2018 Pinot Noir Reserve

The range of Pinot Noirs made by Jim Anderson here is vast – probably the most extensive in the New World, at least that I know of. The quality of the 2019s is exceptional across the board, and this winery deserves serious praise for its fair pricing, which is often ridiculously low given what’s in the bottles. Anderson sources up and down the Willamette Valley from some of the region’s most acclaimed vineyards. Winemaking techniques here vary widely, depending on vintage and vineyard. Some wines are made entirely from de-stemmed fruit while others are done entirely with whole clusters, but most are made with a combination of the two. New oak is also used on a case-by-case basis, anywhere from none to around 50%, though mostly somewhere in between. I have been highly impressed by how the wines here age; examples from the early 2000s are cruising along just fine, with little sign of fatigue.

Jim Anderson walked me through the best collection of wines that I’ve ever tasted from this highly reliable producer since I started visiting and tasting here in 2005. Production here has been increasing steadily over the years (just take a look at how many wines are reviewed here) and he told me that they'll soon begin building a new winery as "this one wasn't built to handle what's going on in terms of size (barrels are stacked high and wide) and construction materials. I've always been a fan of the bang for the buck that's delivered here. Anderson said that it was never the intent here to make collector wines or vinous objects of desire. "It's kind of cool that it's happened, at least with some of the wines, but that really happened on its own. It's cool that it happened but it wasn’t some kind of business plan or goal."

On a sadder, make that a profoundly sad note, Patty Green, the winery's namesake and Jim's wine-growing partner since 1993, passed away in late October, 2017, at the age of 62. She launched her much-heralded wine-growing career in 1986 as a harvest worker at the old Hillcrest Winery, in Roseburg. She quickly moved up to the position of winemaker there in 1987 and stayed on until 1989 before moving to Adelsheim, where she worked until joining the brand-new Torii Mor Winery when it launched in 1993. It's there that she met and began working closely with Anderson and the two of them departed in 2000 to start their own winery, this one, in Newberg at what was once Autumn Wind Vineyard. In the ensuing years Patricia Green Cellars has become one of America's most reliable sources for elegant, detailed and user-friendly Pinot Noir in America. Anderson is emphatic when he says that "nothing is changing because we want to preserve Patty's legacy" but all of this has clearly hit him and their team like a ton of bricks. Anybody who knew her would understand because, while Patty was only a little over five feet all in terms of personality and exuberance, she was a real character and in some ways larger than life. She was enthusiastic, unaffected and welcoming to a fault, with a huge smile and a loud, cackling laugh and the tendency to use it, often, as in really often. But her passion for and attention to winemaking, from vine to bottling, was deeply serious. A passionate gourmand and wine lover, Patty was as comfortable at The Dundee Bistro or at Tina's (where I shared a memorable dinner with her many years ago) as she was at one of her favorite stomping grounds, Dundee’s legendary watering hole, Lumpy's. She was a sweetheart, with enormous talent and realized success as among those who helped to put Oregon Pinot Noir on the map. She was a much-loved fixture in the Willamette Valley and it's awfully hard to accept that she's really gone.

This is a compelling set of Pinots that showcases the powerful fruit of the 2014 vintage while also managing to present an impression of elegance. Although the wines are awfully delicious already, my hunch is that most of them will be at their best with another three-plus years of bottle age and then drink well until at least their 10th birthdays. Co-owners and winemakers Patty Green and Jim Anderson have been working side by side since meeting up at Torii Mor in 1993; they left to start their own winery in 2000. They have steadily been increasing production over the ensuing years via contracts with some of the region’s best growers as well as by ongoing planting of their own 52-acre estate vineyard, which sits in the heart of the Ribbon Ridge appellation, abutting Beaux Frères. Anderson told me that while he and Green share the myriad winery duties, over the years he has been spending more time in the winery and Green has been more occupied with overseeing the vines that they tend both in the home vineyard and at the sites they work under contract, which are spread across the Willamette Valley. Given that just over 12,000 cases were produced here in 2014, “that’s a lot of vines to take care of,” Anderson pointed out. These elegant, perfumed wines are consistently among the finest Pinot Noir values to be found not only from Oregon, but from anywhere, with the entry-level Reserve bottling, in particular, delivering value far above its price. Anderson said that he couldn’t “add much to what everybody has been saying since day one – 2014 is a remarkable vintage for quality and quantity.” The potential Achilles’ heel is that Mother Nature might have been too generous. There were record-breaking fruit sets across the Willamette Valley, which mandated cluster-thinning to avoid potential dilution in the wines, “and that really hurts when the fruit is as clean as it was in ’14.” There’s also the issue of larger-than-normal berries in 2014, “which means less structure, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re drinking the wines young, and lots of the ‘14s are perfect for that.” The Pinots here are raised in up to a third new French oak “depending on the vintage and each vineyard’s material that year, and there’s no dogma,” Anderson told me.

Co-owner/winemaker Jim Anderson told me that in 2013 the timing of the harvest was everything. "It really started to rain like hell in the middle of September, as everybody knows, and the fruit that was already in was safe," he explained, "but a lot of it was from younger vines and some people had also picked underripe grapes." He went on: "If one was willing to wait out the storms, keeping fingers crossed that conditions didn't set up for rot and doing plenty of work dropping fruit, there was a chance to get truly ripe, clean grapes from older, later-maturing vines." Here at Patricia Green, Anderson told me, they picked until October 10th, "and that extra time allowed things in the vineyard to even out and the grapes got back on track to maturity."

"Two thousand eight is all about balance and so is 2007, at least for us, and that's the sort of wine we want to make," Patty Green told me. "Almost all of our fruit in 2008 came in no higher than 23o Brix, which means that the wines have freshness and didn't go over the top with superripeness and dark fruit flavors." Green told me that one of the goals here "is to trap and retain the esters," and that one way to accomplish this is "never to use sulfur, which dulls aromas and dries out the fruit." Two thousand eight provided "a pretty special balance of pH, acidity and sugar," she went on, "and there's density but not excess weight to the wines." Green and her partner, Jim Anderson, feel that after a quarter century (as of 2010) they've become very consistent in their methodology. "So hopefully, we can trump vintage variation," said Green. Green and Anderson are proponents of the Pommard and Wadensvil clones and Green noted that she's especially leery of (Dijon) clone 115, which she believes makes brawnier wines that lack finesse.

According to co-owner/co-winemaker Jim Anderson, "2006 reminds us a lot of 2001, as the wines show great aromatic expression and lots of fruit, but the fruit is deeper and darker." The season shared much in common with 2003, he said, "but there's none of the roasted character that marks so many 2003s; the wines are fresher and more graceful." All of this winery's fruit save an acre of Goldschmidt was picked between September 26 and October 6, Anderson told me, "which is an incredibly short time for us. In '05 we were still picking on October 19th