The illustrious, the famed, the extravagant and renowned, PINOT NOIR…

We were very excited to try out a 2018 Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley, Oregon is no newcomer to wines, especially Pinot noirs. According to WillametteWines.com, The Willamette Valley is “buffered from Pacific storms on the west by the Coast Range”, while the “Cascade Range draws the boundary between the Willamette Valley’s misty, cool climate and the drier, more extreme climate of eastern Oregon”. In a nutshell, the valley provides a nuanced, coastal marine influence, nestled west of the Cascade Mountain range, and east of the Coastal Range, creating a cooler Mediterranean climate (warm, dry summers / cool, wet winters) with plenty of high-degree days in the summer to aid full ripening, followed by cooler evenings and nights, giving the vines a chance to rest. In all, the region is favorable for these lighter, thinner skinned reds, and other whites such as Chardonnay and Pinot gris (but mostly Pinot noir). 

For an additional introduction, check out this clip by the winemaker of Willamette Valley Vineyards! Willamette Valley Vineyards Whole Cluster Pinot Noir 2018 (scroll down on the page).

Pinot noir is one of the more finicky grapes to make into wine. It’s one of the lighter reds out there and has potential to be masked or beat to death using typical winemaking regimens. In my experience there is a much broader range of quality of these wines versus others. Poor Pinots are exceptionally poor, but fantastic Pinots are some of the best wines out there! The varietal is esteemed for its ability to garner such a wide range of aromatics, tastes, and flavors, while at the same time being infamous for letting potential slip away, providing intrigue-less, unacceptably light wines that just won't do. The varying spectrum of wines produced by this varietal, and its temperament in the vineyard, are part of why some winemakers won’t bother with it, however when you got it, you got it good! 

This wine came in at around $22.00 per bottle from wine.com, a lower to mid-ranged price for pinots. It already has a decent pedigree, being awarded 91 points from Wine Enthusiast, stating “Irresistibly delicious, this perennial winner rocks bright, freshly picked raspberry and marionberry fruit, set against a core of minerality. A mix of Pommard and Wädenswil clones, all fermented with the stems, it sidesteps any herbal excess and finishes with a palate-cleansing burst of acidity.”

Let's dive in! For Pinot noirs in general, the pro-tip is to chill to around 57F, a task Dan and Taylor may or may not have missed the mark on. (Who has the patience to calibrate an analogue thermometer, anyway?) Either way, a lighter varietal will be more friendly upfront with less time out of the bottle, but we look forward to having this one hang out for some time as well. 

Further notes:

This wine really did it for us! The whole-cluster production of this wine was quite apparent both on the nose and palate and overall the impression reminded us of a Sonoma Pinot. It was very fruit forward, juicy, lovely light oak, with nice vanilla and caramel surfacing over time. In addition to providing added nuanced astringency to this wine, whole-cluster fermentation also tends to add a sort of fresh “green” quality to wines, that over time can age out, or remain in younger wines and give a nuanced brightness. Being a lighter varietal, winemakers will often attempt to concentrate qualities in a Pinot, as mentioned in the video above, by allowing the free-run to flow, leaving behind more whole berries and less juice to go through pressing, giving a higher ratio of skin to juice in the wine, concentrating skin-derived aromatics, tannins, and anthocyanins. 

As mentioned, the inclusion of stems in this ferment and pressing provided a nuanced tannin experience coupled with green characteristics that seemed to both helped out the intrigue of the wine and played nicely with the fruit, added a bit of harsher more bitter tannin to the finish, but also may have been done to help out the color and boost the Pinot hue and intensity. Tannins in stems differ from tannins in the skin of a grape, and are more similar to those found in seeds, as they exhibit a much smaller degree of polymerization. As discussed in the last blog post, smaller tannin = more bitter. It’s a spectrum, to be sure, but those monomers will definitely get you! For more on the quality and origination of tannins in stems, skins, and seeds, and their potential for combined influence on color in a finished wine, check out the article linked below by Di Gennaro et al.

The green quality can also be attributed most often to methoxypyrazines, but may also come from thiols and C6+ higher alcohols. However, some wines love this addition, and winemakers play a balancing act between pro and con with every change to the wine system. A former professor of mine, Dr. Federico Casassa, experimented with microwaving or baking some stems, the idea being to speed up and oxidize some of the pyrazines and phenols present, to possibly soften any influence and also maybe find something new out of it. Not sure where any of this went, but simple experimentation is always a good time!

In this wine, the aromatics were quite fresh, fruit forward, and almost candy-like. The impression Taylor gets is a good portion of methyl anthranilate present here, which is a yeast-derived product often achieved from a process known as carbonic maceration (essentially the same whole berry fermentation method described in the video above), commonly undertaken during the process of a Beaujolais wine. Fun fact: this chemical is commonly used as a bird deterrent and many species hate the stuff! It gets sprayed over all sorts of fruit crops to mitigate bird presence ruining a harvest. It is literally the “fake grape” aroma, only it isn’t fake. Present in conjunction with other aromatics, it often yields the sweet, Jolly Rancher-like perception. Of course, sugars (at least those found in grapes) are not volatile, thus we cannot smell sweetness, but what we can perceive is the fruitiness that goes along with sweetness. Check out the chapter on Chemical Constituents of Grapes and Wine by Dr. Jackson (linked below) for why this method may contribute to greater ester formation through fermentation, resulting in all sorts of fun aromatics, including methyl anthranilate!

Tune in next week for more good stuff, and join in the conversation (including via Twitter, @YokoyamaLabUCSF)! 

Cheers!

—Taylor, Dan, and Jen

Further reading:

1. Maceration with stems contact fermentation: Effect on proanthocyanidins compounds and color in Primitivo red wines. Serafino Suriano, Vittorio Alba,  Luigi Tarricone, Domenico Gennaro
2. Managing Green Flavors in the Winery: Sorting, clarification and heat treatments are among the most successful options. Gary J. Pickering
3. Chemical Constituents of Grapes and Wine. Ronald S. Jackson PhD, in Wine Science (Fourth Edition), 2014
4. Welcome to Wineoyama!
5. Wineoyama #1: Barolo