A Hedonist in the Cellar_ Adventures in Wine - Jay McInerney [14]
Pinot Gris was introduced in Oregon by the same man who first planted Pinot Noir there back in 1965: former philosophy major, dental student, and University of California at Davis oenology graduate David Lett of Eyrie Vineyards. (Lett’s Pinot Gris, like his Pinot Noir, seems to be built for aging, and can be ungenerous in its youth.) Today there are more than a thousand acres planted in the Willamette Valley, and Pinot Gris has surpassed Chardonnay as the signature white grape of the region. The Alsatians don’t seem to be trembling in their boots just yet, and the hype is well ahead of the overall quality, but Oregon Pinot Gris has become popular enough to inspire vintners in California and Washington State to plant the varietal.
At its best, Oregon Pinot Gris tastes a little like ripe pears, with spicy, smoky highlights, and it complements a wide variety of foods, especially when the winemakers lay off the new oak barrels. The food match of choice in the Pacific Northwest is grilled salmon, but Pinot Gris also suits—far better than the average Chardonnay—Dungeness crab, oysters, and even grilled pork and sausages. “It has a unique spicy quality that goes well with Asian and fusion cuisine,” says Mark Vlossak of St. Innocent Winery, in Salem, Oregon. “It works really well with fish and game birds and even vegetarian cuisines. Pinot Gris also transmits the signature of the land better than Chardonnay.” Generally, it is made in a dry style, in keeping with American tastes, although one or two late-harvest sweet-style wines from the 1999 vintage were available recently, notably at St. Innocent, where Vlossak, a genial and intense native of Wisconsin, is producing Oregon’s finest Pinot Gris.
Vlossak’s love of the grape was inspired back in 1991 by an encounter with a bottle of Livio Felluga’s benchmark Pinot Grigio from Friuli. “We had it with gravlax, and it blew everything else on the table away,” he says. “I spent two years searching for the right vineyard. In ′93, I made the first Pinot Gris. I started making it from this vineyard in a northern Italian style. My distributor in Seattle said to me, ‘You should go to Alsace. You don’t know shit about Pinot Gris in Oregon.’” Vlossak’s trip to Alsace, and his meeting with the charismatic André Ostertag—who has since become a friend—expanded Vlossak’s perception of the potential for Pinot Gris. “I decided it’s possible to make the dry, grand cru style of Pinot Gris here,” he says. The problem is that Oregon Pinot Gris is perceived by both winemakers and the public to be an inexpensive Chardonnay alternative. In order to make great Pinot Gris, good sites need to be chosen and yields have to be slashed, which represents a sacrifice. The catch-22 is that growers and winemakers need an economic incentive to raise quality, but until quality improves, it’s tough to sell a bottle of Pinot Gris for more than fifteen bucks, while Oregon Pinot Noir can sell for fifty or sixty dollars a bottle. St. Innocent’s recent Shea Vineyard bottlings—from a site also famous for Pinot Noir— could help change perceptions of the future of this grape in Oregon.
Fortunately, a handful of Oregon wineries—including Belle Pente, Evesham Wood, and Lemelson—are also making very good Pinot Gris. Oregon winemakers haven’t yet agreed to standardize the bottle shape for this varietal. Some use the slope-shouldered Burgundy bottle, while others favor the long, tall, Alsatian bottle. My unscientific conclusion, after tasting twenty bottles of the 2000 vintage, is that the best makers favor the Alsatian bottle, bravely flying in the face of its negative association—at least in the minds of many American wine drinkers—with cheap German wine. Remember Blue Nun? Forget it. Try a Pinot Gris the next time you grill a fish.
TRANSLATING GERMAN LABELS
Hugh Johnson once remarked that he was surprised that no university had endowed a chair in German wine labeling. For most English speakers, such is the perceived complexity of the Gothic-looking labels, with their information overload and their terrifying terminology,