Oregon Outside the Pinot Noir Box

BY JOSH RAYNOLDS | SEPTEMBER 03, 2020

For many wine lovers, Oregon, and especially the Willamette Valley, is all Pinot Noir, all the time. Perhaps no other region in the New World is so closely associated with a single variety. And yet there’s so much more happening here, especially with Chardonnay. White wine and reds not made from Pinot Noir are approaching almost half of our annual Oregon coverage, which is a remarkable development over the last decade.

The last five vintages, which have been uniformly excellent in Oregon, presented winemakers with a golden opportunity to produce truly world-class wines from all varieties, and they responded with impressively consistent aplomb. Chardonnay, in particular, has become a deadly serious subject for the state’s growers and winemakers, as evidenced by the sheer number of outstanding renditions of that variety that I have been sampling recently. While Chardonnay (along with every other variety, for that matter) has long stood in the shadow of the omnipresent Pinot Noir, that’s emphatically no longer the case. The best examples – and their number is growing exponentially – deserve to be compared to top California bottlings, and, for the time being at least, they mostly deliver similar quality and complexity at relatively lower prices. I suspect that will be changing, though, as wine lovers notice what’s going on here. 

Some of Oregon's finest and most graceful Chardonnays are grown in the compact Ribbon Ridge AVA, which lies within the Chehalem Mountains appellation.

Two thousands-sixteen presented the Willamette Valley with more classic weather conditions than 2015 and 2014. There was an early spring, with budbreak mostly occurring three weeks ahead of schedule. A hot May accelerated the vines’ growth, while June, July and August brought moderate and often cool conditions, and then things heated up again the last week of August. Thanks to the temperate summer, acidity levels in the fruit remained high, while sugar levels stayed on the low side. Grapes were generally smaller than usual, and the clusters were made up of plenty of hens and chicks (a mix of large and small berries that the French call millerandage), which results in wines of both ripeness and freshness. Harvest began at the end of August in many cases, as the weather took a warmer turn. Things really started to heat up around mid-September, but by then most of the fruit was already in. 

In 2017 there was abundant rain throughout the spring and into the beginning of summer, and conditions were often quite cool, which set the stage for wines marked by energy and freshness. And that’s exactly what the winemakers produced, despite some heat spikes during the summer. These are classically built, lively whites that emphasize detail and delicacy over richness and power, but they in no way lack for flavor intensity. I suspect that many of the Chardonnays will be quite long-lived, although their vibrancy makes them pretty compelling right now. Fans of Old World renditions of the variety are going to find plenty to like, and I’ll bet that these wines are going to turn quite a few heads, if they haven’t already.

A cold winter in 2018 was followed by lots of early spring rain. The weather warmed up in May and then took a distinctly hot turn in June. High temperatures continued through August, with basically no rain, but there were no dangerous heat spikes to accelerate sugar levels or cause dramatic loss of acidity. It was colder in September, with notably chilly nights, which slowed down ripening, much to everybody’s relief. Invigorating rain in the middle of the month relieved and energized the vines at just the right moment, allowing harvest to begin in the third week of the month. While the wines are mostly deeper and more fruit-driven than their 2017 siblings, they are by no means brawny or marked by overt ripeness or richness. In most cases the wines will show very well on the young side, and while they may not age as long or as gracefully as those of the previous vintage, that’s a matter of little importance to the vast majority of Chardonnay drinkers who enjoy their wines before their fourth or, maybe, fifth birthday.