When you twist open a bottle of Westmount, you are doing more than enjoying Pinot Noir or Pinot Gris from Oregon’s Willamette Valley. You are traveling in time to the vintage and the weather variations that each month brings as well as in space to the ground in which each vine is rooted. Premium wines are grown in regions where grapes reach physiological maturity on the edge of incoming cool fall weather. Oregon’s cool climate brings many challenges from early season frosts to mid-season rains to Old-Man Winter’s desire to impose his will in October.
In Oregon, the vintage makes the wine. After three straight years of warm weather, 2017 has seemed to reset back to a “normal” Oregon vintage. With veraison upon us, let’s look at 2017 in comparison to 2015 and two of Oregon’s most epic: 2008 and 2012.
*Note: All vintages are compared by using Growing Degree Days (GDD), which are an attempt to quantify heat available to vine development during the growing season. They are calculated by the difference between the daily average and 50° from April 1st to October 31st.
In grape-growing and winemaking, we have to use our past experiences to help us in trying to predict what Mother Nature will throw at us each year. Oregon is warmer than it was in 2008 and 2012, and 2017 is on pace to be cooler than the last three vintages. What does this mean for the 2017 wines? Only time will tell, but with the cooler pace we can make an educated prediction of delicate, acid-driven wines with vibrant fruit.
For more insight on climate, grapes and wine check out our resident climatologist, Greg Jones, work with GuildSomm. http://bit.ly/Climate-Grapes-Wine