Stemming primarily from the same Aurora Vineyard that births their Pinot Blancs (and from vines planted in 1992), the Ponzis’ 2009 Chardonnay Reserve was spontaneously fermented and aged 16 months, with malo-lactic conversion and lees-stirring, in mostly second- and third-use barriques. A lovely nose of honeysuckle, heliotrope, and acacia would have in fact led me to believe, blind, that this wine had in part resided in acacia barrels. Its combination of textural richness and underlying nuttiness reflecting a warm year with fresh lime brightness and vivacity is superbly executed, hints of candied apple and citrus peel adding interest and invigoration to a lusciously-sustained finish. I can imagine this being worth following for several years, but don’t miss out on some soon! “These were the first grapes we picked” in 2009, notes Luisa Ponzi. Dick Ponzi reminded me that already from his pioneering days, Willamette growers “were aiming for a world-class style of Chardonnay. But back then, we were bucking the market with a style so different from what was coming out of California,” that, as he perceives it, “people didn’t understand the subtlety of Oregon Chardonnay.” He admits that “in those days there weren’t a lot of nurseries or knowledge about clones and we grabbed whatever we could. Pommard (Pinot Noir) was grabbed out of the air too, and it’s fortunate that we grabbed the right one there!” whereas when it came to Chardonnay, the early-1990s advent of Dijon clones – which at the time Ponzi secured as cuttings directly from U. C. Davis for in-house propagation – was arguably to make a fundamental qualitative difference over what went before. There is no reserve Chardonnay from 2010 and this bottling may in future be supplanted by single-vineyard bottlings.
Dick Ponzi founded planted his estate in 1969 at what has since become the suburban edge of Portland, soon thereafter – in consultation with fellow pioneers David Adelsheim and David Lett – expanding into less-fertile nearby hillsides. After formal studies in Beaune and stages at more than one prestigious Burgundy domaine, his daughter Luisa began working alongside her father in 1993, and nowadays takes the lead in winemaking. A spacious new facility was completed several miles south of the homestead vineyard in 2008, spectacularly overlooking a string of estate vineyards on the north side of the Chehalem Ridge (on so-called Laurelwood soil of mixed basaltic and sedimentary origin), the oldest of which was planted in 1975, but a significant share of whose acreage has been part of an accelerated expansion over the past decade. Ponzis don’t hesitate to chaptalize in all but warm years, in which, on the other hand, their breezy, hilly, and largely southeastern-facing sites serve to moderate potential alcohol. Pinot is generally destemmed (though the 2011s involved a notable percentage of whole cluster); fermentation lots are (in Luisa Ponzi’s words) “ridiculously small;” extraction is via punch-down; pressing with few exceptions takes place at dryness or just-before; and after brief settling the young wine goes to at least 20% new barrel. The Ponzis render a range of wines from Italianate varieties which I was unfortunately not able to take time to taste on this occasion.
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