NEWS
Patton Valley listed as one of the Most Popular Pinot Noirs by Wine & Spirits
In the April 2008 issue of Wine & Spirits magazine, Patton Valley Pinot Noir was listed as one of the 32 Most Popular Pinot Noirs in a survey of over 300 fine-dining restaurants located throughout the US. Our wine was just one of 8 Oregon wines on the list, which also included selections from California and France. Click here to download the article. We are especially proud of the fact that we did this well in a national survey when our wine is distributed in only 17 states.
Patton Valley Freshens its Look
After seven vintages with our prior labels, we thought it was time to tweak our look a bit. As you can see in the Patton Valley Pinot Noir label, we have retained our trademark leaf image, but have dampened down the contrast, allowing the brand to shine through. We also thought it was time to give our customers a break and make the vintage date readable for a change (no more reaching for the reading glasses). We also thought it was important to emphasize the fact that our wines are estate-grown and that we are located in the Willamette Valley, items overlooked in our previous label. For the Lorna-Marie, we wanted to create a bigger distinction between it, being our reserve wine, and the flagship Pinot Noir label, opting for a very elegant black and gold look. The Rosé label design is less formal than the others, emphasizing the fun nature of this wine versus our more "serious" Pinot Noirs. In addition, on the back labels, you will find the certification stamp from LIVE, signifying that these wines were produced in a sustainable manner. We hope you enjoy our new look.
April 2008 New Releases
As you can see from our online store, we have trouble keeping wine in stock due to high demand and modest production levels at Patton Valley. So, we want to keep you informed of upcoming releases. In April, we will be releasing the 2006 Patton Valley Pinot Noir as well as the 2007 Pinot Noir Rosé. The 2006 Pinot comes from a warm weather vintage, and is lush and rich, with similarities to the highly regarded and long-gone 2003 Patton Valley Pinot, and we think this wine will surpass that vintage in popularity. Our rosés typically sell out rapidly on release, and we think that the 2007 Patton Valley Pinot Noir Rosé is our best pink wine to date. So keep a look out for these releases, with the rosé the first week of April, and the Pinot Noir around tax time, April 15 (we all need a little wine on that day).
Download our Spring 2007 newsletter (pdf format)
Harvest Report 2007
One of the compelling features of growing Pinot Noir in Oregon is that we get a significant amount of vintage variation (as does Burgundy) due to fluctuating weather patterns, resulting in wines with different and distinct personalities from vintage to vintage. Nowhere is this more apparent than in comparing the 2006 and 2007 growing seasons.
In 2006, the weather was warm for most of the season, and very hot late, giving rise to hyper-ripe fruit, big, lush, fruit-driven wines with higher than average alcohols. Our 2006, which just went to bottle, is a ripe, luscious wine, with loads of beautiful red fruit and creamy texture. It shares some of the characteristics of the 2003 vintage (another hot year), but with just a bit more restraint. Not a subtle wine, it expresses what the growing season that year was all about, lots of heat and little moisture.
2007, on the other hand, was very different. With cooler than average temperatures, particularly in September, ripening was delayed well beyond what we saw the previous year. Rain came late in September, and we had to wait to pick, much like in 2005. We did process some rosé from Pinot thinnings in mid-September, as we worked to keep our crop levels down, and we also processed some ultra-ripe Red Mountain Syrah (just one ton) from Washington at the same time from fruit that we traded a ton of our Pinot for (more about this wine in later columns), but we just had to wait for our Pinot to ripen. We picked a small amount of young-vine fruit in late September, but the bulk of the fruit had to hang longer. Riding through the first wave of rain, we waited for some dry weather, and picked about 80% of our fruit on October 5 and 6th. More rain followed, and we waited out another window of dry weather, getting a nice break a week later, picking the rest of our fruit on October 13th and 14th, much later than our "typical" picking pattern.
Despite the trying conditions, we are very pleased with the quality of the fruit. The extra hang time brought additional complexity. The wines in barrel are much less forward than the 2006's, but with great aromatics. Structurally, these wines are acid-driven (much like fine Burgundies) with lower alcohols, more elegant than the very showy 2006's. They promise to be food-centric wines, with the balance of fruit and structure to make them great for pairing with a wide variety of foods, more typically "Oregonian" than its racier 2006 sister. It will be fun to watch the wine develop in barrel over the coming year. We will keep you posted.
Tasting Highlights: Oregon Pinot Noir
By Harvey Steiman, Wine Spectator • Posted: Friday, October 12, 2007
Willamette Valley's outstanding 2005 and 2004 Pinot Noirs offer grace and balance after a string of hot vintages
In Oregon's 2004 and 2005 vintages, Pinot Noir shows the kind of subtlety, grace and balance that winemakers hope to achieve in Willamette Valley, unlike in hot vintages such as 2001, 2002 and 2003, when it was more difficult to get that balance.
If the more recent years made less obviously dramatic wines, that's exactly what Willamette Valley does best. You can sense it in Torii Mor's Deux Verres Reserve 2005, with its gentle texture and delicacy on the finish. Or in the Benton-Lane First Class 2005, which comes off as lithe and refreshing.
Alcohol levels in these and most of the better wines in 2004 and 2005 hover around 13.5 to 14 percent. That's much lower than was typical in the earlier vintages, and much less than is typical in California.
The other wineries in this group, including Domaine Serene, Lemelson, Ponzi and Patton Valley, strive for that same sense of balance and harmony. In these vintages, they got it. They should keep developing nicely for the next five years or more.
The Screw-Caps are Here!
As we indicated in our fall newsletter, we are moving away from cork in our Pinots, choosing to use screw-caps instead. We are convinced that screwies are superior closures to cork. While cork has been the wine closure standard for a very long time, contamination from TCA (which causes cork-taint), ruins far too many wines. The evidence we have seen on the ability of screw-cap red wines to age properly further convinces us that it is time for a change. In the 2004 Patton Valley Pinot, we have bottled approximately 1/3 of the total in screw-caps. We anticipate over the next few years to transition 100% to screw-caps. But being the risk-averse creatures that we are, we are starting slowly, hoping that our customer base will embrace the superiority of the screwie. If you wish to purchase the 2004 Patton Valley Pinot, you will note on the order form that you have the choice of cork or screw-cap. Or you can leave it up to us. It's up to you America! Vote screw-cap!