The Oregon that isn't Pinot Noir

Oregon is a young wine region, dating back to the 1960s. In that short time, it's become defined by Pinot Noir. The grape accounts for over 60% of plantings, mainly in the long, narrow Willamette Valley that stretches south of Portland. Given the high quality of its Pinot Noir, it's no wonder that the association between Oregon and Pinot is so strong. But Oregon is a large state, sharing some of its AVAs with neighbouring Washington and Idaho in desert-like conditions in contrast to the rainy Willamette Valley. And then there's Southern Oregon, just north from California, with a continental climate not dissimilar from the northern Rhône.

I decided to make the drive up from Napa to find out about the wines being made in Southern Oregon, without quite realising the terrain one has to cover. After hours of driving straight along the flat I-5, the highway rises into the Cascades, a mountain range with active volcanoes that stretches all the way to Washington. It's beautiful, but snow was falling heavily with temperatures dropping to -3˚C in the middle of the afternoon.

Once across the border, the highway falls quickly down into valleys where snow was still drifting down on vines planted in obscure corners far away from any major city. The hills are beautiful, covered with trees and snow; the valleys remote, with wineries hidden away. This is the US at its quirkiest and most local.

Rogue Valley

The first thing to be said about Rogue Valley is that it has a great name. The second thing is that it's a dramatically beautiful region, surrounded by snowy hillsides covered in evergreens (logging has been Oregon's main industry since the nineteenth century). It's a popular tourist destination, not so much for its wine as for its Shakespeare festival. Nevertheless, it's quite remote and the wineries are scattered far apart in the countryside, especially in the Applegate Valley sub-region.

Many fruits are grown here, and grape vines are still a recent addition to the landscape and economy. But although few people outside of Oregon know about the wines from the area, the wineries have already established a reputation with tourists as well as locals. Some focus is needed, on how to promote the industry as well as which grape varieties work best.

Despite the snow during my visit, apparently anything can grow here in the dry summers, even Petit Verdot. The best wines are from Rhône varieties, both black and white, where there's a fresh acidity to complement the ripe fruits and full body. But this is a young wine region still learning about what works and what doesn't: there's also good Merlot and the Gewürztraminer I tried from Wooldridge was as good an example of that difficult grape variety as I've had in some time.

Umpqua Valley

A couple of hours further north is Umpqua Valley, another region with a great name. Despite being further north, it's a bit warmer than Rogue Valley (it wasn't snowing for a start, just raining), with a climate more Spanish than French. The main draw for my visit was Abacela, a winery established in 1995 by a dermatologist from Florida. His love for Spanish wine caused him to ask why no one in the US made wine from Tempranillo as good as that found in Spain (a fact which largely still holds true across the US and the rest of the world). With the help of his son, a climatologist, they spent three years looking for the perfect site within the US for Tempranillo.

Tempranillo is a tricky grape: it ripens early so needs a difficult climate to make it ripen more slowly. In Rioja, Tempranillo is grown at altitude with a maritime influence, while in Ribera del Duero it can be grown at 850m elevation to escape the hot temperatures. The choice of a site in Umpqua Valley was an inspired one: a continental climate with varied aspect, elevation, and temperature where Tempranillo gets rich, ripe aromas without ripening too quickly.

Abacela's Barrel Reserve Tempranillo 2013 is an extraordinary wine. It has the concentration and structure of Ribero del Duero, without the aggressive tannins, and is easily the best Tempranillo I have tasted from outside Spain. It makes clear how important site selection is for Tempranillo: you can't just plant it for the sake of it. Abacela also make very good Albariño and Garnacha, making Umpqua Valley a little piece of Spain.

It's hard to imagine the small wineries of Southern Oregon making enough of an impact to dislodge perceptions of Oregon as a Pinot Noir state: to do so will take a long, long time. But there's some really good wine being made there, at very affordable prices. It may not be an easy region to get to, but the beautiful landscape and the wine are worth the effort.
 

A Vegetarian Christmas

Christmas can't be an ideal time to be a vegetarian; all that turkey and when it's not turkey it's goose, or some other game. However, there are plenty of vegetarian food options - the BBC, Jamie Oliver, and the Vegetarian Society have some good recipes - which can be as rich and decadent as a traditional Christmas meal - and, after all, all those side dishes are meat free.

Matching wine with vegetarian food is not as obvious as with meat or fish. The great wines of France, Spain, and Italy have developed in tandem with the local gastronomic culture, which has usually involved meat or fish dishes, and these are countries where vegetarian food can still be difficult to find.

What this means, though, is that matching vegetarian food with wine is not based on tradition but innovation, and you can really experiment with both food and wine. Thinking about matching flavour intensity rather than specific flavours, here are some pairing recommendations based on styles of wine.

Champagne

Any Christmas meal should start with a bit of fizz, and the yeasty, bready, toasty flavours of Champagne make it a great match for canapés, pastries, tarts, bruschetta, or even poppadoms.

Sauvignon Blanc

The aromas of Sauvignon Blanc are intensely green - apple, gooseberry, green bell pepper, asparagus. Goat's cheese salad is a perfect match: this polenta and goat's cheese stacks recipe would be a much more indulgent and Christmassy option.

Gewurztraminer

This is where you can really start to experiment. Gewurztraminer is often off-dry (particularly if it's from Alsace) and has rich, opulent flavours of tropical fruits (think lychee and mango) that makes it a great pairing for spicy Asian food, particularly Thai or Vietnamese. It may not sound that Christmassy, but that just depends on what you want to eat on Christmas day.

Pinot Gris

Pinot Gris is the same grape as Pinot Grigio, but it's picked much later on in the harvest, meaning that it has much deeper, richer aromas and may be quite a bit sweeter. Whereas Pinot Grigio is an easy-drinking aperitif, Pinot Gris can accompany an array of foods. Again, like Gewurztraminer, the nutty depth of Pinot Gris can stand up to spicy food: I recently had a New Zealand Pinot Gris alongside an aubergine and cauliflower rogan josh curry (at Green's in West Didsbury) and its nutty spiciness added further complexity to the meal. This Christmas curry would similarly benefit from being paired with Pinot Gris.

Italian Reds

Due to their high acidity and high tannins, Italian reds are at their best as food wines. The reason that Italian reds are so high in acidity is to match the sauces in pasta, so it doesn't matter whether there's meat in the pasta dish or not: it's all about the rich sauce accompanying it. Jamie Oliver recommends a couple of spinach-based pasta dishes that a Chianti or Valpolicella would be great with.

Pinot Noir

A grape that tradition pairs with game, but the earthy characteristics of Pinot Noir mean that it will go perfectly with any mushroom-based dish. This vegetarian Christmas roast almost demands a bit of Burgundy.

Sweet Wine

At the end of the meal, veggies and carnivores can get together in sweet harmony and share a sherry and Christmas pudding or port and cheese. For sherries, seek out in particular the intensely sweet Pedro Ximénez style. The French may not make their wines to suit vegetarian palates, but there's one combination that works well: Sauternes and blue cheese. Now there's a way to end Christmas day...

An Aromatic Flight

Apart from simply writing about what I love thinking and talking about, one of the main reasons I started this blog was to record how I progress in the WSET Diploma which I begin in January, what I learn from it, and where it leads me.

One of the many daunting aspects of the Diploma is the blind tasting, where you are asked to provide detailed tasting notes on flights of wine, including spotting the identity of a wine and its age.

To help practise this technique, the WSET recommends a series of flights to taste, such as "Full-bodied spicy reds" (Shiraz, Zinfandel, Malbec) or "Old-World Oaked Whites" (Côte de Beaune, Rioja, Cru Classé Bordeaux). The only problem with this advice is that some of the flights suggested are quite expensive - "Gamey, Strawberry-ish reds" (Burgundy, Barolo, Rioja) - and you need like-minded people to share the wines with.

For this reason - and despite tasting lots of wine in the meantime - I had until now only gone through one of the recommended flights, "Syrah/Shiraz" (Northern Rhône, South-Eastern Australia, Barossa). Here, identifying the inexpensive wine was straightforward, but less so distinguishing between the French Syrah and Barossa Shiraz, showing just far from its stereotypes premium Australian Shiraz lies.

I finally rectified this lack of flight tasting by haphazardly creating a version of the recommended flight of "Unoaked aromatic whites" (Alsace Gewurztraminer, Argentinian Torrontés, Dry Muscat). Not having two of these in the house, I opted for an Australian Viognier and a Vinho Verde, as well as an Alsace Gewurztraminer, all of which are available from the Wine Society.

Knowing what the wines were, if not which ones were which, clearly helped. The distinctive aromas of Gewurztraminer leapt out of the glass and the slight spritz pointed towards the Vinho Verde, leaving the Viognier as a process of deduction. Next, it's braving tasting wines completely blind...

what we tasted

Vinho Verde, Viognier, Gewurztraminer

 

Dócil Vinho Verde, Niepoort 2012, £9.95

Vinho Verde is the only region in Portugal known for its white wines. Possessing a floral aroma with a slight sparkle, it can be made from a variety of grapes, including, as here, Loureiro.
Dirk Niepoort is a character in the Portuguese wine scene; from an important port family, he also produces great reds and whites from the Douro, but I didn't know he also made Vinho Verde. However, this wine didn't have the character of his Douro whites I've tasted.
Tasting notes: deep lemon-green colour; citrus fruits (grapefruit, lemon) and tropical fruits (banana) on the nose, with medium(-) intensity; high acidity, medium intensity and body, and same citrus fruits on the palate, with a spicy (ginger) finish.
Overall conclusion: good. Nose lacking, but spicy finish on mouth.

Princes Abbés, Schlumberger 2011, £13.50

From an historic, and Alsace's largest, estate, you could smell the rich aromas of Gewurztraminer before you even picked up the glass.
Tasting notes: medium gold colour; pronounced intensity on the nose, with tropical fruits (lychee, mango, pineapple), stone fruits (apricot), and citrus fruits (orange peel and marmalade); on the palate, medium-dry, medium(+) acidity and intensity; fruits as above, with a medium(+) finish.
Overall conclusion: good. I felt that the acidity wasn't quite high enough to balance the sweetness.

Tahbilk Viognier 2012

Tahbilk, from Nagambie Lakes in Victoria, own the oldest Marsanne vines in the world, dating back to the 1860s. I've tasted their Marsanne wines before - nutty, danky, and weirdly ageworthy - but this is the first time I've had any of their other wines. Viognier is a grape which produces perfumed, floral wines and this was the best wine of the three.
Tasting notes: medium lemon colour; green fruits (apples and ripe pears), tropical fruits (mango, passion fruit), kernel, and possibly some MLF; medium(+) acidity, body, and flavour intensity on the palate, with pine nuts, cinnamon, white pepper, as well as green and tropical fruits, with a long finish.
Conclusion: very good. Depth of flavour and intensity, though spices dominate the finish.

Three good wines which, despite all being aromatic, were quite different: a fresh Vinho Verde, a medium-dry Gewurztraminer, and a fuller-bodied Viognier. The New World screwcap wins...