Lenné Estate

2009, the vintage that almost never was

In early September of 2009 I was walking the vineyard with David O'Reilly of Owen Roe fame and a thought hit me; what if it rains? The answer was clear, turn off the lights, the party is over. Lucky for us we didn't have any early rains like 2007. In 2007 the fruit could sustain rain with smaller berries and thicker skins than in 2009. In 2009 the vines set grapes with thin skin and large berries. Hot weather in July dehydrated a percentage of berries in each cluster, compounding our worries. After an inch or two of rain you could have stood in the vineyard and imagined those berries sucking up water and popping like bubble wrap under a steam roller. Luckily the rain didn't come early in 2009.

2009 was certainly one of the more trying vintages in our brief history. It was a warm vintage with excessive ripeness because of the dehydration and warm weather. In warm vintages you have to make a choice between flavor development or higher alcohols. Grapes need to hang on the vine to attain flavor but the sugar in the grapes rise quickly in warm years. Yeasts gobble up that sugar during fermentation and convert it to alcohol. But when faced with leaving grapes on the vine to develop flavors or picking early to control the alcohol,  I always choose flavor development.

That was a difficult choice in 2009 and was made worse by the low tannin content and low natural acidity of the wines. I was worried that the wines wouldn't be balanced and the alcohol would be dominate. But then a funny thing happened, the wines seemed to integrate the alcohol with some time in the bottle. I still can't argue that the 2009 wines from Oregon are balanced, nature just didn't give us wines that had the perfect amount of fruit, acid, alcohol and tannins like the 2008 vintage. But I can say that while the alcohol's are high, the wines are full of flavor and not as hot as I expected. 

In fact most consumers prefer them the the 2008 wines as I thought they would. I suppose because is they are flat out delicious. The wines are fruit forward, soft on the palate and ready to drink now. They are some of the fastest selling wines we have ever produced at Lenné. And the biggest, most fruit forward wine we made in 2009 has also been the fastest selling clonal designate ever: 2009 Lenné Kill Hill Pinot Noir. It is big and explosive on the palate and while my customers favorite right now, I prefer both the Lenne 2009 Eleanor's 114 and the 2009 Lenne Jill's 115 Pinot Noirs. 

Whatever your preference, you have to keep in mind that the 2009 wines will be short lived. If you have them in your cellar 5 years from now you have made a mistake though they should get aromatically more complex with 2-3 years of bottle ageing. Also, with summer upon us, it is important to serve the wines at a cool room temperature as the alcohol will stick out if they become warm. Just remember to drink the 09's and let  your 08's sit in the cellar at least  until late fall, but longer if you have patience. The 2008 wines are in the toddler phase, starting to show some personality, but very undeveloped still. 

2008 Pinot Noir: in perfect balance

Funny how running a vineyard and managing a small brand tends to get in the way of social media. Maybe it says something about us baby boomers that it is a new way to communicate for us. Well I am more guilty than anyone but I decided it is high time to dust off the blog, maybe even post something on our face book page....and god knows, I might even tweet! Well that maybe going a bit too far but I have to say something about the 2008 vintage.

Most people don't realize that the 2008 vintage was slightly cooler than the 2007 vintage that was panned by critics. It is true that the 07 vintage was characterized by rain showers during harvest, but what critics didn't understand is that you can still make good wine with a little bit of rain, especially if you are on a steep, well drained, windy site. I would say that steep, south facing, windy sites at the right elevation are what separate great sites from good and mediocre sites in our part of the world. In 2007, a slightly warmer year than 2008, these sites made some wine that is turning out to be stellar. Don't believe me? Well my favorite wine at Lenné right now is our 2007 Lenné Estate Pinot Noir. It just tastes better than any of the 2008's at the moment.

But the 2008 Pinot Noirs will surpass the 07's at some point. As much as I like the 07's right now, there is a special quality about the 2008 vintage that needs to be fleshed out a bit. First, it was a moderate growing season which is always a good thing in the Willamette Valley. It was cool, but I always prefer cool over hot. While the fall was warmer in 2007, the 2008 vintage was marked by cool weather after the middle of September but dry for the most part. And the rain didn't come in earnest until November. So winemakers were able to let the grapes hang and develop flavor.

That isn't really any news but what often goes unnoticed is the fruit set. It is one of the most important aspects adding to the quality of the vintage. Berry size and the thickness of the skins are very important to the overall quality of a vintage. In 2007 we had small berries and clusters, just what I prefer to see. The clusters were uniform, but the skins were relatively thin. In 2008(and 2010 I might add), clusters and berries were small as well, but with thick skins.  That played a key role in determining the end wines. The cool, dry autumn let winemakers leave the fruit hanging so the copious skin tannins could develop. If the weather would have been hot, we would have had something more akin to 2006 where we were fighting rising sugars(and the resulting higher alcohol wines). Instead, we had gorgeous fruit that retained it's natural acidity, matured the skin tannins and developed loads of flavor due to the long hang time.

The resulting wines have perfect balance. They have a lot of very fine tannins, beautiful mouthwatering(not mouth puckering) acidity and deep, layered fruit. When you taste them you need to pay attention or you will miss them. You have to taste them over a day, get intimate with them, start to understand them and be mesmerized by them. They are fickle, coming out and then going back into hiding again.  And if you drink them now, you are wasting your money.

I have a friend who tells me that if you drink Burgundy before it is 15 years old you are an idiot. I tell him if I have to wait more than 5 years before I can enjoy a wine it probably isn't for me...I'm not getting any younger. But with the 2008's you need to wait a year or two and if you want an ethereal experience, longer than that.

So why will most consumers like the 2009 wines better? Well I suppose that is fodder for another post. 

 

 

 

Culinary light in the most suprising places

Sometimes you find culinary gems in the most unusual place. I had that experience recently at two very different restaurants. When you live inside Portland proper, you never think about going to the suburbs to eat, you just don't. There are just too many great restaurants close to home that making a jaunt across the river for dinner is a special circumstance and in our case, two dear friends live in the Portland suburb called Bethany. In this typical suburban landscape  sits a small suburban commercial center called Bethany village with a multitude of commercial business sitting at the base of a several swaths of condo complexes.

And in downtown Suburbia who would have thunk it, a fantastic Friday night wine tasting at an ever evolving eatery called The Bethany Table.

The Bethany Table started off as a prepare your own meal franchise and has evolved beyond that more to a more conventional restaurant. What puzzles me is why their Friday night tastings don't have a waiting list a mile long. It was one of the best $30 dollars I ever spent. Owners David Bowles and Janet O`Conner call it a wine tasting, but it is more like a four course sampling menu paired with wines. The first course was a ceaser salad paired with a Macon. Following that was a salmon bisque with a Mark Ryan Chardonnay. The next course was a Barbera D'Alba paired with Janet's beautiful savory tart(Janet used to own The Savory Tart in the Hollowood district in Portland). The meal, oh tasting, finished with a small piece of prime rib paired with two great Cabernets from Washington. Could you spend a better $30 in this recession if you are a food and wine lover?

My other recent culinary experience also opened my eyes. You would think that the Oregon wine country would have a plethora of great places to eat but the food scene is just starting to evolve in Oregon wine country.  A number of good if not great places exist, but one great restaurant can boast the best food in Oregon wine country for my dollar: The Painted Lady.

The Painted Lady is most certainly a fine dining experience. If you are in the mood fore something casual and quick this isn't the place to go. This is a place to languish over a meal, to savor the Northwest dining experience that is fresh, delicious and beautifully presented.  If you are here on a wine country experience, I wouldn't miss this.

And two new places have rave review. The first is Jory, the restuarant at the new 80 room wine country hotel called the Allison Inn and Spa. I haven't eaten there yet, but I have heard good reveiws and I have to love any hotel that plants a huge garden for fresh produce.

The second new restuarant is Farm to Fork at the Inn at Red Hills in Dundee

. I have heard nothing but good things about this new eatery including rave reveiws from my business partner and chec, Gabriel Caliendo. Gabe knows food and said he had an amazing food experience there which puts it high on my to do list.

Wine country in the Northern Willamette Valley isn't the new Napa and we are happy about that, but a little world class food sprinkled in doesn't hurt.

You meet the nicest people.

Summer is finally upon us at Lenné. By the time mid July hits much of our work in the vineyard is done. With less time on the tractor, I find myself enjoying some warm afternoons on the deck enjoying the view and reflecting on how far we have come from that April day in 2000 when we first stepped foot an this steep pasture in the heart of Yamhill County.

Along the way a few interesting , sometime disastrous things have happened. But last week I had to reflect on something that has nothing to do with what happens in the vineyard, nothing to do with the weather or wine quality. I had to reflect on the people you meet along the way.

About a year ago several couples visited the winery and became big fans. One of the couples, Mike and Anne, have visited since and on one of their visits we started talking about Burgundy. On their most recent visit they surprised me with some Burgundies from their cellar. Not just any Burgundies, but Premier Crus from the mid to late 90's and one Gran Cru from 92. I was flabbergasted. I buy several Premier Crus from each vintage but only go back to 98 in my cellar. While I will wait for fall to dip into any of these wines, I was really gob smacked as my English relatives would say, that Mike and Anne would open up their cellar to me and truck these beautiful wines from the east coast.

Later that day a small foreign car made its way up the hill with an older and younger man. For me it was an opportunity missed as I was rushing to pick up a tractor part before the Oregon Vineyard Supply store closed. I have long suspected that there are two or three people on the planet who read my blog and low and behold, the younger man was one of them. He said he followed my "living the dream" blog and that is why they came. I was speechless twice in one day. Unfortunately it was an opportunity missed for me as I was in a hurry and couldn't spend more time with them. It turns out that the older man was his father and he took some time to chat with me before I left. He was from Belgium and had been in the ag business and was the type of person whose life experience showed on his face. He was more than interesting and part of me just wanted to sit down and have a glass of wine and listen, learn about his life.

Driving away that night I thought about Mike and Anne and the Belgian and his son and all the people I who have sought out our special little place. You really do meet the nicest people in this business and it made me think that I am really lucky to be living this dream.

The 2007 vintage in the mud.

Well, with another late spring and the admonishment from the two or three people who read my blog for being absent so long, I decided it was time I say something about the 2007 vintage in these uncertain times.

There probably will never be a bad vintage every again in Oregon or anywhere else. That's if you believe a vintner and from my perspective you should always believe what we have to say. I have read some crazy things about the 2007 vintage in the Northern Willamette Valley, but suffice to say it is a vintage like 2007 that separates the great sites from the rest. Great sites produced some remarkable wine, worthy of seeking out, but for every great site, there were probably 20 that produced marginal wine.

It's not that the 2007 vintage produced lighter, more delicate wines, but that there is a hollowness about many of them the make them ultimately not as satisfying. Does that mean they aren't enjoyable? Far from it, their delicacy makes them an appealing when juxtaposed to their 2006 high alcohol counterparts. And, if you believe a recent New York Times article detailing the California vintners who are extoling the virtues of delicate Pinot Noir, we should get our pencils sharpened to count all the money from the orders bound to be flooding in. That article might be a discussion for another blog, picking Pinot Noir early to capture it's delicacy......lol.  While we are at it we can hang 4 tons per acre(well my stressed vineyard would never set that much), that ought to produce some delicacy.

But I digress. What I am really hear to talk about is the 2007 vintage. Jay Miller from The Wine Advocate summed up the vintage pretty well: "2007 appears to be a superb vintage for Pinot Noir. It will appeal to fans who like the intellectual appeal of Burgundy as well as those who come down more on the hedonist's side of the coin." That counts about 90% of consumers out. If you lined up 10 wine consumers, not Pinot Geeks, but the type of people who know Pinot and enjoy it and buy it, 8 out of 10 of them would pick the 06 vintage in a blind tasting over the 07. It's just the way it is.

Myself, I would favor the 07 Oregon wines that came from great sites, not necessarily the ones that came from lessor sites. Pinot tends to go from cherry, to black cherry, to really black cherry,to borderline plum and prune in the warmer vintages. There is no denying the opulence of the 2006 vintage, but the bright fruit, inherent spicy qualities of the 07 vintage, work for me better than the flavors of the 06.

I have told people unabashadly that I will be shocked if anyone makes a better 07 in Oregon than my 2007 Lenné Estate. My site is steep and windy which is important to prevent absorbtion from the showers that plagued us all through harvest. It was an interesting vintage to look back on and I am sure it would have been a disaster 10 years earlier when crop levels and canopy management were much more in line with the lower prices of the wines then. But there is a reason we drop fruit, spend a ton of money in managing our canapy and our vineyard in general: vintages like 2007. 

I was also fortunate to have a good mentor in 2007, David O'Reilly of Owen Roe. David buys grapes from me which go into his Kilmore Pinot Noir. He and his crew have had a big hand in making my wine what it is. On the 24th of September, we samples and walked the vineyard tasting grapes. We were at 23.5-24 degrees brix with good pH numbers. We knew the rain was coming and I was nervous, may have even jumped the gun as I hadn't been through a wet vintage on my site. "After we finished walking the vineyard all David said was, "go ahead and pick your grapes if you want to, but leave my portion hang." Enough said, I did it and one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Some good wines will be made from 2007, maybe even some great ones, but no bad wines. You can believe that, you read it on the internet. 

Living the Dream, Vol. 2

Memorial Day weekend is always a big weekend in the Northern Willamette Valley and I am starting to think, an omen at Lenné.  Last year, I  was buying banquet tables the week before Memorial Day when I got the call. It was a friend who was doing some mowing for me and turned a corner and said he lost tension on the clutch. No problem I thought, must be a cable, after all, my little blue baby, otherwise known as a 60 hp New Holland TN75V, only had about 800 hours on it. Tractors are build like brick sh*#+t houses, or so the theory goes. And I had come to depend and trust, dare I say develop a real affection for that tractor. We had spent a lot of time together. That is me and baby blue in better times. 

That week, I had plenty to do to get ready for our first Memorial Day back in 2007. But when you are living the dream, sometimes the dream isn't like you dream about it. Over the next couple of days I spent about 14 hours under that tractor in the middle of the vineyard trying to install a new clutch cable and restore the tension.  But the only thing that was getting tenser was me and I finally had to  come to grips with the truch; my tractor done me wrong.

Well about a month and $4500 dollars later I licked my wounds and started rebuilding trust with baby blue. I still wonder about her at times, but so far so good. You wouldn't think a clutch would go out with so few hours, but stuff happens when you are living the dream.

This year was all different. We had a big tasting with our club members on a 95 degree day a week before the Memorial Day weekend. I released the 2006 Lenné Estate "Karen's Pommard" Pinot Noir. The wine represents our two best barrels from the 2006 Vintage and puts the o in opulent. You hear people say about wines, "oh it's a food wine." Well, I know what they mean and this is not a wine you would say that about. It is rich, textured and makes a lasting impression and judging by the sales that day, people agreed with me.

But I digress. A couple days before the big weekend I was feeling good, realizing I had already done much of the preparation for the Memorial Day weekend. On Thursday I decided to weed the landscape at the tasting room and give it a little bit of water. About noon, I noticed the water pressure starting to weaken. I jumped in my truck and drove up to the cistern at the top of the vineyard. Sure enough it was nearly dry. Back to the pump house to see what the problem was. Everything seemed okay, but didn't look like we had power.

Fortunately, I got a hold of my pump guy. When you own a piece of rural property, you have to have a pump guy. As luck would have it, he was in the area and stopped in a couple hours later. Yep no power, that was the problem. You also get to know a good electrician and fortunately, the guys who worked on the building initially were able to come out the following morning. That was good news considering I had a partner and his wife who were staying at the tasting room Friday night and probably would like a shower and the use of a toilet, not to mention the people over the weekend who might need the same relief.

But Friday morning, the electrician couldn't locate the break in the huge 4 0tt cable that stretched some 500 feet through the vineyard. I knew where the cable was as I trenched and buried it back in 2004, but the location of the problem was going to take some additional instruments. The electricians left and by noon on Friday I was a little panicky about the lack of toilets all weekend, but figured I could wire a generator into the pump house. I rented a generator and with a little help on the phone from the electrician, wired it all up and got water flowing to the cistern. Later that afternoon, I was feeling pretty damn smug,  realizing that I had reacted on the fly and learned how to wire in a generator and save the day, or at least the weekend.

About five on Friday I was waiting for my partner and his wife to arrive and turned on the faucet,-nothing. Up to the pump house again and I realized that the water was flowing into the cistern, but the immersible pump in the cistern wasn't bringing it out and down to the tasting room. I double, triple checked my wiring, called the pump guy who was probably halfway to Montana by now, being it was now six the Friday before Memorial Day, and when I got his answering machine, I did start to panic even more.

My partner and his wife finally arrived and we stared at it for a while until I finally decided to call it a night and left at around eight. I rigged up 50 gallons of water and a bucket so my partner and his wife could at least flush the toilets. I drove home wondering what the hell I was going to do the next day.

You always hate to get a guy out of bed at 6:45 am on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, but I thank my lucky stars the pump guy who's name is Phil, answered the phone, a little groggy, but answered nonetheless. By 9 he was at the vineyard installing a new panel for the sump pump which had probably fried in a power surge when the power went or when we got it back on. At eleven that morning, water came flowing down the hill and ten minutes later our first customers came in and happily used the toilet. My partner and his wife even got to get a shower in later that day.

I guess small miracles, a little luck and a good pump guy are all big when you are living the dream.

Smell is everything?

I used to think aromatics were everything with wine. But like all things, my perspective has changed. Perhaps it is a function of age as our olfactory sense diminishes with time. I sometimes also think that women have the best olfactory sense. Don't believe me? Just check out Katherine Cole's column for the Oregonian. Talk about Le Nez. I hope someday she sits down with with one of my Pinot Noir's and puts her nose to it, so to speak.

While it makes for great reading, wine is more and more about the palate to me. I need to sense the wine especially in the mid palate and finish. There is a fifth taste on the palate called umami and some wines give me an impression of this taste, though it is created by tannin and acid balance, not the chemical component of the umami taste. It is almost a savory taste you sense on the mid part of the palate. Increasingly, I am under the impression that this sense separates the merely good wines, from great wines.

Where does it come from? Well I think it comes from the vineyard. Sites with controlled vigor produce more concentrated wines and contribute to this impression on the mid palate. To me these are the most satisfying wines. Moreover, they may not be the ones that reveal themselves on the first taste. Generally people are pulled in by the aromatics long before the taste. But on drinking more than a taste, sitting with a glass, a bottle, the wine always reveals itself for what it is. The best wines make an undeniable impression on the mid palate and finish. Well at least that is my definition of great wine.

I had a local retailer tell me recently after trying a bottle of my 2006 Lenné Estate Pinot Noir, that he couldn't stop drinking it. I think the reason is that satisfying, almost savory quality on the mid palate. I get that impression from another wine I have recently had a fair amount of, the 2005 Yakima Red from Owen Roe. This is a wine that grows on me each time I taste it. It is maybe one of the most structured wines from Owen Roe, meaning it has a fair amount of tannin, but in a good way, a way that adds to the wine's richness. I can't wait to taste this wine in 10 years, as I think it has the stuffing to last.

Two other wines which I have liked very much lately, perhaps not as much of that mid palate quality, but nice wines nonetheless are the 2005 Abeja Cabernet Sauvignon from Walla Walla and the 2005 Siltstone Guadalupe Pinot Noir. The Abeja wine has some interesting smoky, almost chocolate like aromas and a soft, supple texture. The Siltstone is from a vineyard I pass everyday and has great aromatics, full of black and red fruit with a very fine tannin structure leaving the impression of velvet.

Does great wine go with food?

It is January and being bored, I organized a few tastings for my wine club members called the Rootstock Club. The first Saturday tasting featured a comparison of wines form the two main soil types in the Northern Willamette Valley. After a blind tasting we sat down to lunch. Two of my club members were sitting next to me and uttered the unthinkable, "we really don't like wine that much with dinner, we like it better afterwards."

It made me think about something Hatch, the winemaker at Fromm told me when we were in New Zealand. He said we are all trying to make great wines, but most days I just need a good wine with dinner. Sometimes I think that most great wines are destroyed by food. It's the perfect food and wine match that brings out the best in each other. But who has time to sit around and come up with the perfect food and wine match? In reality, it is the simplest of foods that works with great wine. We should probably have simpler wines with more complex meals or keep food simple when we are having a great wine.

The problem is none of us eats simply when we are out. I went to a very well know Portland eatery recently,  a place with well known chefs and a restaurant that has sadly lost it's mojo. Well, maybe food for thought for another blog on the life cycle of restaurants. But while the mojo was missing, the food was still good and the wine was great(if I say so myself), the 2006 Lenné Estate Pinot Noir. The wine is finally out of bottle shock and has opened like a rose, with amazing mid palate and finish. You will have to excuse my immodesty on this wine, but it really sinks into the mid-palate with an almost savory quality.

I suppose I look for length above all else in categorizing a wine as great. Not that wine can be reduced to one element, but I know that without length, I can't think of a wine as great. That length is almost always diminished by food. Perhaps I should re-think my definition of great wine, but I will stick to the idea that great wines can't be put down, they hold your interest after the meal is over. On the night in question, the wine was obliterated by a first coarse which included a garlic laden salad and a spicy curry soup with ginger. It was a good exercise in how to make a great wine taste bad. In a perfect world, I would have ordered an Alsatian wine or Oregon PInot Gris for the first coarse but, too many wines and such a small liver.

In any case, the wine went better with my duck and horrible with my wife's scallops. And yet, another problem with food and wine pairing, a wife who doesn't eat meat. I can tell you that by the end of the meal, the wine started to taste recognizable but it made me think about the kinds of wine we make and what their place is with food.

Matt Kramer had a good article recently about food and wine. I loved the line: One thing is certain: Food gives wine meaning. I know what he means and yet really have no clue. We spend a lot of money meticulously managing our vineyard to produce wines of depth, very perceptible on the mid palate and finish.  While wines always help clean food off your palate and these wines add to the overall meal, I almost always find them diminished by food. Sacrilegious! Probably, but thats why I keep that inexpensive bottle around, a little more restrained, higher in acid and perfectly good with dinner.

New Zealan, final impressions

We finally headed south to Central Otago and saw some great scenery along the way....at least until we came to the glacier town of Franz Joseph. We were lucky enough to walk up to the glacier and get some photos. Later that evening it started raining and rained the entire next day on our trip to Central Otago and we missed the spectacular(or so they say) scenery of the Southern Alps.

After a night in Wanuka, we made our way to Queenstown to explore the wines of Central Otago. We stopped briefly at Carrick and then moved on to one of the stars of the region, Mt. Difficulty. Mt. Difficulty sits on a hill with spectacular views. We sat out on the terrace and enjoyed the views and the booms of the bird cannons coming from the cherry orchards below. Most of Mt. Difficulty's single vineyard Pinot Noirs were sold out and the one remaining was about $80 New Zealand dollars which was close to the norm for single vineyard bottlings. With the exchange rate being so poor, it was a stretch to take a chance on something we couldn't taste. But we sat happily drinking a lower tier Pinot called Roaring Meg, named after the famous waterfall in a New Zealand state park, who's name escapes me at the moment.

After Mt. Difficulty we headed to Quartz reef and later to Felton Road. Danny Schuster had told us to stop in at Quartz Reef and see  Rudi  Bauer, an Austrian who had worked  several vintages at Sokol Blossor. I think Rudi said something that put Central Otago into perspective, that these were still young days for this winegrowing area. I liked Rudi's 2006 Pinot Noir as well as anyones in Central and I imagine his single vineyard wines were that much better. I think he is producer to keep an eye on.

Leaving Quartz Reef we headed to what I thought were the best wines we tasted in Central, Felton Road. Their wines were a little more balanced than most. My impression of Central Otago overall were of very high acid wines. I don't know if that was indicative of the 2006 vintage, or a preference throughout the region. But the ph on these wines rendered most of the wines hard and acidic to me. I can't say that I found much mid palate in any of the wines and when we left Central Otago, I wondered if some of these wines would ever even out in the cellar. But that is my impression of a lot of Burgundies I taste as well.

It remains to be see, I suppose, the ageability of New Zealand Pinot Noirs. Overall I was very impressed with the people, but more excited about the Riesling than the Pinot Noir. In Central Otago, the wines were more varietal in the nose than up north, but they lacked the suppleness. In the north, the wines were more supple, but had more secondary flavors, probably from the extended macerations that seemed to be the norm. My favorite wine was still the wine my friend Paul opened in Wellington, the 1999 Dry River Pinot Noir. Perhaps my second favorite was the wine from Danny Schuster, the 2006 Ohmi Hills Pinot Noir. I loved the wines of Neudorf, Ata Rangi, overall, my two favorite producers. And, I  just sat with a bottle of the Fromm Riesling last night with Thai food, a perfect match, I can't wait to taste the single vineyard Fromm Pinot's I brough back in 6 or 7 years.   I also came back a better knowledge of biodynamic farming than I ever had and an appreciation for how gracious wine people can be with our visit to Seresin.

I wish I would have brought back more Riesling, nearly every producer has them and most are good. It makes me think of how forgotten that wine is with the general population here, though in wine circles it is making a bit of a resurgence. I did bring a lot of Pinot Noir back to share with others as well as a sense that I will follow New Zealand wines more closely and return someday to see how far they have come. More importantly, I brought back images of the people I met, the information they shared and how great they were in general.

On the plane over, I talked with a young engineer who lives in San Francisco but is from New Zealand. He pretty much summed it up. "The difference," he said, "between us and American, is that we don't talk as much about what we are capable of or what we have done, we just go out and do it." I found that same understated attitude in all the wine people we met and that alone, is worth another trip.

New Zealand, Vol. 5

We left Nelson and headed towards Hanmer Springs, home of the thermal pools and the not so world famous Heritage Hotel. While sitting in thermal pools is someones else's idea of fun, the scenery alone is worth the trip. The fact that Hanmer Springs is about 40 minutes from the winegrowing area of Wiapara also adds to its interest.

After spending an afternoon seeing the sites of Hanmer Springs, we headed to Waipara and  pitched up at Pegasus Bay, a beautiful family owned and run winery in the heart of Waipara. We were greated in the tasting room Edward who is a family member and the marketing manager.  Edward tasted us on all the wines and we fell in love with the Riesling. It is amazing that nearly every winery produces Riesling and some delicious ones at that. I rarely found the minerality that you associate with Riesling in some areas, but the wines are full of great fruit and floral aromas.

Pegasus Bay is a beautiful winery in the heart of Waipara and besides making some nice wine, they have a fantastic venue for lunch. In fact, I would have to say that the lunch at Pegasus Bay, was one of our nicest meals in New Zealand. We selected the lunch platter for two with a glass of 2004 Pinot Noir and a glass of the Marlborough Savvy. The platter was as beautifully presented as any food we have had, with oysters, a great country pate and beautiful greek olives to name a few. We sat outside overlooking the small lake and the most difficult thing about having lunch here, was getting up to leave. It was really easy to forget time at this place as we sat in the garden and enjoyed the fresh oysters, the view and the delicious wines.

But leave we had to as we wanted to visit one more producer on our way out and it was nearly three by that time. We would have loved to visit Bell Hill, a small producer in the Weka Pass area heading into Waipara, but we had no way to contact them at that point and Bell Hill is an appointment only producer. There wines are highly sought after and their production is small. Instead, we decided to visit a producer named Daniel Schuster on our way back to Hanmer Springs.

Daniel Schuster sits on a hill with clay and limestone soils, not far from Bell Hill. The vineyard is beautiful, reminiscent of some our our own vineyards in the Northern Willamette Valley. We were greeted by Danny's wife Marie, who not only tasted through the wines with us, but sat with us on their beautiful deck overlooking the vineyard and told us all about the vineyard, their work in putting it all together and about Danny himself.

I liked the wines and I thought the 2006 Omihi Hills Selection Pinot Noir was one of the best Pinot Noir's yet, certainly the most concentrated we had tasted. After some time with Marie, Danny pulled up with a young Italian who grows Pinot Noir in Tuscany and was working the vintage with Danny, learning. And what a teacher he is. There are just times in the wine business where you feel lucky to be in the right place in the right time because you meet people that drive this business and make  you feel lucky to be a part of it.  Thas Sunday in Waipira was one of those times.

Danny Schuster is one of the more interesting people I have met in the wine business. There we were listening to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, drinking 2006 Omihi Hills Pinot Noir, soaking up some delicious bread with olive oil and just enjoying the beautiful setting. Danny is a big Bob Dylan fan and he even had a chance to sit and have dinner with Bob Dylan. What impressed me most about Danny is his passion for wine, Dylan and just life in general. He had perspective, talking about what he had built, that it was small, but now a vineyard sits where there was nothing before.

After a bit, Danny took us into the cellar and tasted through some of his 2007 Pinot Noirs and gave us his perspective of what makes a complete wine. We tasted three different Pinots and then blended them to get to that complete wine. When we finally left, four hours after we arrived, I felt a sense of home here. The size of the vineyard, the people running it and what they had created,  all made me think of Lenné and what we have done and are trying to do. I felt a real sense of connection to growing Pinot Noir and a little homesick as well.

Danny left us with a bottle of his 2006 Ohimi Hills Pinot Noir and a bottle to share with his friend Tony Soter. I have never met Tony, but he is recognized as one of the top producers in our area after having created Etude, a very succesful brand in California. Danny also left us with more than wine, a real sense of place and the people who make it so.