he and I all had some pretty great work with him, and we've been you know, kind of helped me to become more aware of. So, some of the first pioneers who made their way up to Oregon in the 1860s, 1870s, German and Swiss settlers planted wine grapes in southern Oregon. And Riesling was among the grapes they were working with way back when. Flash forward and the beginning of the 20th century, the wines of Oregon were actually celebrated around the world. And there were individual commentators who said that Oregon's Riesling rivaled those of the old world. But unfortunately, prohibition to war intervened and the industry sadly tanked and wasn't revived until the 60s. And in the 60s, you had a whole bunch of, you said, UC Davis grads - so basically, California transplants who wanted to work in cooler climates and came north.

And they were the ones that really identified the Willamette as their stomping grounds. And they planted all sorts of things. I think, you know, the popular myth is that, you know, they planted Pinot and suddenly Pinot Noir took off in the Willamette Valley and it showed up, you know, on every supermarket shelf around the country. And, you know, that's not the case. They were working with dozens of different varietals and Riesling was among them. And very important, among them. You know, well into the 80s, it had, you know, a sizable market share, about a fifth of the grapes plantings in Oregon, at least. Yeah, if not a quarter, well into the 80s. But Riesling suffered the fate of a lot of sweeter wines in the midst of the Chardonnay craze, in the midst of the Pinot Noir boom that came thereafter.

And now only accounts for, you know, over 700 acres, I think, in Oregon. But that share is growing. Now, it should be said, that is dwarfed by Washington State. So, Washington State has well over 5,000 acres of Riesling planted and produces more Riesling than any other market in the United States. I'm going to pull up a map for you here of Oregon proper. All of that acreage in Washington is irrigated, though. I'll get to it. Sorry to interrupt. No, no, no. You feel free to interrupt whenever you like, John. And so, you know, that does beg the question. You know, if Washington is the, you know, kind of, you know, by volume major producer on the West Coast, and I'm teaching a lesson loosely entitled Riesling Out West, you know, why focus on Oregon as opposed to Washington?

And for me, it is because, you know, Riesling as it exists in Oregon is lovably nerdier. And I think Oregon winemakers are operating on a much smaller scale, by and large, than a lot of the winemakers in Washington. And they are obsessed with the notion of terroir, so this notion of expressing a sense of place in their wines. And that is something that Riesling does beautifully, and that is something that it does much more profoundly when you are not irrigating, as John says. And, you know, the conditions on the ground in Oregon allow them to, you know, work in the vineyard in a way that is very hands-off, in a way that is very environmentally, you know, responsible. And that's worth celebrating. And so, you know, in as much as we're talking about Riesling, we're talking about Riesling.

We're focusing on wine out West. I want to focus on the wines out West vis-a-vis Riesling that excite me the most. And those just happen to be Oregon Rieslings from producers like John. But you have the Willamette Valley here, and that is just south of Portland, centered around Salem. And Willamette is itself a tributary of the Columbia. These, you know, sets of rivers were formed originally with the uplift of the Cascades. It's like, you know, roughly, you know, 15 million years ago. Prior to that, Oregon, the entire state was ancient seabed, which is where you get a lot of the sedimentary soils that emerge in the Willamette Valley today. The oldest rock there tends to be sedimentary. And then you get all sorts of volcanic activity as the Pacific plate kind of crushes under the continental United States.

And you get lava flows. And you get all sorts of fun igneous rock. And we'll feature that for the sake of the vineyard on Basalt that we're going to taste through first here. And then, flashing forward, you get all sorts of alluvial deposits. So you get wind-borne loess, which is coming off of the mountains a million years ago to half a million years ago. And then the great Missoula flood, which deposits all sorts of sediment at the tail end of the last ice age as a massive ice dam. That previously blocked a lake in Montana, kind of variously, you know, breaks and reforms and floods the Columbia and the Willamette with, you know, massive amounts of heavy soil. And it is the case that the Willamette Valley doesn't only grow grapes.

They do, there's a lot of like hazelnuts there. There's, if you get a Christmas tree on the West Coast, it's probably from the Willamette Valley. And it is basically a hops Valhalla. But much of that growth is happening on the valley floor. The really good vineyard soils tend to be poorer soils and tend to be at elevation. And then we're going to certainly talk at length about the Willamette vis-a-vis Riesling. But we're also going to talk about these regions of Southern Oregon. And off the grid, for instance, comes from Oregon, barely, you know, almost California. And the Illinois River, which is a tributary of the Rogue River and considered part of this larger Rogue Valley region. But, you know, that's something that John will discuss further.

And it's a wildly different landscape and set of growing conditions for wine and much higher in elevation than you would find in the Willamette Valley. So we're dealing with Western distances here. You know, this is not the East Coast. This is a massive state. And it is a real polyglot in terms of the soils you're going to find there, which is delightful for the sake of Riesling. Because you can't say that there is a single soil type that Riesling, you know, really works with in isolation. Riesling can grow almost anywhere wine is made. And it, you know, takes on, you know, this wonderful set of distinct personalities on those soils. So without further ado, we're going to kick it over to you, John.

I've wasted enough breath on, you know, my poorly reported history of millions of years' worth of mountain building. Building formation and settlement patterns in Oregon. But, you know, you are the man on the ground most recently. And then I'll let you talk about the craft of Riesling as it exists in Oregon. And I wanted to ask you first and foremost, you know, having mispronounced your wife's name, I want to acknowledge that the two of you got started together and were working in Oregon wineries together. How did you get into winemaking in the first place? Yeah. So Xenia and I met in Orlando. Where I'm from. Oh, wow. Yeah. Born and raised in Winter Park, Orlando, Florida. And we met in college and started dating. And, you know, we stayed in order to stay together.

Sorry. She's from Serbia, ex-Yugoslavia. It was really bad there. And her parents pooled together some money with friends to send her to go to college here. And we, in order for her to stay, we got married. And that was, you know, like almost 20 years ago. We were just kids. But I had already fallen in love with wine when I was 20 and just was obsessed with learning as much as I could. I wasn't as much as interested in drinking it. And she was there hand in hand. We graduated University of Central Florida. She had a degree, has degrees in molecular biology and chemistry. And instead of going into genetics, I said, you know, we should put this to work and try and, you know, find a way to work and learn how to make wine.

But the dream was impossible because, I mean, we were in Central Florida. So. There's some wine in Florida. Yeah. So we, I was selling a lot of, I was working for a company that gave me a shot when I was 23, selling Louis Dresner wines, a little bit of Kermit Lynch, a lot of things that are now considered natural wine or neo-natural. And Harry Peterson-Nedry at Chehalem in the Willamette Valley gave us a chance for Xenia to work the '07 harvest. And I would fly out every weekend. There was actually a direct flight sponsored by Disney on Alaska at the time. It was $99 each way. And every Thursday night I was flying from Orlando direct to Portland and would fly back Sunday night and run my sales route. And then.

Wow. And I would go work harvest on the weekends. And then by the end of that harvest, Xenia came home. And Harry called me and said, 'Hey, do you, do you want to come be our director of sales?' And I was 26. I had no experience with national sales, but that's what I said. Only if I can work harvest and Xenia can work in the lab. And we did that for five years. And that's where we learned how to make wine. Oh, that's brilliant. And it's kind of a unique story because I feel like a lot of the, you know, love stories you find in wine revolve around wine. And, you know, yours is, you know, a love story that predates, you know, your journey into wine together.

Yeah, we, and the crazy part about, you know, when I went to work for, when we went to work for Chehalem, you know, it was just really different from the wines. We were drinking those wines, but they, the production method was very much a reflection of the generation of winemaker from the late, from the early 80s up until the late 2000s. You know, we had, it was, how do we make the wine consistent? Because lack of consistency was what defined the early years with Irie and Eraf and Sokol Blossers. And to find a consistent product was really important for distributors, right? So the Pinot Gris was, you know, it was inoculated, fed with nutrients, chaptalized, deacidified, put in stainless steel, never oak. How do we make a consistent product?

So that's kind of what we learned. We learned how to make, but I always had this Dresner, Joe Dresnerman in the back of my brain saying, 'this doesn't have to happen.' And every vintage there, we worked from 07 through to 20'10. We had challenges with Pinot Noir, Chardonnay or Gris, but no matter what Riesling, which we made a lot of at Chehalem was spectacular. Especially in 07 where everything was basically the kitchen sink was through. We were thrown at those wines to make them taste good. There were lots, there was lots of rain. It was the best Riesling vintage. It was the best white wine of the decade we made at Chehalem, was their 07 dry Riesling.

So I said, there's another story here and it really needs to be told through no winemaking, which meant starting Ovum with neutral barrels, cement eggs, native yeast, only adding sulfur. And if we have to filter, we'll do that, but nothing else. So you said: If this was Pee-wee's Playhouse, the couches will be freaking out because cement egg was the word of the, was the word of being Ovum. And, you know, I want to touch on that, but you kind of answered my next question, which is why Riesling? And, you know, it sounds like it was a very organic love affair for you as the model child in the winery. You know, you had all these problem children that, you know, were misbehaving and Riesling was, you know, the star there.

You know. For the group of producers in the Willamette in this region that, you know, by 2007 already had an identity for Pinot. I still feel like there is this cult of Riesling in the Valley and in these people that really believe in it strongly as a grape. You know, folks like yourself, certainly, you know, Brooks come to mind, you know, the guys at Teutonic come to mind. You know, there are a lot of like, you know, true believers. What do you think is special about the Valley when it comes to its Rieslings? I don't think that there's a ton of special characters about the Valley for Riesling, to be honest. I think it actually. So the whole point of Ovum was to discover where the Grand Crus are, where Riesling should grow, even in the face of monetary gains like growing Pinot Noir or now Chardonnay.

What we're finding is that Memorista comes from the Eola-Amity Hills. We've actually made this once from the Dundee Hills. And we make a Riesling from a certified organic site at the top of the Dundee Hills. That now we realize was better base wine for sparkling. Right. So we went back to that and we're making that as Von Clair because, of course, Xenia, my wife, has been the assistant winemaker at Argyle for eight years. So we have a sparkling project that we started many, many years ago. We've never released anything about we are going to release something in December. So I'm starting to talk about it. And I'll get to that in a minute. But the reason why the basaltic volcanic soils are good for Riesling is because they do the opposite to Riesling of what they do to red grapes, be it Pinot Noir or Gamay, which is pretty much all we have.

The Pinot Noir and Gamay typically have a lot more bright red fruit. Like if you think of Dundee Hills, you're going to get brown sugar, fresh cherries. Not overripe. Not stewed. Not syrup. Just fresh cherries. Things we love. And that's why those wines from Domains Green and Druin, White Rose, Stoller, they became so popular early on because they were the biggest wines of the region. And but and I don't know if you know, but I worked at Ivory for over a year. And Jason and I always talk that the Chardonnay never sold at Ivory. It's not because it was too good. It's because it was too expensive. It was so salty and austere. And I found that to be true with what we're drinking now.

A bunch of people are posting how lemony and limey and salty this Memorista is. It is because of the confluence of time, temperature, humidity, lack of cloud cover, but really that basaltic soil and how it interplays with the macro climate effects. We're getting nerdy, right? Follow me. Follow me. Because whites, no matter if it's Pinot Gris, Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc to go salty. But the whites that have the best ability to convey that salt is Chardonnay and Riesling. Riesling to me is a max because it can still retain other terroir conduits like fruit without needing barrel or winemaking to get it to the next level. So we have something like cement egg. So ovum means egg, right? Latin. The bottle isn't an egg, but the label is.

That wouldn't be a very stable bottle, the egg. Yeah. Yeah. There is an egg bottle. It's a kava producer. Yeah. John, I wanted to share quickly. I have a geological map of the valley that situates Eola Amity. And the font is small and it's a huge map. I will share it with you all later. But the different colors correspond to different soil types. And you can see Eola Amity here. And this kind of darker brown corresponds to the basalt soils that John was talking about. The darker, this is, these are the darkest brown. Those are the sediments that were deposited during the Missoula floods. And then, so as you go up in elevation, you get more of that volcanic, you know, soil here.

And Eola Amity is, you know, somewhat unique within the land for having, you know, the amount of basalt as it does. Or at least that's what I understand. So what we're discovering and I'm discovering is that, and stay on this map. So the east side of the Eola Amity is where the basalt is. And that's the only place that's planted. There is one vineyard planted on the west side, which is all marine sedimentary. Fascinating. Because you don't think you want to plant vineyards east facing. But in Willamette, more often than not, they are. So that, but the volcanics, everyone in the wine business here in Willamette thinks that the Eola Amity Hills Pinot Noir is different because of wind. The truth is, the wind typically pounds the west side and funnels through the rest of the valley and offers some freshness.

The east side doesn't get that wind. What we're finding, I'm finding. What Ksenia is finding is that it's the volcanic basaltic soils are very shallow. And what's underneath it is harder volcanic rock, but it's sloped. So when the rain hits the shallow three feet of powdery basalt, the water then goes down the water table. Whereas the Dundee Hills is flat, but super deep. So you have 40 feet of pure powdery basalt until you hit mother rock. So their wines typically are a bit juicier because they struggle less. Where, and I think more Pinot Noir here, and the wines struggle more and are thicker skinned and more concentrated from Eola Amity because of the shallowness of the soil. And the whites, on the other hand, still, whether in Dundee Hills or Eola Amity, have just mega salt.

I don't know exactly why. No one knows yet. And I'm not even a huge believer in soil. I think it's one of about seven factors that play into the wine's profile. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think, too, when people talk about soil, there's so many variables. So you talked about basaltic soils across those two sites, but soil depth is a hugely important dimension of how ultimately those grapes grow. And, you know, how the wine ultimately expresses. And, you know, the wind is something that people talk a lot about throughout the valley in general. It should be said the Eola in Eola Amity there actually comes from the Greek for the wind. And, you know, the way those soils are transported or the way, you know, the exposition of a particular slope, be it east or west, you know, makes it, you know, kind of more or less exposed to the eroding influence of that wind, you know, has this huge kind of shaping effect on the resultant wines.

In a really interesting way. But, you know, what I really love about the Oregon wine community is I get the sense that, you know, on a really, you know, deep level, on a hyper-specific level, it's something that, you know, all the winemakers there are really, you know, kind of interested in nerding out on. You know, everybody wants to, you know, go, you know, take that dive together. You don't even have to, it's like you fast forward, you know, right to the nerdiest bit of a conversation. You don't, you know, have the first. You know, what is Riesling? You know, you know, oh, Riesling's dry. It's, you know, the next level of, you know, of course Riesling's dry. You know, what is Riesling like, you know, dry Riesling like on basalt soils?

What is it like on the sedimentary soils you have here? And I think that's a really fun place to go as a wine lover. It's a very nerdy place, obviously. And it's not necessarily the conversation that you, you know, first have, you know, when you're drinking wine. But, you know, as you fall further in love with it, you know, I think they're really wonderful conversations to, you know, to start to initiate. And. And then for the sake of how you make your wine, John, I'm going to share a, you, before you were so rudely interrupted, we're talking about your eponymous egg. I have a picture of a concrete egg here because the, the kids at home all are hugely interested in the eggs. Why Obama as a name?

And then what do you like about the context, about how your wines develop in egg versus other vessels? Yeah, I think the initial, the initial attraction to the egg is a bit of novelty, you know, because, God, it's so strange. I just hear about barrels and stainless steel. And now somebody's telling me I got to learn what an egg is all about. You know, the egg, we were fascinated. So within the context of Obam, we're not trying to make wines that are a reflection of us as winemakers. We're really trying to find if Oregon as a whole can provide Riesling that is on the highest level. And the only way to do that. It's the same way the monks did it when the wine business wasn't monetized.

So we remove all factors of dollars and try to think of what the only winemaker prerogative that we can have. That's not going to change the overall conversation that the wine is having about its own terroir, which is texture. We can influence texture. And that that is something that happens in the cellar. OK, that's a process-driven experience. Experience within a wine. So I had read all about these eggs and how they enhance the texture, mainly of red wines. And I thought, damn, this seems like something that could be really useful for a grape like Riesling. And after many, many, many years of using it, we found that the egg heightens texture to its absolute max. And if the variety and the vineyard that’s providing that grape, in the case of Riesling, offers some sort of minerality, it will crank it to 11.

But as in anything with life, and definitely with wine, when you gain something to that maximum level, you lose something. And the egg steals fruit complexity. So we always use neutral barrels to to retain the vineyard’s fruit complexity while matching it up with the textural richness. Right. Of something that may feel like 13 and a half percent alcohol when it's only 12 and a half. And also retaining the vintage's components of fruit. So vineyard and vintage is incredibly important to me. And any time you take one change away from the cellar, you are taking one of those two things away. So I don't want to add or subtract anything. And do you ever work in tank or other neutral vessels? OK, yeah. So we use Austrian cask because we found that it's in the shape of an oval cask.

It's the same size - actually, it's bigger than the egg. And they will retain fruit while also maximizing texture. But you don't get the heightened minerality. So all of our wines now moving forward will have at least one cask, one egg and four barrels included. And, so you know, we - we I am using. So there's a new wine coming out. That isn't as much about the vineyards as it is Oregon as a whole kind of a macro climate wine. It's five vineyards fermented together, co-fermented native yeast in amphora, egg, cask, barrel, and seal. Wow. And I rack every basically every moon cycle. I rack the wine that I put in there. I put it in those vessels back into a tank that is half full. Right.

So it fills up with the vessels and then I wait for it to mix. And at the end of the day, it goes back into those vessels. And I did that three times. So the final wine is a tank wine that has been seasoned by amphora, cask, egg, and barrel. And oxygen. And oxygen. But guess what? And which which every winemaker said, oh, you can't do that. That's you're roughing up the wine. Riesling can handle it. Yeah. The acidity. It's one of the few whites that can just say, 'Screw you.' Do whatever you want. I'm still going to be me. Yeah. I just I love it for that. Yeah. Riesling is, you know, again, we talked about this many moons ago when we did our German Riesling class.

But it's famously high in tartaric acid. And, you know, that just gives it, you know, this durability in this this life that you wouldn't expect on something that's relatively low in alcohol. And it's not relatively; it can get high in alcohol. But, you know, for for most of the examples, we like to drink, you know, 12, 13 percent. And, you know, it is, you know, sturdy as stone. You know, it can, you know, outlive, you know, any other that you could, you know, throw throw up against that. And, you know, yet it's delicate and pretty. And, you know, so it does both. It's like that, you know, kind of iron fist in a velvet glove or whatever that analogy is. I don't know if you can see this.

This is going to be the new wine. Old love. Old love. And you know what? We're not. It is all Riesling. But because it's more of a process-driven wine, taking what Riesling to the max of what I think and what Xenia thinks, we're not putting Riesling on the label because it's it's more about the process. Just like Big Salt, our co-fermentation of Muscat, Riesling, and Gewurz. We don't put the varieties there because it's a co-fermentation. It's more of a singular wine in as much as you would say, you know, I drank Chardonnay last night. But you didn't say I drank Marsan Roussan, right? Yeah. So we're trying to we're going to there'll be a line of wines, just a handful that are like that from us.

And then there will be the torchbearers of off-the-grid memories. And I feel like it could be more about developing a house style. Yeah. People come to associate with you and then you have these other, you know, kind of pure expressions of place, which is a great segue to the off the grid here. I'm going to share the map again. And, you know, you we we spoke earlier in preparation for this class. And you were lamenting the fact that, you know, you have all these friends in the Willamette Valley and they've never been to any other part of the state to investigate the vineyards. And, you know, the Willamette, you know, is so successful as a brand that, you know, I'm sure for winemakers in other parts of Oregon, they feel like it sucks the air out of the room for them.

You know, talk about the Rogue Valley and what it has to offer. I'm going to address a question from Jason here. How should we think about aging? And what it means for Riesling versus Reds? OK, so I will note Memorista today. Right now, it's just like it's so salty and citrusy. This wine you can drink on day seven. OK. I have a friend who owns a wine shop who recently did a release of the wines and he tried them for seven days. And these are wines because they see a lot of oxygen in the cellar. They're like children who have. Who have experienced a lot before they go into the world. They're they're ready. OK. And they're self-secure. They're very much so. And I guarantee you this Memorista will drink great five days from now, if not better.

I find too a lot of these a lot of these wines, especially in their youth. You know, they can be a little nervy right out of the bottle. And, you know, sometimes, you know, if you give them a little, you know, time to take in a little air, you know, they get a little, you know, a little softer and a little more expressive in and of their own right. But recently really is it is the original and the greatest. Oh, fuck. I forgot half a bottle of this in the fridge wine. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's the greatest grape. That's why, you know, it can be the greatest sweet wine you ever had. It can be the greatest dry wine you ever had. The problem is, you know, in the last 50 years, stylistically, the U.S.

and really just Europe as a whole drank a lot of sweet. We drank sweet and the Germans did it best. And that's what was pushed down our throats. Thankfully, on my part, but unfortunately. Now we live in a time where the greatest grape being Riesling is a value play. Yeah. Riesling is discounted. Yeah. Straight up. But it makes it makes it harder for people in your position. So, well, it's easier to some extent because you can pay less. What would a Riesling, you know, Riesling cost? What, a quarter of what Pinot costs? You know, half. Oh, half. OK. Now, it depends on the vineyard. Some of the stuff, it's the same price for me. We do not give a fuck. Excuse me. I will pay whatever if it's the right vineyard.

Yeah. And if they grow it, if they say, 'Hey, we're not growing organically because it costs too much.' How much do you want? Yeah. People people should understand, too, we're putting the cart before the horse a little bit. But, you know, I think most people assume that if you make wine, you own all the vineyards, you have a beautiful Chateau, etc. You know, is that how you operate, John? No. So, I we did buy believe it or not, I bought 40 acres on the west facing side of the Eola Amity Hills, because I do believe in the next 50 years, which is the context in which you have to think about grapes growing, that it will be one of the more pioneering areas to grow in Oregon unless we forget we only have 50 years of history.

Today. And we assume that the monoculture of growing Pinot Noir is the way forward. It paved the way. The true way forward is diversity. OK, so I have to drop some knowledge. All right. This map doesn't do it. I appreciate the wine folly people. But maps have a gigantic flaw when it comes to wine. They just show you where something is and they don't tell you a story. They don't tell you what happened or why that place is a good place to grow the grapes. It's just, oh, look, there's Salem, there's Portland, there's Columbia Valley. So I have a map that I'm working on that's a collection of terroir data points. Soil is a given. So I'm not putting that on the map because we can look that up.

I'm taking into account temperature, clouds, cloud cover. This is all during the growing season. OK, not the full year, but only the time that really matters. Temperature, clouds, rainfall, solar energy, humidity. And degree days. So when we look at the Eola Amity Hills during its growing season, which starts now through about October, the average daily high is 83 degrees. The cloud cover during this time has 83 percent clear skies in the growing season. We have 43 inches of rainfall, but not in the growing season. We only have zero point three inches in the growing season. Two thousand two hundred and seventy three degree days. Seven point four kilowatt hours. Zero percent humidity. So I correlated all this data throughout the rest of the world to try and find the what I call a terroir cohort.

Who is most similar to all of this data? And guess what? It ain't Burgundy because Burgundy. I'm looking at my map here. So you're looking at you guys. You want to come today. This is like the Danny DeVito Arnold Schwarzenegger cousin kind of. You're looking for the Burgundy brother from another mother. So right. Exactly. So bone instead of bones. Bone, the heart of Burgundy, right, is we again. Eola's 83 degrees is the average daily high, bone is 71. We have 85 percent clear cloud, clear cloud cover in Eola. Bone has 66, meaning they basically have 20 percent more humidity. We have zero. They have 20 percent. Zero humidity there in the height of summer. For sure. Oh, yes. All right. So, OK, the cloud cover.

David Adelsheim, one of the founders of Willamette, told me in 2008 the biggest difference between Burgundy and Willamette was cloud cover. And here I am, like 12 years later, realizing how true it is, because the kilowatt hours of sun, which sounds super fancy because it kind of is, is is really what we're talking about. So we get seven point four kilowatt hours. So if you had solar panels, right, this is the energy you're collecting. Bone only has seven point one. And it should be said that grapes are like the original solar panels. No doubt. They are conduits of the sun. Right. And they have 20 percent more humidity, and they have one hundred and twenty more degree days, meaning the season is actually longer in bone.

But they're at a lower temperature, which when you are at seventy-one degrees versus eighty-five, the vine produces at seventy-one degrees average daily high. The vine produces actually a lot of leaf growth. When you're at eighty-five degrees, you tend to produce a lot more energy in the fruit, less in the leaf. So that's why our fruit is a little bit more higher concentrated in sugars. And when we get the sugar, so essentially we have a bit more sun here and all of that. The terroir cohort correlates. Drum roll. Yeah. Eola Amity Hills to Northern Bierzo. The heart of Goldea and a little bit of Mencia. And as you may know, you know, I spent, I've been, I co-own a Spanish and Portuguese import company. Not many people know that.

And I've been to Spain nine times. And if you go to northwestern Spain, because they don't have any water, they don't have any rainfall in the summer. It is so much more similar to every growing region in Willamette. If I'm in Eugene, which is a banana belt, believe it or not, the terroir cohort at a ninety-five percent correlation is La Rioja, La Alta, high elevation Rioja. So your frame of expression should be less French and more Spanish is ultimately. Yeah, in the end, it's not too suggest that Pinot Noir can't grow, because I've actually had Pinot Noir from Bierzo from Raul Perez, who I've known since 2013. Yeah. No, he grows Gewurztraminer too, because my parents plant these long time ago. I can't change it now.

He says, 'I'm going to make it here.' You can try. He's like, 'Gero', Gewurztraminer, very good. Mine is terrible. It's shit, but I have to make it. And it is crap. But his Pinot is really good and it's really similar to Dundee Hills. But. And what I'm suggesting is that diversity wins. Oregon can do all of this because we have tons of sun. We have water holding capacity in the vines. It's phenomenal. Whether you're in southern Oregon, which I'm going to get to in a second, or in Willamette. Right. They get half the rainfall in Bierzo or Rioja, but their soils are heavier clay and they hold more water. So the water uptake is about 20 inches for both Willamette and Rioja.

So we have a lot of land, but if you lose all of the water, then you're fucked. John, you have now two daughters. Congratulations. You have a thriving wine business with obviously a growing number of SKUs. For those unfamiliar, you have an amazing wine bar in the heart of Portland called Le Cave. And I now understand that you also operate a Spanish import business. And you're working on a comprehensive, like multi, you know, kind of variable-driven, you know, mapping project. When do you sleep? Yeah. So this is going to come out. I have no off switch for sure. And this is going to come out in the fall and it will, it's, I didn't mean for it to be groundbreaking, but it will force us to look at map, wine maps in a different way because it's going to be beyond just, hey, oh, that's where Ampouy and Côte Rôtie is.

Cool. Why? By the way, I reversed the terroir cohort correlation for Ampouy and it has a 95% correlation to Portland, Oregon, which everyone thinks is too humid to grow here. But ha ha, ha ha. It's more similar to Côte Rôtie and we can probably grow great Syrah here. And I know it because a friend of mine. There are a few people starting to work with Syrah in Oregon. Oh, guys. Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, I have the numbers for Ton L'Hermitage in front of me and they're, they're almost identical to Portland, Oregon's number. So I won't go there. So we're in Southern Oregon, right? I went in there, 2011, a winemaker that we're working with at Chehalem. He's like, 'I make, you know, if you really want to make great Riesling, you've got to go down.' Oh man, I'm getting a little tired.

And you do voices. You do voices too. Yeah. You know, you got to go down to Southern Oregon and check it out. You know, it's like a bad Harry Styles impersonation or something. So we go down there and it looks like Northern Italy and not, not the Rogue Valley, which is what it is called. They only call it the Rogue Valley. All right. So it's really the Illinois Valley. But the growers there of which there's only like six said, well, no one's going to buy into this Illinois Valley thing. Let's just call ourselves Rogue. And we're allowed to because the Illinois River spits into the Rogue River. Okay. So, the Rogue, right? Let me look at my map information, right? So the Rogue Valley, which is based out of Medford, its average temperature is 84 degrees.

The average temperature in the off-the-grid off-the-grid vineyard is 78. The degree days and off-the-grid are 26,000. And the degree days in the Rogue are 3,100. So there's 500 more degrees, which is effectively 20 more growing days to ripen fruit. You can't ripen Riesling at 3,100 degree days, but you can at 26,000. By the way, all of this data is collected. My dataset is from 1980 to 2016. So it's deep. And the cohort of Cave Junction is Ponferrada, Spain. Another Spanish spot. And that's the heart of Bierzo. So technically, this Riesling is growing in that place. But the reason why it's so similar to Bierzo is actually because of the elevation. We're at 15,000 feet. It's basically the highest growing region of anywhere in Oregon. Nobody knows about this place.

The soils here are serpentine, which are way older than the marine sediment, right? Than anything in Willamette. This is the mantle of the earth being pushed out from a tectonic event. It creates a hillside that's eroded with fresh water. So rainwater hits something that was saltwater created. And then it's a metamorphic rock. It cracks off the hillside, tumbles into the valley. Now this valley is filled with sediment. I love it. I'm loving it. So down there in Cave Junction. And you've got to go to the right. Move the cursor to the. No. More into that valley area of Cave Junction. One inch to the right of Cave Junction. Just one inch. So we are in former gold mining territory. And that's why this place was planted.

The first place in Oregon in the 1860s by Swiss and German immigrants who were hunting for gold. And they brought Riesling with them. Yes, crazy. And other Swiss varieties. Okay. They plant it. They make these fabulous wines. In 1904. A guy writes a book for the World's Fair that says Oregon wines from that area are as good as anything from Germany. He says it in a much more interesting way. Sounds out, hello! So, guys, I mean, this is an exceptional place to grow Gewürztraminer and Riesling. It creates very powerful wine with screaming acidity. This wine, because of botrytis, right, has like 13 and a half percent alcohol. But the bones of it; if it didn't have botrytis, it would have been like 12 and a half. That's always been important.

So, for those of you playing along at home, this is even a lovably nerdy lesson. But botrytis is noble rot. So, it is essentially, you know, a benevolent form of black rot, which is just, you know, the, you know, mold that spoils grapes that we know and love. But essentially forces the grapes themselves to kind of retreat within themselves. And the grapes wither on the vine. And you get this amazing concentration of, you know, kind of dynamic flavors in the berries. And higher alcohol because the sugar content in those shriveled bunches is so much higher. And it is more prominent in dessert wine traditionally than in dry wine. But, you know, there are a lot of winemakers who like what it brings to their dry wines.

How much botrytis fruit goes in the mix here, Don? You know, whatever the vintage gives us. Okay. So, in 2018, there was about, I'd say around just less than 20%. And what it gives wine recently when it's dry is something very intangible for most, but it's dry extract. You and I have talked about this. Yeah. So, this wine has gobs of it. And it's that grip on the palate that really no other white, really no other variety can have this much acid and that much grip. And a wine like this. Tremendous amount of like astringency on the front end. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it reads sweet because the glycerol, part of the alcohol, feels sweet. But it's actually under 10 grams of sugar. And it has almost 8 grams of acid.

So, these are just crazy numbers. Yeah. So, you know, the serpentine, this was also a creek bed. So, just less than 50 years ago, they moved the water running through this vineyard. So, it wasn't a vineyard yet. It's called Sucker Creek. And they diverted the water for salmon spawning. A salmon ladder was built. And some industrious dude came along, found it. It was, you know, it was like government land. He planted marijuana, but in lesser enlightened times than today. As he does. It was not legal. Yeah. So, you know, DEA, somebody finds out. So, you know, this is crazy Southern Oregon. You know, DEA like comes down on the helicopter, busts this dude. Machine gun style. Guy disappears into like Southeast Asia. There's a whole other story.

And the government auctions this land off to the local grape grower. And he looks at the soil. And he's just like, okay, this is a river bed. Literally was just there like 15 years ago. What can grow here? I'm going to plant Riesling because I know it will do better than anything. So, this is planted in what looks like gallets from Chef and it's a pot. No, that's wild. Studded with studded with serpentine. This blue-green rock. It looks like Jade, like fake Jade. And then deposits from an old gold mine. Wow. Just packed full of diversity that the serpentine is very important by the way, because it causes mineral uptake deficiencies in the vine. Yeah. So, yeah, most famous, most famously in Beaujolais, it should be said. Yeah.

And it particularly likes potassium uptake. And so, you basically, it retards the growth of the vines, but you get, you know, tremendous concentration out of the fruit. Yeah. And the deposits of serpentine are far greater here. They're the largest in the world. This part of Oregon and it's the mother rock of California. So, all of the West Coast, when you get just 20 miles off the coast and you have mountains, that's where serpentine is located. I was in the Loire a year ago. And they said, oh, here's the most serpentine in the world. It's right here. And I was like, no way, dude. That's not even real serpentine. The serpentine has to crack off of a mountain and be in chunks.

And in this case at Off the Grid, you know, Riesling will produce five tons to the acre in the Willamette Valley. Of course, we green harvest there. But in Off the Grid site, we don't do any green harvesting, get about two tons to the acre naturally. They act like hundred-year-old vines because of the serpentine. I feel like there are winemakers on chats like this all around the world bragging about their serpentine right now, though. So, I feel like, I don't know. I feel like everyone says they have the most serpentine. No way. I've been there. I can say it. It's not even mine, you know. Sarah Thompson, we've been neglecting you, girl. And you should. John has been doing his, like, remarkable work monitoring the chat himself. I'm just drinking wine now.

I'm so sorry. What do you have for us? We've addressed the cement egg question. We haven't said climate change. The couches are freaking out again. But we addressed that for the sake of the west-facing sites and the 50-year timeframe. Food pairings, did we not get to? Or what's the? People also want to talk about elevation in addition to the soil. Yeah. And then kind of lean in a little bit more on the off the grid. Do you pick the grapes in two separate passes? That's a really good question. Okay. So, I shared. Sorry, John. I shared that image of the betritized fruit that you guys saw. And very often too, you know, select, you know, clusters of grapes at the optimal ripeness, winemakers will make multiple passes through the vineyard, most famously in places like Lavaca.

So, they go through the vineyard like, you know. You know, three, four, five, six, you know, up to a dozen different times to pluck those grapes at the optimal moment. I'll kick it, John. Oh. I'm texting you. Bill, I'm texting you a photo of some botricized fruit. Oh, cool. Fully botricized cluster. If you can pop it up, it's great. If not. So, you know, elevation is super interesting because in Willamette, we really don't have. It's not about the elevation because we're at 250 to 900 degrees. When I came here, everyone thought if you plant it at 900 degrees, there's no way you're getting anything ripe and that's just BS. You know, climate change may have a little bit to do with it, but we're just seeing more violent swings of weather.

But overall, we, you know, I don't think a lot, a lot of, I was having an argument with a winemaker about this last night who said, oh, the vintages have been hotter than ever. And, you know, yeah, they've been a bit warmer on average, but we've also had some wicked cool vintages too. So they're just, they're outliers, right? There's no, doesn't seem to be a lot of mean or median vintages. But, you know, my Riesling doesn't seem to give a fuck, you know? It's so weird. It really affects, you know, it's like honey badger don't care. Riesling don't care. Riesling keeps producing like whether it's 13 and a half percent, this is a balanced wine. I don't care to make 11 and a half percent wine. We have no dogma.

We make what the vintage and the vineyards give us. And for us, we've been so pleased. There's never been a bad year for us because Riesling, yes, it's hyper versatile, but it's meant to grow in these places. And whether it's that 1,500 feet in elevation or Memorista's 480 feet, they just produce different pieces of a story. So, and you asked, so the elevation, climate change. Your passes through the vineyard on the off the grid. Ah, so super important question. I'm in this real struggle internally about passes. I don't do them because I believe you get one chance to make the greatest wine. And doing multiple passes is often related either towards making multiple wines for commercial reasons or you're scared that, there we go. That that is going to happen.

This is botrytized fruit kids. Look at that. You see all those green grapes underneath? This entire cluster is being concentrated by a little yeast, basically a little mold reducing the water. You still get all your juicy sugars. You have all your acidity. You have less water. So that cluster would, if we fermented it on its own, would generate a wine of like 16% alcohol. It wouldn't ferment fully dry. Yeah. It probably wouldn’t. Yeah. Definitely native yeast like us, we're not adding anything. So, but I like to soak, I de-stem that and I soak those raisinated berries with the green ones. The green don’t have, that’s, the green fruit is perfectly ripe, by the way. That’s like 22 Brix, very high for Riesling. And I soak, I try to rehydrate those berries so I can access the flavor.

But if you smell botrytis on the nose, to me, it's a little too obvious. In as much as reduction or Brett is obvious. I like those things in small doses. But this is Botrytis. Now, I believe if you have a chance to make a GG wine or a Smaragd Riesling from the Bacau, the pinnacle dry wine, why would you make anything less? And I have this conversation, an argument with Clemens Busch, you know, one of the pinnacle people, winemakers. And he's like, you know, of course we have to make the Spätlese and the Cabernet because this is what people come in, they expect from us in our tasting room and, of course, some places around the world. And yeah, so maybe we could make all GG, but then we would have too much $60 wine that no one would buy.

It's like, yeah, but you agree GG is the top class of wine that you can make. Why would you make anything less? That's why I don't make multiple passes. I've done it in the past. And the final wine is always the greatest wine. So I'm going to push it to the max every year. It's interesting too, there are a lot of back to the future winemakers in Germany doing more of that, you know, and certainly people like, you know, the Merkelbach brothers and, you know, they never stopped. Love Merkelbach. Yeah, they never stopped doing that. So, you know, the notion of, you know, and, you know, even someone like Johannes Selbach, he's making a whole series of single vineyard wines that are harvested en masse, you know, like that, as opposed to, you know, with the aid of those multiple passes.

And, you know, I think for a lot of, a lot of winemakers, they are starting to see that more as a stylistic choice than as a, you know, true representation of a wine, you know, in the vineyard. And I think it's not unlike your use of vessels. You know, you start to think about, you know, wine as chorus. You want different voices. You know, you don't want only, you know. Don't start me on the music. Don't get me going. Well, we've had this conversation before, but you don't want, you don't want a single vessel. You know, you don't want only neutral oak. You don't want only cement egg. You don't want only, you know, you want those, you know, different, you know, kind of convergences happening, you know, for the sake of the drinker in the wine.

Yeah, mate. You know, in the Aussie world, they make dry racing and it just smells all reductive. You gotta, you gotta have multiple sounds, right? Yeah. I'm just pleasing the group chat. So my, my thought is, yeah, we use eggs, right? So an egg to me is all base. We use the top note, the top note being the fruit complexity. We capture the top notes, the ultimate top notes in stainless steel, but I just can't do it. I think it lacks soul, right? It's all treble. It's like the auto-tune of a. Yeah, perfect. Perfect. And a barrel, a regular 228 liter neutral barrel will capture enough fruit complexity, but it doesn't have the depth, the mids, right? The mid tones that a cask can give.

So we use casks to blend it out, just like a music producer. We need those three levels to have a complete sound. And in our case, a complete view of terroir from vineyard and vintage, right? So every year, if you're going to fall in love with our wines or get excited about them, when you try them, it has nothing to do with us as wine makers, except textural complexity. And we're trying to capture the vineyard and the vintage, no matter what. And that may mean the wine's not as good because the vintage wasn't as good. Sorry. But we also don't charge a ton for the wines for all the effort that goes into it, right? So we want people to, if you were in, you know, Austria and you go into the tasting room, the most expensive wine is like 25 euros.

It's the same for us, except when those Austrian wines get here, as you know, after the tariffs, thank, you know, God forbid, right? Those wines become so expensive. Yeah. I just wanted to briefly touch on the other two wines we have in the mix here because, you know, they're both really good. Really fun, you know, expressions of, you know, place. And, you know, working in kind of different styles as well. So, you know, Libertine would be kind of, you know, a little closer to the wine that you were making. Although this is, since we're addressing that botrytis question, this has pushed that to that, you know, even further extreme where I think the botrytis on this wine is really obvious. You know, so it's something that you get on the nose.

This is a 2016, and I know that, John, this is coming from a site in Lavelle Vineyard in the Willamette that you've worked with yourself also in the committee. Yeah. It's south of that, actually. But it is on basaltic soil, so it's very similar. Yeah. And, you know, there's an opulence to this wine. And I think, you know, something that you touched on for the sake of your wine that, you know, has off the grid that has a touch of that botrytis fruit is the texture. It gives you this real greasy oiliness on the palate. And, you know, if you push that far enough, you know, if you end up in like the Zindenberg place, then, you know, you get something that's just like crazy and almost like this, you know, wild, you know, pastry shop confection of a wine.

And in a way that can be like off-putting, but, you know, in a way that, you know, can be fun in the way that like Rococo or like Baroque things are fun when they're hugely opulent and kind of wild. And I think, you know, Libertine does that for the sake of the bulk of their wines. And, you know, they really, you know, kind of push the envelope stylistically. And that's Alex and Veronica Neely, so that's another husband and wife team. Alex is a Reed college grad and a philosopher in his own right, which feels consistent with like the whole liberal arts, you know, M.O. at Reed. And then Brooks, I feel like no tasting of, you know, Oregon Riesling is complete, you know, without Brooks Riesling. They make over 20 different individual Rieslings.

Jimmy Brooks is a, until his death, his premature passing in 2004 was a real pioneer for the sake of biodynamic principles and for the sake of Riesling as the, you know, kind of showpiece white grape in Oregon. He was someone that, you know, really, you know, wanted to push Riesling alongside Pinot Noir. And fortunately, his sister, his son, Chris Williams, first and foremost, his former friend in the cellar who now makes the wines there, have really pushed that further, but could not be made in a more different style. So, you know, this is, you know, in the context of our tasting, kind of like a control because, you know, much more representative of modern winemaking, you know, in stainless steel, no skin contact to speak of, which is a variable that we haven't talked about quite as much, but, you know, defines the other three wines we have in the mix and is something that- inoculated.

It is, yeah. So, also inoculated. I'm not hating on it. No, no, no. I'm just saying that's more about the winemaker and less about the vineyard. Yeah, yeah. And also a blend of multiple sites. Absolutely. Yeah. But a really delicious wine, you know, nonetheless. And I really like where they land, you know, for the sake of that balance between fruit and acid and dryness on this wine. You know, some things that, you know, are really worth addressing there. So, we've spoken about skin contact on these wines. And that's not to say they're orange wines, you know. That's to say that, you know, leaving the skins in contact with the juice during winemaking is a hugely important variable. You know, for the sake of aromatic whites across the board.

And I think it's something that people don't talk about enough and understand fully enough. And then- If I may, if I may, you know, skin contact is important for humanity. Sorry. Yeah. None of us would be here without a little skin contact. It should be safe to say. I mean, this is for the chat. So, no. Skin contact is fascinating in whites because what it does is- It releases potassium. And potassium is a natural buffer of pH. So, it effectively deacidifies the wine. You do not want that if you're making- You don't want that if you're making Chardonnay. You don't want that if you're making Viognier, Marsan. Basicially, any grape other than Riesling to some degree. That's- There are skin contact producers that would argue with me about that all day.

But Riesling, again, it's like honey badger. It doesn't care. Because- It's a way to build texture with using something that the vineyard gave you. Right? The skins are there. So, that's something we do in almost every vintage, unless there's a lot of atritus. In which case, I will press off the whole clusters, take the juice, and use the juice to soak the Barrique clusters. And the reason there is that when you're doing native fermentation, the mold has a lot of microbiomes that will try and out-compete the native yeast. Right? So, you want to give the native yeast the best chance they have. That's why we don't add any sulfur to the juice either. It's just raw. We don't add any sulfur for the first six months of the wine.

But you do sulfur a bit at bottling, do you not? I have a method where I like to- I don't care. We're not- I'm not going to tell you. So, I add- We add sulfur. We have kind of our own thing where we start adding chunks of it. When we feel like the wine is kind of done. We start adding, you know, 10 parts per million, and then 10 parts per million, and then 20 parts, and then often that's it. But we give the wine time to metabolize it rather than one bomb, which just shuts the wine down. It's like the drip irrigation system, vis-Ã-vis sulfur additions. Oh boy. Yeah. And I will say about, you know, I'm kind of a stickler about irrigation.

If you want to find the terroir of a place, you can. You cannot do it, in my opinion, if you're irrigating. Because guess what? Grapes love the sun. They love it when it's dry. And you can pretty much grow a grape anywhere with those factors, especially if you can take water from somewhere else and feed it. Okay? If you want terroir, it has to come from dry farm, non-irrigated place. So, Washington makes it real tough because it's basically a desert. Yeah. It was funny. Like, you know, they make a lot of Riesling in Washington, and there are a lot of lovely people working there. And, you know, I had a chance to meet some of them at the Riesling event that, you know, I worked on last year.

And one of my fun moments was, of course, being the Finger Lakes, it was really rainy. And one of the Washington winemakers came out there, didn't own a raincoat. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, why would you in Washington? It never rains. Yeah. And again, like for me, you know water is such an important ingredient when it comes to expression of place in wine to treat that as a variable that you are going to control yourself. It feels like it erodes any notion of typicity of place. Well and somebody's mentioning like I'm down for a Finger Lakes class because Bill and I were in the Finger Lakes a year ago having an amazing time in the rain And what do they have to do They have to find ways to divert the water because they get too much Yeah Oregon guys preaching here we don't have to divert anything I remember chatting with all those winemakers going and leaving and thinking man I got it good It's so easy.

We don't even have the disease pressures that they have in Europe. Odium, tons of powdery mildew. It's like this place was meant to grow Vetus vinifera and other amazing fruits. I got a cherry tree right here. You also have, you've had idyllic butterflies floating around and the blue sky came out behind you as if you, so you are, you're truly rubbing it in. I have this crazy succulent in bloom right now. It's really beautiful. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Really. Yeah. But I think you're preaching to the converted. Hopefully, you know, we will, we will live in a world at some point soon where, you know, any, any of you that have, you know, gotten attached to these wines and want to visit Oregon to taste Riesling.

And I'm sure that if you wander into any tasting room in Oregon and say you're there for the Rieslings, they will like freak out. They'll be like so excited. It's like, you know, again, it's just like. It's like every other, it's like, you know, where's your Pinot? Where's your Pinot? If you go for the Riesling, you will be celebrated as a conquering hero. So word to the wise, you know, and, and which, which, so Sarah Thompson, we're going to get back to you and let you run the last of this. But I do want to deliver a customary toast. John, I'm sure people have all sorts of questions for you still, but we always close it out with, with a toast. And, and I want to, you know, toast Sarah Thompson, love you.

You have been such an important part of the work that we have done at both of our restaurants and such an important part of this, you know, virtual tasting process. And, you know, again, this is, this is not the end, only the beginning. But, you know, for the sake of Riesling in, in, in Oregon, I just want to celebrate seeking out the underdog, you know, in wine as in life, you know, I think. Seeking out the, the underrepresented. Seeking out the underrepresented makes everyone's life richer. And so cheers to that. As always, celebrate alone, together. Cheers, guys. John McNeill, Next time we'll try our sparkly wine. John McNeill, Yeah, I know. I'm gonna let you run the class next time, John. John McNeill, Oh, man. Sarah Thompson, Yeah, there's a position opening up.

John, do you want it? John McNeill, Yeah, I got a night free. John McNeill, I got a night free. John McNeill, I got like eight hours in the night. I'm not doing anything. Sarah Thompson, Sunday afternoons. Sarah Thompson, Bill and John. John McNeill, The best business in the world. Sarah Thompson, It's amazing. John McNeill, The best people. Sarah Thompson, Ellen was wondering if Willamette is so similar to Rioja. Where's the Tempranillo? John McNeill, There are people that are growing. John McNeill, A little bit. Yeah, yeah. John McNeill, The guys at a lot of John McNeill, Better yet, my partner in the bar at La Cause, he has his own brand. John McNeill, Golden Cluster. You guys need to go to goldencluster.com. He made an Albarino. He uses the Albarino, the Portuguese pronunciation.

John McNeill, Oh, the Portuguese. Yeah, yeah. John McNeill, There is a couple small vineyards with Albarino. And now I've been to Spain in that area nine times and I've drunk the best of the best. John McNeill, And it was as good as the best Raul Perez wines I've ever had. Those are all, you know, $50 bottlings, as you say, Bill. John McNeill, And we are. John McNeill, David Shilk's name is a bottling. Yeah, so that wine is called Albas. He sold out of the 18th and 19th coming soon. If you want to know how good we can be next to Spain here in Willamette, that's a start. Golden Cluster. John McNeill, There, and he makes Syrah from Willamette too. Mind blowing. Another producer, Twill. Twill Cellars is making the best domestic Syrah.

It tastes so much like Saint-Joseph. John McNeill, That's a start. John McNeill, That it blows your mind and it's like $25. John McNeill, Insane. David Shilk, Is there any Minthea yet or? John McNeill, Yes. So Minthea is being grown in Mosier. So that's about 65 minutes east from here, but we get very dry there. So Minthea should be grown in the Willamette, but the best we've got now is my friend Chad Stock. He's growing Goldeo in Eola Amity Hills. John McNeill, That's a couple of years out. David Shilk, Oh, wow. John McNeill, Yeah. David Shilk, What other grapes? David Shilk, Would you like to see that you don't currently see, you know, in the valley? John McNeill, Yeah, I would love to see more Golden, Minthea, Alvarino, Cayino, Luero Tinto, maybe some of the Vinho Verde varieties would do really well.

David Shilk, Fun to say too. John McNeill, Yeah. David Shilk, The Bruncellao, Soussomme, like you got to go with that. John McNeill, Yeah, I think, you know, unfortunately, we're trying to use France as a cohort. John McNeill, Yeah. David Shilk, And it's not unfortunate because we'll grow great French grapes too. We have that heat, we have the dryness, but it's the diverse, the runway of our plane from taking off is so great. And I think in our lifetimes, we will find that Oregon may have the most diverse macro climate for all Vetus vinifera varieties in the world. John McNeill, And the Serpentine for it. David Shilk, Serpentine, baby. I want to wear a Serpentine chain around my neck, but my neck is a Serpentine. John McNeill, It would have to be gaudy.

It would have to be like a gaudy chain. John McNeill, Like, yeah, yeah. David Shilk, I got my Serpentine right above my Pinot. So, what's, oh, what else? John McNeill, You know, there are 121 participants on here, and I think we all want to know if you need harvest interns. David Shilk, Right, right. David Shilk, Right. Well, what's crazy is this year will be the first time where Ksenia gets to work harvest with me. David Shilk, Instead of at Argyle. So I have her extra set of hands and David Shilk, So not yet, not yet, but we'll be looking for people soon. It is a lot of fun. Although, you know, oh, one thing I didn't mention that's really critical is that when we think about white wine and its production, not a lot happens during our harvest.

You know, we bring in the fruit, we de-stem it, we crush it, we soak it on the skin, and then by gravity, it goes into our underground cellar. David Shilk, So that's a little bit of a roller coaster. David Shilk, Which sounds all cool, but harvest is really cool when you're doing red wine because you're you're making wine, right? When you harvest red grapes in two weeks, yeah, you're punching down, you're stomping as Bill's making some sort of hand gesture that I believe is a punch down. John McNeill, That was PKI. David Shilk, I don't know if everyone else can see it. John McNeill, It's not skin contact, no. David Shilk, It's impressive. David Shilk, So, you know, you're making wine in two weeks. Right?

David Shilk, Red wine, all the sugars convert to alcohol and the wine is made. Now you're going to want to age it and let it go through malolactic, whereas our wines are still fermenting, primary fermentation is still happening right now. David Shilk, Okay, so we're eight months later. Off the grid is not done in our cellar and we're doing our first run of bottling at the end of this month. John McNeill, Do they ever go through malolactic? David Shilk, So, yeah, rarely. David Shilk, We've actually inoculated a couple barrels. David Shilk, Just to see if we can try. David Shilk, They still haven't gone through malolactic, even with inoculation. David Shilk, Yeah, we're too cold of a cellar.

David Shilk, Sometimes they go through malolactic, and when they do, Riesling, as it ferments to dryness, when you have a little sugar, it's very floral and has a lot of fruit. David Shilk, When you hit the bone dry, it's just all mineral, and then when it goes through malolactic, it goes tropical. David Shilk, So, occasionally, every vintage, a couple barrels will go through malolactic, and it's my favorite one. David Shilk, Oh, really? David Shilk, No diacetyl, no butteriness. David Shilk, Oh. David Shilk, It shows itself as guava. David Shilk, So, when you have guava. David Shilk, Mm-hmm. David Shilk, Do you ever think about bottling that as just like a one-off barrel, like, like, best of spouse kind of thing? David Shilk, Yeah, yeah, we've talked about it, but then it would be stealing that barrel away from the final blend.

David Shilk, Yeah. David Shilk, And, and that would be a very process-driven wine, because it's what happens in the cellar versus the vineyard. David Shilk, So, yeah. David Shilk, We talk about it, though. David Shilk, All the big questions. David Shilk, Yeah. David Shilk, So, malolactic is a conversion of malic acidity to lactic, and it's just like it sounds, especially in grapes that don't have the character of Riesling, like Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, or Pinot Blanc. David Shilk, They typically show a lot more diacetyl, or diacetyl, which is an aroma of butter. David Shilk, So, when you smell buttery Chardonnay, it's because of that full malolactic, oftentimes in 100% new oak, which helps retain the butter. David Shilk, And people, people, a lot of people love it. David Shilk, Yeah. David Shilk, Yeah.

David Shilk, I don't, I enjoy it sometimes. David Shilk, It's, you know, it's a novelty for me. David Shilk, Yeah. David Shilk, And it's different types of acids. David Shilk, So, you think about the difference between biting into a green apple versus the difference between eating yogurt. David Shilk, And that's the, that's the core truth of it. David Shilk, Totally. David Shilk, Thompson, come on. David Shilk, Keep eating this. David Shilk, What else you got? Thompson, I got nothing. Thompson, John's been on top of the chat. Thompson, He's, he's killing it. David Shilk, He's monitoring. Thompson, What's Ksenia's role at Ovum? Thompson, So, she's my wife. Thompson, So, we, all right. David Shilk, She still works at, she's still working at Argyle, right?

Thompson, Well, she's on, you know, we had a new, another daughter, David Shilk, Not the top. Thompson, Three months ago, Ella, Ella Jane. Thompson, And so, she's on maternity leave and we're not, I don't think she's going to go back, but that has to stay in this chat room. Thompson, And so, Thompson, What is her role? Thompson, You know, Ksenia is half of Ovum. Thompson, We make the wines together. Thompson, If I, to correlate it to music, you know, I kind of write the songs and she's the engineer, you know, and they don't get made without her, right? Thompson, I come up with a lot of ideas and she is a bit of the architect of putting it together. Thompson, And she has that level of exactitude that I lack.

Thompson, That precision. Thompson, And she's the scientist to your artist. Thompson, Yeah, and she appreciates the artistry and I love the science behind it, if you can't tell, but she's better at it than me. Thompson, So at one time we thought we might not do it together, but we both agreed they just wouldn't be at the level they are without the female versus male perspective. Thompson, It's not versus, it's the combined. Thompson, Because she sees things in the wine that I don't and vice versa. Thompson, So two people together. Thompson, We make the wines together. Thompson, I know it sounds crazy because you think there can only be one chef in the kitchen. Thompson, In our case, it's just not true. Thompson, So she'll, you know, yeah. Thompson, Yeah, I mean, some.

Thompson, Yeah. Thompson, And I love creating something with others. Thompson, I did not like it in the beginning. Thompson, I wanted it to be all about me. Thompson, But as we discovered how special all these vineyards were, we never knew the wines would turn out the way they are. Thompson, I mean, they're very, you know, Smara GG and level. Thompson, And I told you about my blind tasting bill. Thompson, I did a week ago with wine industry folks that had no idea that which one was the ovum wine. Thompson, We've replaced your regular, you know, Alsatian Grand Cru with Oregon, you know, Riesling. Thompson, Yeah, yeah. Thompson, And it's, it's just a fact. Thompson, If you blind taste them. Thompson, It's very hard to know. Thompson, I remember at the Finger Lakes excursion.

Thompson, Johanna Selbach tried the off the grids. Thompson, And he's like, this is GG. Thompson, I've never had the, you know, I can't do it. Thompson, I only care about Pinot Noir in the Oregon. Thompson, How do I not know about this Riesling? Thompson, Yeah. Thompson, And that's because we're not busy chasing a style. Thompson, You know, we're just making what we're given. Thompson, But I will say the sparkling project is not about vineyard and vintage. Thompson, It is very much about Zinnia and the eight years of Thompson, Things she learned at Argyle and what we've learned at Ovum. Thompson, They're made of old vine Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, old school Champagne. Thompson, Allowable, allowable in Champagne, it should be said. Thompson, Right. Thompson, And Riesling because it has all the DNA for Champagne, right?

Thompson, Super high acid, really minerally. Thompson, And we're using vessels like Amphora to do a native ferment and then aging in barrels for very long periods of time. Thompson, And then tiraging each bottling at different pressures that relate to the final wine. Thompson, Oh, that's cool. Thompson, We have a, for those of you playing along at home. Thompson, We actually have a Georgian Method Traditionnelle Rose available in your online Tail Up Coat marketplace that is aged in traditional Georgian vessels with additional Elevage in oak and then made in the Method Traditionnelle. Thompson, So, that is an extremely niche market, but a growing one. Thompson, Well, I will tell you, we don't; I'm not using Amphora to make it smell like Amphora in as much as we don't use a new oak barrel to make it smell like new oak.

Thompson, We use Amphora to rapidly age the base wine. Thompson, Because I want that, I want that Vilmar, you know, Thompson, Anxiousness? Thompson, Like, yeah, I want that crude depth. Thompson, You want that like old Chinese wine? Thompson, Food level like umami. Thompson, Yeah, and you guys crack it and you go, how is this even domestic? Thompson, Yeah. Thompson, But Oregon is great at growing Grapes for Sparkling, but you have to pick the right places. Thompson, So High Elevation Dundee Hills is a good start. Thompson, And that's called Clos Scorpio, or kind of the House of the Scorpion. Thompson, He's a Scorpio. Thompson, He's a Scorpio, right? Thompson, Thompson, I'm the Taurus. Thompson, Okay. Thompson, So we have a bottling called Toro y Scorpio. Thompson, That's a blend of our favorite barrels together.

Thompson, But we don't, we're aging that really before release now. Thompson, Cool. Thompson, We'll keep an eye out. Thompson, Where, where's the best place actually? Thompson, I don't know if anyone's asked it, but how can people get their hands on your wines outside of, you know, their favorite virtual marketplaces and restaurants? Thompson, I mean, you know, you can buy it from us. Thompson, We ship for free. Thompson, For the most part. Thompson, That's nice. Thompson, Yep. Thompson, And that's it. Thompson, I'll make sure everybody gets that link. Thompson, It's just openwines.com. Thompson, And Thompson, Sorry, it's getting a little hot. Thompson, Yeah. Thompson, My computer's acting a little funky. Thompson, Oh, yeah. Thompson, You've given us more than enough of your time. Thompson, So are we? Thompson, Yeah.

Thompson, It was truly my pleasure. Thompson, It was a lot of fun. Thompson, Yeah. Thompson, Free Run Wine Merchants is our distributor in Virginia area. Thompson, They're awesome. Thompson, And keep an eye out. Thompson, You know, we're going to be bottling a new kind of wine under the Big Salt label called an Orange Rose. Thompson, It's skin-contact Pinot Gris and Riesling and a little bit of Gewürz aged in amphora, cask, egg. Thompson, It's a very small production. Thompson, You're going to see it in August. Thompson, And unfortunately, that's going to make it to DC? Thompson, Yeah. Thompson, 28 cases are coming to Free Run. Thompson, It'll be very affordable. Thompson, It'll be a very affordable bottle. Thompson, And then after that, in the fall, you will see Old Love.

Thompson, And the single vineyards will come out along with it. Thompson, So. Thompson, So the orange wine is Big Salt. Thompson, Orange Rose. Thompson, Half Rose, half orange wine. Thompson, Well, cheers to you, sir. Thompson, Happy Father's Day. Thompson, Thank you for giving up, you know, a significant portion of your Father's Day to join us here. Thompson, You know, the wines are stunning as always. Thompson, And you are such an eloquent and fierce advocate for them. Thompson, And, you know, unforgettable way. Thompson, You know, thank you so much for joining us, man. Thompson, Oh, yeah. Thompson, Yeah, you guys, this is the best one I've ever done. Thompson, I absolutely had to blast. Thompson, No, no. Thompson, After all the skin contact, I couldn't lie. Thompson, No. Thompson, Thompson, love you. Thompson, Okay, kids. Thompson, Cheers, guys. Thompson, Have a great one. Thompson, Have a great week. Thompson, Thanks so much. Thompson, You're welcome. Cheers.