Wine is grown and produced in every state of the union, but few are recognized as world-class wine regions – Oregon is one. The first vines were planted in the Willamette Valley in 1964 by David Lett, and Oregon’s cool climate has had a love affair with the wine industry ever since. It is no fluke that great wines are produced in Oregon, as there are many complex factors that determine a grape’s success in a region. Here is why Oregon is a perfectly unique wine-growing region.
First, we must tackle the idea of what is “great” wine. Wine is beautiful because it will forever be subjective, and the attributes in each wine are uniquely interpreted by the individual drinker. Your entire life shapes how you perceive wine and which wines you enjoy drinking. At Westmount, we believe there are three components of wine grapes that can impact a wine’s potential for greatness. (The fourth factor is winemaker knowledge and skill, but they’re a sensitive bunch, so we won’t comment on that at this point.)
- Acid – The backbone of a wine, acid is the life and body of the wine. Through a growing season, our grape-growers and winemakers are managing acidity, harvesting our fruit at the optimal time to retain freshness while avoiding overly sour flavors. The amount of acid in a wine impacts ageability, structure, and wine presence on the palate. All compounds in a wine interact with, and are affected by, the amount of acid. It’s all about riding the knife-edge between youthful vibrancy and mouth-puckering sharpness.
- Phenolics (Big words like tannins and anthocyanins) – Phenolics provide the color, structure, and texture of a wine, which come primarily from the seeds and skin of the grape. Both tannins and anthocyanins protect the grape during its life in the vineyard. Tannins make the fruit unpalatable until the seed is ripe, and anthocyanins protect the ripening seed from UV rays by scattering sunlight as it reaches the berry skin. Their management is the focus in both the vineyard and winery. We use different farming practices to promote their maturation in the vineyard, and in the winery, we taste daily to make sure we delicately extract what we want out of our fruit.
- Sugar – As all plants do, the grapevine absorbs sunlight and converts it to sugar through photosynthesis. That sugar is then converted to alcohol by yeast during alcoholic fermentation. Thus, at a very basic level, the amount of sugar in each berry determines the amount of alcohol in the resulting wine. Alcohol has an impact on more than just the intoxicating nature of wine. As with acidity, alcohol interacts with all compounds in a wine, and can lift aromatics or overpower a wine. An overly high alcohol level will throw a wine out of balance by making it one-dimensional, while a wine that is lacking alcohol may be too subtle and nondescript.
Grapes are not grown, nor is wine made, in a vacuum; all three components outlined above must be considered together. Their interaction during ripening, as well as fermentation, is extensive; every single day during a vintage has its own impact on the final wine’s quality. That’s why that “great wine” moniker is very much a moving target. Fortunately, our grape-growers and winemakers love the hunt.
The relationship between grapevines, humans, and wine is one that goes back millennia. Grapevines evolved in large deciduous forests in temperate and Mediterranean climates. It was amongst vast seas of giant trees that the vine developed its resilient characteristics. Having to constantly compete against larger plants, grapevines had to be scavengers for both nutrients in the soil and energy from the sun. It is because of their great ability to search the soil horizons for nutrients and quickly accumulate sugar in their berries that we began our longstanding relationship with grapevines and their intoxicating elixir.
Grapevines have been commercially farmed for over 5000 years, and they were one crop that was selectively planted, moved, and replanted as humans migrated out of Mediterranean climates. When new lands were colonized, vines were planted. Over centuries, each region found the varietal that worked best for them, which is why it’s hard to compare wines from different regions. The history, climate, and soil makes each wine unique to the time and place in which it was grown.
Oregon sits on the 45th parallel; the point halfway between the equator and the north pole. It is the point where winters become harsher as you travel north of it, and summers become more extreme to the south. It is the point of moderation and ease; warm summers consist of long sunny days paired with cool summer nights, and wet winters with rarely freezing temperatures, so the vines not only survive, but thrive.
Oregon also has a very diverse geological history: bed rock is littered with millions of years of sea life deposits, while lava flows from Utah, Idaho, and Montana brought floods of volcanic rock through the valley and initially shaped the landscape, and the last ice age shaped the sedimentary and volcanic soils, as well as brought rocks and soil from further north. During the end of the last ice age, as ice was receding, an ice dam in what is now Montana, released millions of gallons of water down the Columbia Gorge to the Willamette Valley. It has been estimated that the flooding and reformation of the ice dam lasted for 55 years. These floods, coined the “Missoula Floods,” moved soil from all parts of the northwestern United States to the Willamette Valley, and changed the geological landscape of Oregon forever.
A great wine region is something akin to “the most interesting person in the world.” Diversity in soils, a character-building climate, and land aspects that are hard to walk – let alone plant grapevines – are all needed in some combination to bring the most out of each berry. Oregon, personified, is the most interesting person in the world. Oregon has a rich geological history, a wide variety of soils, a valley that is sheltered from weather extremes and littered with small hillsides, and a very cool climate that slows ripening and builds character in the fruit. In short, if you are not drinking Pinot from the Willamette Valley, you should be.