Vinography.com Praises Patton Valley's 2007 Pinot Noirs

Wines such as theirs are a pleasure to drink as much for the knowledge that they are the creations of just a few dedicated folks as much as for their flavors, when they are good. And the wines of Patton Valley Vineyard are good -- excellent, in fact. They are one of my benchmarks for Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, and are definitely worth seeking out.

More at Vinography.com.

Meet Jenn Kilfoil, Patton Valley's new Direct Sales Manager

We are very pleased to announce that Jenn Kilfoil has recently joined Patton Valley as Direct Sales Manager. She has responsibility for the Wine Club, the Tasting Room and for all on-line wine sales.

Jenn joins us from Archery Summit, one of Oregon's premier wineries, where she had responsibilities in both the tasting room and in the management of restaurant accounts in Portland. Prior to Archery Summit, she worked as a sales representative for a wine distributor, Mount Hood Distribution, and managed the bar service at Blue Hour, a top restaurant in Portland.

Jenn's primary responsibility is to deliver to you world-class customer service. Please don't hesitate to contact her at 503-442-3940 or at jennifer@pattonvalley.com with any questions or requests you might have, or drop by the Tasting Room and say hello.

Jenn replaces Shannon Koch at the winery, who has moved on to new opportunities. We want to thank Shannon for all of her hard work in establishing the Wine Club and getting the Tasting Room up and going and we wish her well in her future endeavors.

Releasing the 2007 Patton Valley Vineyard Pinot Noir

With the coming of Spring, new wines emerge here at Patton Valley. Recently, it was our cheeky little 2008 Rose. Today, we are very pleased to release the 2007 Patton Valley Pinot Noir. A sensuous, silky beauty, showing elegance and complexity from the cooler 2007 vintage. Exotically perfumed and more "burgundian" than the very voluptuous 2006, the 2007 Pinot shows classic Oregon Pinot character, with great balance and length. In a year where top quality farming was amply rewarded, we believe this wine shines brightly among its peers. To read the full tasting notes, or to order, please click here. $35/bottle, or $378/case (includes 10% discount), or $336 for Wine Club Members.

Releasing the 2008 Pinot Noir Rosé

It is that time of the year again, time for the release of the 2008 Patton Valley Pinot Noir Rosé!

We are fond of all of the rosés that we have made in the past, but the 2008 may just top them all. Salmon pink, just loaded with ripe fruit (think strawberries and peaches) and having a core of acidity to keep it all fresh and lively. That's the good news. The bad news is that we made half as much as last year, so supplies are short, just 239 cases ($16/bottle, or $172.80/case with the 10% case discount). If you are inclined, it would be best to act now. Click here to place an order.

Tasting Room Moves Back to Thursday-Sunday in March.

Old Man Winter is losing his grip, the sun is peeking out, and it is time for us to move from out winter hours of week-ends only to out full Season Tasting Room Schedule. Starting March 5th, we will be open Thursday-Sunday, from 11AM to 5PM. Come on out and help us chase winter away. Bring your family and friends. Thursday and Fridays are great days to visit, the pace is much slower and the crowds are gone.

The Rosé is Coming! The Rosé is Coming!

We know Spring is here when the new Pinot Noir Rosé is ready to go. The release of the Rosé had become a popular event here, and we are very excited about this wine. We will be notifying you later in March with order information. That is the good news. The bad news is that we made half as much 2008 as we did 2007. So keep a lookout for our release email.

Patton Valley Pinot Noir Picked as the 18th Most Popular Pinot Noir in Restaurants

In the April, 2009 issue of Wine & Spirits, the magazine revealed the results of its 20th Annual Restaurant Poll. Patton Valley was selected as the 18th most popular Pinot Noir in this national poll (up from 29th position in the previous year). Over 290 restaurants participated, from 30 different states. We are especially pleased with the results of the poll given that Patton Valley Pinot is distributed in only 14 of the 30 states surveyed. We are also delighted to see the strong showing of Oregon, with 16 of the top 33 Pinots coming from Oregon, compared to just 8 in the previous year. Click this link to read the full story.

2006 Patton Valley Pinot Noir Highest Rated Oregon Pinot Under $40

With these tough economic times, everyone is focusing on getting the most bang for the buck.  A recent review of the Wine Spectator’s online rankings for 2006 Oregon Pinots revealed that Patton Valley is delivering the highest quality for the money.  As of November 13, 2008, the Wine Spectator had reviewed 121 Oregon Pinot Noirs from the 2006 vintage.  Of these wines, 31 were given scores of 92 points or more.  The Patton Valley Vineyard Pinot Noir, at 92 points and a $35 suggested retail price, had the highest quality to price relationship of the group, and was the only wine with a price under $40.

Included in the group of 31 were most of Oregon’s best known quality producers, including Beaux Freres, Bergstrom, Brick House, Domaine Serene, and Penner-Ash.  The average price for this elite group of wines was over $60.  We should point out that the 2006 Patton Valley Lorna-Marie Reserve Pinot has yet to be reviewed by the Spectator.

Inventories of the 2006 Patton Valley Pinot Noir are starting to dwindle.  To secure your wine, go to our online store at our website, www.pattonvalley.com/wine/.

We will continue to strive to bring you the highest quality wine at a very reasonable price."

Pinot Noir Willamette Valley 2006 listed as an Editor's Pick in Wine Spectator Over-$30 category

"Supple, seductive and generous with its red plum, red cherry and rhubarb pie flavors… This is delicious, and should improve in the cellar as the tannins subside more…."

Patton Valley Goes Completely Screwy

Screw-Caps Now Used For All of Our Wines
If you have followed Patton Valley over the past few years, you know that we started converting our wines from cork closures to screw-caps, with 30% of the 2004's, 65% of the 2005's, and 95% of the 2006's (everything except the reserve Lorna-Marie) getting screwies. We are happy to announce that the 2007 vintage will be 100% screw-cap finished, with the $70 2007 Lorna-Marie finally joining the rest of the cellar in Stelvin caps.

Screw-caps are showing up more and more on high-end red wines as the awareness of the marketplace grows to the shortcomings of cork. However, a number of myths and misconceptions concerning the use of screw-caps still exist: wines don't age well in screw-caps, screw-caps cause wines to smell reduced (burnt match smell), only "cheap" wines use them, and it just isn't as "romantic" as a cork. We thought we would relay our experience to date with the screw-cap closure system so that you can understand more fully why we are so committed to it (the answer is, "it delivers a much better product").

Wines Don't Age Well In Screw-Caps
We are not sure of the genesis of this urban myth about screwies. If you Google screw-caps, you will undoubtedly find numerous "experts" who say the screw-caps are good only for wines that you don't plan to hold for further development (presumably, because most say that the restriction of oxygen from entering the wine with a screw-cap will result in the wine remaining in "suspended animation", never evolving). We wonder if any of these "experts" ever tried the experiment of putting the same wine in cork-closed and screw-cap-closed bottles and then tasting the wines over a number of years. We have done that experiment. With the 2004, we have found that the wine has evolved gracefully since going into bottle, in a manner virtually indistinguishable from the cork finished version. While this is not decades of evidence, the belief that wines don't evolve in screw-caps is hogwash.

Wines Get Reduced In Screw-Caps
Wines that are reduced when they go into the bottle will likely smell reduced whether they are in cork or screw-cap. In the 3 vintages in screwies to date, we have detected no emergence of reduction. Maybe we just don't make reduced wines to start with, but we have seen no issue.

Only Cheap Wines Use Screw-Caps
This used to be right 10 years ago, but not today. Notable examples of high-end wines in screw-caps include PlumpJack's $130 Reserve Cabernet from California and Domaine Laroche's Chablis Grand Cru Les Blanchots Reserve de l'Obedieince at $80. In Oregon, high-quality producers such as Argyle and Chehalem are putting age-worthy Pinot Noir in screw-caps. The tide has turned.

Screw-caps Aren't Romantic
We are still scratching our heads on this one. Guess it comes down to your definition of romance. Enough said.

The bottom line comes down to giving the customer the highest quality product we can. Prior to using screw-caps, we estimate that about 10% of our bottles had noticeable variation. Maybe only 1-2% were heinously corked (smelled like moldy cardboard), but many more, up to 10%, were "different", usually showing some degree of reduced fruitness. Leaking corks were also a real headache. With thousands of bottles under our belts with screw-caps, we know of only one bottle being returned for having leaked, and bottle variation has vanished. You deserve to get what you pay for, and we will continue to strive to give you the highest quality product we can.

Harvest 2008 Update — Can you say October?

September 7, 2008

We want to keep you posted on how the 2008 growing season is progressing and also gaze into our crystal ball at the upcoming harvest.

In a nutshell, the growing season has been a rollercoaster ride so far. The early Spring was much colder than normal, leading to delayed budbreak, starting out 2-3 weeks behind "average". Then we had periods of intense heat (some days over 100 degrees) followed by abnormally cool stretches. Weather at bloom was good, as was the fruit set. One feature that looks to mark this vintage and is very promising is that berry size is noticeably smaller than what is typical. Small berries usually mean concentrated wines (the ratio of skins and seeds to juice increases).

We reacted to the slower start out of the blocks by aggressively managing the vineyard canopy and fruit burden. Pulling leaves in the fruit zone as soon as bloom was finished gets more sunshine directly on the fruit, setting more color and helping to ripen the tannins, while improving airflow and spray penetration. We also were careful to drop enough green clusters to keep our yields down to 2 tons/acre, which helps the fruit to ripen evenly and more rapidly.

Another favorable feature of the vintage is that disease pressure, most notably mildew, has been low, which usually means botrytis pressure late in the season will be low. If we end up picking later into October (which is likely), low disease pressure allows us to wait out periods of rain longer, leading to very complex and high-quality wines.

Looking out the window today, we have sunny, warm weather, in the 80's, perfect. We believe that we are currently 10-14 days behind an "average" year, indicating that we will likely start picking (for non-rose) in October, possibly the second week of the month. If you remember the stellar 1999 vintage, another cool growing season, harvest went on for most vineyards into late October, and great wines were made. We believe we are well positioned with tightly controlled crop yields and low disease pressure to be able to pick well into October. We also look back at the wonderful wine that came out of 2005, and the beautiful 2007 yet to be released, both from cooler, wetter vintages, and we are excited about the prospects for this year. Keep your fingers crossed.

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!