Representing as usual a high-volume blend drawing from most if not all of WVV’s vineyards, their 2011 Pinot Noir Estate delivers vintage-typically tart red currant surprisingly allied to an almost caressingly polished palate, with a buoyancy borne of under-12.5% alcohol and an intriguingly and delightfully saliva-inducing savor of veal stock emerging on a downright refreshing finish. This lovely Pinot will probably gain further interest over the next couple of years and serve well through at least 2016.
WVV founding partner Jim Bernau and winemaker Don Crank III are now assisted by Drew Voit, formerly of Shea (whose own Harper Voit wines I have also reviewed in this report). They elected not to bottle from 2011 all of the single-vineyard or even A.V.A-specific wines of a normal year (and not all of those they did bottle were shown me on the occasion of my July visit). Brix varied considerably over the very wide range of sites sourced or owned by WVV so that some blocks came in at 12.5-13% natural alcohol whereas others were chaptalized to varying degrees. Bernau and Crank opine that it might have been worth doing some acidification of musts since the proportions of malic were very high and after malo-lactic conversion pHs were also surprisingly high – but in fact they didn’t perform any such adjustment. A small share of stems was included with certain of the fermentations. Interestingly, they characterized fermentation and cap-management – which is here always exclusively via punch-down in two-ton bins – as “a lot more aggressive” than usual, “to try to get (out) every last thing that we could.” Intriguingly, the team here has begun yeasting with a special non- Saccharomyces culture that prompts an early “pre-”fermentation in lieu of cold soak. I had the pleasure and insights this year of tasting the WVV collection in the company of Tualatin Vineyard’s 1971 founder and proprietor Bill Fuller, who has been encouraged by Bernau to begin making a bit of wine himself at Tualatin, mostly from his oldest vines, and to at least some extent replicating the approach that was taken there with Pinot and Chardonnay in the 1980s – though Fuller adds with a wry smile “that wouldn’t necessarily be the same as making the best possible wine.” Amazingly, WVV’s long-time vineyard manager Efren Loeza came to them with the acquisition of Tualatin, where he was hired in 1979 at age 17 by Fuller, so any revival of old methods won’t be built on speculation. (For more about WVV, see my issue 202 report. I also tasted this year two wines made and marketed by WVV from Griffin Creek in the Rogue Valley, but since that is technically an independent estate and WVV is not prominently indicated on those wines labels, I have reviewed them in this report under their own name.)
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