A masterclass in the art of ‘marginal ripening’ - and not trying to be important
Mark Savage MW’s visit to the Oxford Wine Club was remarkable and revelatory. Though a surprising number of members – nearly half – had previously been to Oregon, I doubt anyone had an idea of what was in store at Lady Margaret Hall.
Mark has been deeply involved with the wines of the Northwest – Oregon in particular – for well over 30 years. The first pioneers went north from California in the late 60s and early 70s because they wanted to get beyond the Zinfandel / Merlot / Cab Sauv oligopoly – not just because they wanted somewhere to grow marijuana where they wouldn’t be hassled.
David Lette was among the very first. Hit by what Mark called a ‘cosmic brick’ on a day out in the Napa Valley from dentistry school further south, he enrolled at UC Davis and then – to the bemusement of his professors – went North looking for vineyard land. There wasn’t any – only hazelnuts. But he found 20 acres on the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains in the Willamette Valley and planted more or less everything in the Pinot family, plus Chardonnay and other stuff in what became the Eyrie Vineyards.
That was in 1965. The land he wanted – and found – was ‘marginal ripening’ land dominated by the influence of the cold, damp Pacific. Marginal ripening, said Mark, is the key to finesse in wine. It’s the key to refreshment (‘the first duty of a drink’). It keeps down alcohol levels; it stops wines and wine-makers becoming too self-important. Mark’s belief is that wine makes itself once you have put the effort into the vineyard.
The Eyrie Vineyards, now run by David’s son Jason, provided five of the eight wines plus two from Abacela in the south of Oregon and one from Vickers Vineyard in Idaho.
The first two wines were both from Eyrie – the 2007 Pinot Blanc and the 2007 Pinot Gris. Though they will mature in Mark’s opinion they are made for drinking young. The Pinot Blanc was medium gold with a complex nose – by turns salty, citric, honeyed and leafy. Bone dry, it had a good mouthfeel with great persistence and balance. The Pinot Gris, slightly darker, slightly pinky gold, with a slightly waxier and less immediately fruit-driven nose. Fractionally less well balanced for some tastes but evolving in the glass with every sip.
As Mark admitted, the next wine was ‘ultra-exotic’, distinctly ‘Marmite like’. Oz Clarke, an Oxford contemporary in the University’s blind tasting team in the late 1960s, gets it. Others don’t. The winemaker at Vickers Vineyards in Idaho had to be persuaded that his like-no-other 1993 Chardonnay – product of the coldest year for decades – should not be allowed to go through malolactic fermentation and it took several years before he was even prepared to release this lightning bolt of a wine to the public. Mark bought about half the production and is now down to his last few bottles. We were privileged. A deeper colour than the first two wines but it certainly did not have the look of a wine coming up to 20 years in age and neither the bouquet of vivid citrus, smoky nuts and focused minerality nor the electric charge in the mouth suggested anything different. It would probably keep another 30 years – if only there were bottles left to keep.
It was paired with the Eyrie Vineyards 2007 Chardonnay. This was less vivid but equally thrilling – fuller in the mouth and a steadily evolving bouquet that added new layers of aroma every time you returned to the glass. At least the equivalent, suggested Mark, of great white burgundy at a fifth or even a fiftieth of the price. And Mark knows that it will age beautifully. He has been deeply involved with the Lettes for around 40 years and had the chance to taste back over 38 vintages on the occasion of David’s retirement a couple of years ago. Part of Mark’s role has been to help stiffen the Lette’s resistance to being ‘blown off course’ by fashion, which can be tough when competitors are racking up the points. Like the Lettes his mission in wine can be summed up as ‘don’t bugger about; just keep the integrity of the grape’. Not surprisingly, therefore, the wines don’t see that much new oak. Too much and it ‘gets in the way of the wine’.
The same philosophy inspires the family’s Pinot Noir, which closed the tasting. But before that we had two wines from the Abacela Vineyards a few hours drive South; the first their Vintner’s Blend (everything from Grenache, Syrah, Malbec plus some white grapes as well in all probability). Low in price, high in flavour and attack. The second their 2005 Tempranillo, smooth and rich with lots of black fruit and well-integrated vanilla oak. Vineyard owner Earl Jones is a Hispanophile who retired from a lucrative day job, bought some land and planted ‘at least 15 grape varieties’ to give himself some fun. Southern Oregon is not Pinot Noir territory (too warm) and Mark’s last two wines from the Eyrie Vineyards brought us back to the Lette’s passion for Pinot.
We had the 2007 standard wine and 2006 Reserve. David Lette’s Pinot Noir was what put Oregon on the world’s wine-making map in the 1970s when his South Block Reserve came second – by just a fraction of a point – to Chambolle-Musigny in a heavyweight Parisian tasting. The result was repeated a few months later – no fluke – and the Drouhin family promptly headed out to Oregon to buy 98 acres of land next to the Eyrie.
Throughout the tasting Mark had highlighted many of the similarities between Burgundy and Oregon: similar latitude, the same small family holdings, the focus on making wine that tastes of one place and only one place, where the ‘song of the earth’ is what rewards the grower. Even some of the vintages come out similarly – good years and less good years coinciding across the Atlantic.
Both the two Pinots were pale garnet. We should, suggested Mark, be suspicious of Pinots that are deep in colour and heavy in alcohol. After all Pinot has only 5 of the 13 anthocyanins in the normal red grapes. And too much alcohol is ‘bad for business’ – you can’t finish the bottle. On the nose both had black and redcurrant notes and a touch of the forest floor – though the Reserve was rather more striking. Similarly in the mouth both were taut and vivid with great balance and sensuality, though the greater power and potential of the Reserve was evident. Superb wines both of them.
Thanking Mark, Peter Newell suggested we should take any opportunity to visit the Ox House in Northleach (‘just 25 miles away’). Mark imports wines from a number of similar, family-run estates across the world and in everything he buys he looks for that same blend of clarity, finesse and distinctiveness. ‘Magnificently eccentric’ said Jancis Robinson of Mark. The reception from the Club suggested that the latter half of that phrase was superfluous.
GH