International Pinot Noir Celebration, part III

In the afternoon, the coach returned us to McMinnville and we had some time off before heading over to another lawn for the first of two major tastings. There were roughly 70 wineries present at the event, with 35 presenting on the Friday and 35 on the Saturday. Each winery only showed one wine, and it was up to them which vintage they provided, so we weren’t necessarily comparing like with like. Wines from the 2020 vintage were notable by their absence...  

We started out with enthusiasm and then by about two thirds of the way through, I found myself beginning to flag. It was a warm evening, and a lot of the wines had a kind of nervous, high-toned tension - although some attempts had been made to cool them, the weather was not entirely pinot-friendly. A few of them did stand out, but my list covers both evenings so I’ll save it for a later post.

After the tasting, dinner was held on yet another lawn. We were joined by Robert Watkins and another member of staff from Mt Beautiful in New Zealand and it was interesting to hear about the IPNC experience from the point of view of a producer. They aren’t charged to attend, unlike some other wine festivals, apparently, and indeed receive some travel expenses, but are expected to contribute a considerable amount of wine to the IPNC’s stash. Presumably these are stored somewhere and brought out on future occasions.

Once again, the food was amazing. Opinions were divided on the chilled raspberry and roasted beet soup, but the seared Oregon albacore tuna went down very well. There was also a roulade de lapin with a marionberry jus - we came across marionberries several times during the weekend, and they turned out to be a type of blackberry unique to Oregon. 

A sommelier went past occasionally, pouring small amounts of library wines from the IPNC’s stocks. These offerings seemed to be quite random, and we were unfortunate enough to receive at least two red Burgundies from 2006, my least favourite vintage ever. But all in all, it was a good evening and we staggered back to the apartment feeling content.

International Pinot Noir Celebration, part II

The coach tour felt a little like a school trip and there was a rather amusing video about how the “motor coach” was cleaned in three different ways. Our destination was kept secret until the last minute. Since I was unfamiliar with any of the wineries in the area, the suspense was somewhat wasted on me. Eventually it was disclosed that we were going to Lingua Franca.

The bus stopped in the vineyard next to some well-maintained chardonnay vines and everyone hopped out and donned sunhats as the sun was beaming down and it was very warm. We were given a quick talk by Thomas Savre, the Director of Winemaking at Lingua Franca, who is French and has trained at many of the big names in Burgundy. Apparently Comte Lafon is a consultant at Lingua Franca and had been visiting earlier in the week. 

There were also contributions from other wine makers including Ken Wright, who was very experienced and knowledgeable. He mentioned that the vines grow down an extraordinary distance – something like a foot a year until they max out at around 20 feet down. This is why old vines are such a big deal – they’re rummaging around down there for all the interesting trace elements, which younger vines can’t do. I’d never really understood this before, so that was interesting to hear.

Then it was off to the Lingua Franca winery itself for a tasting followed by lunch. There was plenty of opportunity to mingle with the winemakers and other attendees and the atmosphere was convivial. The four course lunch was very impressive, especially given that it was served in a winery and not a place set up for fine dining. 

We tasted six wines from different producers and I enjoyed three of them in particular: the 2019 Ken Wright Cellars Tanager Vineyard, the 2021 Lingua Franca The Plow, and the 2019 SUNU Wines Matteri Vineyard. These were light, pretty and enjoyable, and not too alcoholic. But a quick check of the prices revealed that the going rate was around $75 a bottle. So much for my hope that Oregon pinot noir might replace my Burgundy habit!

International Pinot Noir Celebration, part I

The blog has been on something of a hiatus lately due to major life events i.e. moving to the US at long last! I arrived on 16 June (or June 16, as they say over here) and have been acclimatising since then.

Now that I’ve moved, my wine drinking patterns have changed somewhat and the good stuff is likely to be in concentrated bursts of activity. Fortunately, there have been two such bursts in the last few weeks: the International Pinot Noir Celebration at the end of July, and a trip to the Finger Lakes in early August. It will probably take several posts to cover them all.

Starting with the IPNC, this has been going since 1986 and is held in Oregon, in the town of McMinnville which is about an hour away from Portland. This was the furthest west I’ve ever been! It turned out to be an excellent introduction to Oregon pinot noir. There were also a few producers from other places such as California, France, New Zealand and Austria.

I met up successfully with G and H at Portland airport on Thursday evening and we got a car to our student apartment in McMinnville where our wine friend D from upstate New York was waiting for us. This turned out to be the perfect accommodation as it was within walking distance of all the activities. The only weird thing was the height of the beds, which were about four feet off the ground with no ladder – presumably aimed at athletic young men. I ended up putting my mattress on the floor which solved the problem.

We had pizza delivered and I’d picked up a couple of wines at the airport to get things rolling. One of these had appeared to be a tempranillo when I saw it in the shop, but on closer inspection it was a tempranillo / riesling blend, which I think it’s fair to say was not entirely successful. Described on that website as “a fun combination of grapes one wouldn’t expect to find in Oregon” – hmmmm! I will learn to check the label more closely in future. Fortunately the other bottle, a pinot, was drinkable so all was not lost.

On the Friday morning, we had an amazing buffet breakfast on the lawn with some particularly wonderful raspberries and apricots. The opening ceremony consisted of an elderly celebrity couple giving a quick speech in praise of pinot noir, including a memorable quote along the lines of how the first time you taste it, it's like your head leaves your body and then reattaches in a slightly different way. This was followed by a long parade of people from the various wineries, which took some time to get through.

One noticeable thing for me, attending for the first time, was how everyone assumed that one already had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Oregon AVAs. I hadn’t even encountered the term AVA before but someone at our table explained to me that it stands for American Viticultural Area and is a bit like an appellation in Burgundy. It would probably have been helpful to have a map of how they all related to each other, but the info for the festival was all on a mobile phone app and I don't think this was included. Serves me right for not doing any homework, I guess. 

After breakfast, it was into the coach for a vineyard tour… More to follow!