The Evolution of Terroir: The Willamette Valley, Oregon, U.S.A.
By Jonathan Swinchatt
August 31, 2009
Terroir is hot, the subject of international conferences (Beaune, November 2005; Davis CA, March 2006; Bordeaux, July 2006), vigorous debate, and a spate of articles, not a few in this magazine. The words are many, but the subject seems to defy all efforts to clarify, simplify, or define in a way that satisfies its adherents or convinces its detractors of its legitimacy or usefulness. Perhaps this should not surprise: Terroir is a word that symbolizes a system—a complex interplay of parts that is difficult to grasp rationally, impossible to consider as a single entity, and truly ineffable. The concept is brilliant—a single word designating a complex of components (however you define it), steeped in the romance of wine, carrying with it the mystery of the indefinable and inexpressible, and—significantly—expressed in the language of wine. Were it English or Italian, there would be little notice or debate, but the notion is French, from the land we all look to as the historic seat of great wine. The problem is that when you look past all the debate, all the winery hype, all the hours of discussion and reams of paper, its difficult to conclude that the notion of terroir, per se, has real pragmatic value.
That statement demands quick clarification. It is simple: We can discuss terroir from a philosophic or academic perspective until the Atlantic closes once more and the shores of France and America join, but put a bottle of wine on the table and ask even the most devout terroirist to describe how it reflects the place from which it came and the answer is most often a hesitant commentary on the soil, the vintage, the climate, perhaps a bit about viticulture and winemaking, but not much about the wine itself. In “The Judgment of Paris,” George Taber writes of a vineyard in Chile, a joint venture between the Baron Philippe de Rothschild company and Concha y Toro, describing a tasting by French winemakers: “The test vintage of 1996 was considered a great success. The wine was not yet on a par with Mouton, but the taste of terroir that French winemakers always look for was clearly present.” What is this “taste of terroir” that seems so obvious to the French even after tasting a single vintage? Might it come from the winemaking or the barrels? Whatever it might be, it is clearly difficult to express or describe how any particular wine, however carefully made by a terroir conscious winemaker, reflects the place from which it came.
Yet place does leave its mark, however subtle and difficult to identify it might be. Wine tasters with broad experience and well-developed palates can often identify region and, sometimes, the precise provenance of specific bottles (see sidebar). And studies in the Napa Valley have matched areas within vineyards, defined on the basis of geologic criteria, to winemaker’s taste, or to aspects of viticultural management. A relationship does indeed exist between place, grapes, and wine.
Still, as devoutly as some might wish it so, place is not the only influence on the development of wine character. No one has made this clearer than Warren Moran, a New Zealand wine geographer who identifies Agro-terroir, Vini-terroir, Territorial terroir, Identity terroir, Legal terroir, and Promotional terroir. Moran’s main message is that great wines do not arise from land alone (geology, soil, climate), that the expression of terroir depends as well on the passionate involvement of people. He tells of tasting wines in the cellars of a vigneron friend in Aloxe Corton who had recently purchased some vines in the neighboring commune of Savigny-les-Beaune. “As we tasted the second of his vintages from this new parcel…[he] severely upbraided himself for not having yet learned to make this red wine in the style of Savigny….His approach to its vinification had it tasting more like an Aloxe Corton than a Savigny….” Moran adds, “As in all regions, wine styles in Burgundy have also changed through time.” Or, asWarren Winiarski has long proclaimed, “Without people, there is no terroir.”
So, in the world of terroir, there is place—climate, geology, soil—and then there is everything else. Winegrowers and winemakers mold the character of wine through hundreds of decisions made in the vineyard and winery; local and regional styles evolve and develop. Wine academics, scientists, and industry professionals all bring their particular bias to the discourse. Wineries use the romance of terroir to sell wine, manipulating the notion and its application to their own purpose. For wine lovers interested in enhancing their experience through understanding something about terroir, or wine provenance, the barriers are formidable. But perhaps we can slide past the clutter of terroir and examine the context of a bottle of wine from a somewhat different perspective.
The Willamette Valley
At least for the moment, let’s forget about terroir. Let’s focus instead on three of its primary components—place, people, and culture—and see if that helps penetrate the veils that now obscure the broader notion. There is no better place to start than the Willamette Valley, an evolving wine region in the state of Oregon. Recent geologic and soil studies there have begun to clarify the character of the land at a time during which the establishment of several new AVAs (American Viticultural Areas) has created a forum for discussion of matters involving wine and place. And interest in Pinot Noir—the Willamette Valley’s wine of particular note—in the United States has been growing rapidly pushed in part by the fad effect of the movie “Sideways” and perhaps even by a maturation of American taste. Let’s start with the physical side.
The Place
The wine pioneers of the Willamette Valley—David Lett, Dick Erath, Richard Ponzi, David Adelsheim, and a few others—arrived in the mid-1960s and early 1970s with a passion to make great wine. The viticultural wisdom of the time assumed that the Oregon climate was too cold for vinifera grapes, but this view was for the cautious and uncommitted. These guys were different, all they wanted to do was produce great wine and they thought they could do it here, in Oregon, where no one had done it before. They knew little about soil, or farming, or even how to make wine, but they had confidence, gumption, and intelligence. And they also had great insight because they picked what might turn out to be the best place in North America to grow the grape they chose as the focus of their passion, the reputedly most fickle of all, the sensual, mysterious Pinot Noir. They would grow others as well, particularly Pinot Gris, and a bit of Chardonnay, but Pinot Noir is what touched their hearts.
The place, the Willamette Valley, stretches 150 miles from near Portland in the north to Eugene in the south. It lies between the Coast Ranges on the west and the Cascade Mountains on the east, a distance of about 60 miles at its widest point. The Willamette Valley AVA encompasses most of the valley, over 3 million acres of potential vineyard land. But these statistics, and the name itself, are egregiously misleading—few vineyards exist on the flat valley floor that occupies most of the AVA. Rather, they are located on the slopes of moderate size hills in the northern and central parts of the AVA and on the hillsides that form its borders. Poor drainage on the flood plain of the Willamette River is given as the cause for this distribution but the real kicker is temperature. The climate in the Willamette Valley is marginal even for the early ripening Pinot Noir, but the toughest environment is on the valley floor where cold air pools and grapes struggle to survive. Winegrowers are saved by the south facing slopes of the hills formed by the Valley’s geologic architecture.
The ages are prodigious and the events of a scale difficult to grasp, but at its heart is simply the story of the land. It begins 50 million years ago when an island arc—think the Hawaiian Islands—collided with and stuck to North America, forming a new border to the northwestern corner of what is now the United States. Over millennia, sediments delivered to the continental edge formed deep sea fans, offshore deltas and shoreline beaches, all of which would later become the ground for grapes. As the oceanic tectonic plate slid beneath the continent, it raised inland a line of volcanoes, today’s Cascade Range. About 15 million years ago, raging hot lava flowed from fissures in eastern Washington and Idaho, reaching the Pacific coast and into the northern part of the Willamette Valley, forming massive layers of basaltic rock. Then, twelve million years ago, the Juan de Fuca oceanic plate began a periodic and ongoing push into the continent, crumpling rocks and lifting up the Coast Ranges, movement that continues today.
The final major event occurred about 15,000 years ago, when the last continental ice sheet dammed a valley in Montana, forming a lake some 500 miles long and up to 2000 feet deep. Over the next 3,000 years, the dam failed time and time again, each failure releasing a flood that equaled in volume ten times the instantaneous flow of all the rivers now on Earth. These floods roared down the Columbia Valley, backing up a series of large, ephemeral, lakes in valleys tributary to the Columbia, including the Willamette Valley. The flood filled the valley with successive layers of fine sediment. When the lakes receded, winds swept the surface, picking up dust, moving it around, forming a layer of loess (windblown dust), particularly on the northeast slopes of the hills. This all might sound esoteric and foreign to wine, but without this history there would be no Willamette Valley, no stage for the play of Oregon Pinot Noir.
The architecture is simple, an upwarp with oceanic basalt at its core, layers of marine sedimentary rocks tilted away to the northeast and southwest, with a thick section of continental basalt near the top. The basalts, hard and resistant to erosion, form the highest hills (Chehalem Mountain, Dundee Hills, Eola Hills) with the sedimentary rocks holding up the lower hills and intervening valleys. The flat lands are underlain by lake deposits that sweep onto the lower slopes of the hills, with thin deposits of loess on some of the northern hills. This is the ground that produces Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, and diverse ground it is.
While the large-scale architecture is straightforward, the geography is more difficult to grasp, quite unlike the orderly slopes of the Cote d’Or. Driving south from Portland, over Chehalem Mountain, one enters a realm of hills, narrow valleys, and broad lowlands. To the west lie the Dundee Hills with their deep red soils. In the mid-distance the Eola Hills lie beyond an open plain, obstructing the view of the broader valley floor that lies to the south. In the western distance, the Coast Ranges form a thin, low line on the horizon while mountains of the Cascade Range lie to the east. It takes a few days of wandering the roads and perusing maps to get any coherent sense of direction or location.
The hills rise from about 200 feet in elevation at their juncture with the lowlands to over 1600 feet. They are covered with an array of crops and forest; orchards of apples and pears, hazelnuts, Christmas tree plantations, and vineyards vie for space. It is intricate land, diverse in elevation, climate, bedrock, and soil, and it has been a difficult place to grasp enologically, at least in its details.
The climate is much like that of Burgundy. Latitudinally, the Willamette Valley lies a bit south of the fabled Cote d’Or, but the temperature regimes are much the same with cool winters and warm to hot summers. The Coast Range on the west protects the valley from the cool ocean temperatures and the Cascade Range walls it off from the desert heat of eastern Oregon. The Van Duzer Corridor—a break in the Coast Range about half way down the valley’s western side—allows ocean breezes to moderate the summer temperatures. It rains more in Oregon than in Burgundy, but the bulk of water falls in the fall and winter, with near drought during the summer, unlike Burgundy where the rain falls year round.
David Lett, while traveling through the vineyards of Europe, latched onto the notion that the key to growing the most flavorful fruit was to fit the variety to the climate, allowing for a growing season that provides barely enough time to ripen the grapes. He figured he had found just such a fit for Pinot Noir in Oregon. The climate proved to be a bit marginal, with the cool end of a long growing season coming up hard against the onset of rain in the fall, a potential disaster at harvest. The weather indeed delivers a hard choice, whether to pick at less than ideal ripeness in order to beat the rain or let the grapes hang with the hope that they will dry out and fully ripen before the next storm. The choice involves risk and reflects the personality, experience, and attitude of the winegrower. As people adjust to a place, they develop the approaches, methodologies, and techniques that allow them to express their personal and communal vision of the character and style that best reflects the land or the grape.
The People
Those early wine immigrants to Oregon weren’t farmers, they were self-described beatniks and hippies and they struggled. The locals, farmers for generations, wondered at the temerity of these bearded youth who had appeared out of nowhere but admired their determination enough to welcome them and share the wisdom of hard won experience. Cooperation seemed to be in the air and it infected the newcomers who passed it on to those who followed.
And follow they did, particularly after a signal event that has not been broadly noted nor widely remembered. In 1979, at a blind tasting in Paris of Oregon Pinot Noirs and a group of elite Burgundies, a 1975 Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Noir grown and made by David Lett finished third, an astounding success for this young area. Dissatisfied with the results, Robert Drouhin, of Domaine Joseph Drouhin, arranged a similar event in 1980. Lett’s wine outdid its previous triumph—the 1975 Eyrie Vineyards South Block came in second after a Drouhin Grand Cru. In 1989, Drouhin bought land in the Willamette Valley and established Domaine Drouhin Oregon.
The new Oregonians—for almost all came from elsewhere—quickly learned that the climate required them to use every trick they could to ripen the grapes. The first lesson was to plant on south facing slopes—or east and west variations—to allow the vines and grapes to grasp and capture as much solar energy as possible. Elevation, through its relationship with temperature—the higher, the cooler—also turned out to have a telling effect on grape character. On the warmer lower slopes, grapes ripen earlier and have time to develop the phenolics that provide lush, smooth texture, deep aromas and distinctive fruit flavor. At higher, cooler elevations, the grapes tend to have more pronounced acidity, and what winemaker Eric Hamacher describes as “liveliness” and “high-toned” red fruit. A mere 200 or 300 vertical feet make the difference.
Grape character, however, is also influenced by soil type. Soils in the Willamette Valley are either sedimentary or volcanic in origin. The sedimentary soils drain well, stressing the vines, at times leading to “rustic” overtones—earth, leather, and coffee—and tannins with grip. The volcanic soils, either thin (Nekia) or thick (Jory), contain clay and hold moisture, feeding it to the vines like a time-release drug, encouraging softer, more refined tannins and red fruit flavors. Diverse combinations of elevation and soil type can lead to confusing similarities—Tony Rynders, winemaker at Domaine Serene, maintains that in some vintages fruit from thick Jory soils in the Dundee Hills has similar character to that from lower elevations in the Eola Hills, where thinner Nekia soils dominate. Observations such as this underlie discussions on the meaning of the six newly designated AVAs (Chehalem Mountain, Rabbit Ridge, Dundee Hills, Yamhill-Carlton, McMinnville, Eola Hills).
Winemakers from each of these districts agree that Oregon Pinot Noir is distinguished from other areas—Burgundy and California in particular—by its bright, pure fruit and balanced acidity, the latter preserved by cool summer nights. They contrast this with the tendency for California Pinot Noir to have a “jammy” character and Burgundies for showing more minerality and non-fruit characteristics — earth tones, leather and so on. How the AVAs are distinguished one from the other is a more open question. Ken Wright, who produces the broadest range of single vineyard wines of any Willamette winemaker, thinks it is “crystal clear where the differences lie” between these regions. But while their geographic boundaries are distinct, from an enologic or geologic perspective the situation seems a bit more complex. Some brave winemakers (notably Harry Peterson-Nedry of Chehalem) and wine writers have attempted to describe the character of wines from each of the AVAs, but to this outsider the results are broad and diffuse, with much overlap that blurs any clear distinctions.
Winemakers themselves have some difficulty distinguishing wines from the AVAs. Steve Doerner, winemaker at Cristom, finds himself “hard-pressed to find the differences” in blind tastings. Nor can he identify wines from each AVA (by taste) using sets of descriptors that appear to set them apart. Mark Vlossak, proprietor of St. Innocent Winery, thinks they might not yet have found the right places for Pinot Noir— he wonders if 35 years in an area of far more complex geography and geology than that of Burgundy is enough time to sort it out. Others feel that many of the vines are just leaving the exuberance of youth and beginning to attain the maturity that allows expression of place. And perhaps it’s also a factor of the geologic diversity of the AVAs.
The Chelahem Mountain AVA, for example, contains soils derived from volcanic bedrock, sedimentary bedrock, and loess. The Dundee Hills and Eola Hills AVAs are dominated by volcanic bedrock and soil but each contains some areas of sedimentary substrate. Yamhill-Carlton is mostly on sedimentary bedrock, but patches of volcanics intrude. All the AVAs have slopes within the limits for growing quality grapes, 200 to about 700 feet, and virtually all the vineyards have some variation of southerly aspect. Perhaps the distinctiveness of each AVA will emerge with time but at first glance the impression is one of overlapping physical character.
More important, at least for the moment, are the great advances in Willamette Valley winegrowing made in the past decade or so. In earlier years, Oregon was plagued by inconsistency, with good vintages perhaps two years out of every five. In the late 80s, they recognized that the problem, and its solution, lay in the vineyard. Through aggressive fruit thinning and canopy management (shoot positioning, leaf thinning) they exposed fruit to the sun, accelerating ripening by 7 to 10 days, reducing the risk of picking semi-ripe fruit to avoid fall rain. Yields dropped to less than 2 tons per acre, with 1 ton or less not unusual. Such low yields hasten ripening and assure fruit of intensity and balance. Today, the good vintages dominate and vintage variation is seen as a direct reflection of the connection of wine with place.
Dry farming has long been standard practice, but in very dry years the vines begin to fade before the fruit is ripe. Rain in late August can provide the boost to get them past this obstacle, but for some this is too uncertain—many have chosen to install drip irrigation as insurance against real drought. The “drc” (Deep Roots Coalition) promotes dry farming, because, they say, irrigated wines tend to converge in character masking the influence of place, but also to protect already overused aquifers. They also hold the belief that dry farming promotes deep rooting and greater expression of place, but when winegrowers are asked how deep their vine roots penetrate, most admit to not having looked.
By Napa standards, Willamette wineries are small and smaller, only a few with production exceeding 15,000 cases, many with less than 5,000. The details of winemaking vary, but most hand pick fruit, sort diligently, and ferment in small batches. Though “hands off” winemaking is the cry, Willamette winemakers do sometimes acidify, add sugar, or use an evaporator to remove excess water from a wet fall. Some ferment whole clusters, most de-stem. Natural yeasts are used for slow fermentations and by those who believe they are fundamental to the expression of terroir; others use one or more of the 90-plus cultivated varieties now available. Russ Raney uses yeast cultured from a bottle of Henri Jayer’s Burgundy. Mark Vlossak develops a vision over time of where wine from a particular site “wants to go” and does what it takes to help it get there. Many of the newer, larger, wineries are gravity driven, avoiding the need for pumps and emphasizing gentle handling. The goal is common, to preserve the character that comes from the vineyard, but the paths are many and the styles range from the light-colored, aromatic, elegant and complex wines of Eyrie and Evesham Wood, to the big, dark, powerful and intense wines of Ken Wright. Steve Doerner seeks power with finesse, maintaining that “Great Cabernet knocks your socks off but great Pinot Noir slides them off gently.” Dick Shea prefers wines with “the exuberance of youth.” Matt Kinne has adjusted his style twice, first eliminating stems to reduced tannins then, later, re-emphasizing structure in response to tasting older wines. All seek complexity, some using grapes from different sites, others a variety of clones or a diversity of barrels. They share information openly and honor each other’s decisions—there appears to be no “right way” to make Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.
The Culture
The Willamette Valley wine community has grown steadily for four decades, but its culture has remained true to its founders. The cooperative spirit of the farming community that rubbed off on the early winemakers has led to a variety of innovative community-wide events: The annual International Pinot Noir Celebration brings together winemakers and Pinot Noir enthusiasts from around the world. Oregon Pinot Camp gathers an invited group of distributors, retailers, restaurateurs and winemakers for open exchange of ideas, opinions, and judgments, the goal being to more clearly promote Oregon Pinot Noir. The Steamboat Conference is for Pinot Noir winemakers from around the world to join together and share information and wine, critiquing each other with the sole goal of improving all. These initiatives grew out of a close community that has thrived on cooperation. Now, the Willamette Valley appears to be on the cusp of change.
The designation of 6 Sub-AVAs has raised concern that the focus of effort will move from the broader community to the more limited confines of the sub-regions, perhaps engendering more overt competition. As Warren Moran has observed, “The most graphic word that describes the search of each appellation for their own style is…typicité. Each group of vignerons in each appellation strive(s) to achieve this distinction.” While cooperation is still the focus, recent developments suggest that the Willamette Valley is reaching a stage in which truly distinctive typicity, clear enough to be more generally recognized, might begin to emerge. For the past ten years, for example, Eric Hamacher has focused on producing the best Willamette Valley Pinot Noir he can by using grapes from carefully selected, exceptionally well-managed vineyards. For him, the vines are not old enough and the understanding of place not deep enough for most vineyards to produce the depth of character to warrant single vineyard designation. In 2005, however, he released his first single vineyard bottling, a 2002 Durant Vineyard Pinot Noir, regarding it as having the depth and completeness he feels reflects the Willamette Valley. As they search for this kind of quality, more winegrowers are exploring organic, biodynamic, and other approaches to sustainable agriculture, methods that appear to improve vine health, produce better grapes, and bring more distinctive character to the wines. As this movement grows, differences between AVAs might well become more marked, giving regional groups, such as the newly formed Dundee Hills Winegrowers Association, something more substantive with which to set themselves apart.
The most significant changes may come from a new and powerful influence that has begun to intrude into the Willamette Valley—big money, drawn by the growing recognition that Oregon indeed can produce consistently high quality wine that can be sold at a price that compensates for low yields. Premier Pacific, a vineyard development and management company chaired by California’s William Hill and backed by CalPers (the California State Employees Retirement System), has 9 new vineyards—6 in the Eola Hills, 3 in Yamhill-Carlton— for sale or lease. These were developed at a cost of some $45,000 an acre, low for California, where $100,000 an acre is common, but three times the going rate for the Willamette Valley, where capital has never been abundant and frugality reigns. The impact of this type of capital influx can change the culture almost overnight, driving up land prices and increasing costs, making start-ups prohibitively expensive for all except those of accumulated wealth, as has happened in the Napa Valley. This is the irony of success and progress—they always alter the roots from which they arise. And as so often happens, wealth tends to assume privilege, which comes into conflict with the existing culture. To date, the persuasive quality of the community has prevailed and the new residents seem to recognize eventually that adaptation is a more productive mode than conflict.
Whether of not the assimilation of new wealth can continue with this degree of equanimity is unclear. The larger reality is that the Willamette Valley lies in circumstances similar to Napa perhaps 25 years ago, a bucolic setting with a glamorous industry near a major city. Since then, the Napa Valley has become the Disneyland of the wine world, a destination of exuberant fun and excess. Will the Willamette Valley avoid such a mixed fate or welcome it? With one developer hoping to build a luxury resort in the Dundee Hills the outcome is far from clear.
Some Final Thoughts
Pinot Noir has the reputation of being the grape most transparent to place and the Cote d’Or is universally recognized as the region in which Pinot Noir best expresses the terroir. Willamette Valley winemakers recognize the supremacy of Burgundy in the world of Pinot Noir, reckoning that some of their wines have risen to the level of Premiere Cru but none yet to the exalted level of Grand Cru. In this context, it is useful to remember that while the two regions have similar climate, almost nothing else is even vaguely the same. Geography and geology contrast sharply region to region, with the bedrock of one a mix of sandstone, siltstone, and basalt, the other entirely limestone. One is characterized by quite uniform, east facing, dominantly gentle slopes, the other with hillsides at all angles to the sun, some quite steep.
The cultural differences are even more marked. Many aspects that are open to choice in the Willamette Valley—planting density, pruning regimens, harvesting dates, sugar content, maximum yields, vine age—in Burgundy are set by law. In Burgundy, then, differences in place—subtle changes in soil composition, sun aspect, position on the slope—are likely to be reflected more clearly in the wines than they are in the Willamette Valley where winemakers are quite free to express their own diverse understanding and vision through the broader range of choices they must make. A few days difference in harvest dates in Oregon, for example, can alter the expression of flavor from earthy tones to black fruits and on to the bright red fruit flavors that seem to characterize fully ripe Oregon Pinot Noir. Similar differences occur in grapes grown at different elevations picked at the same time. And in the Willamette Valley, in America in general, winemakers are mobile, they tend to move around, making a “house style” difficult to establish and maintain. Under these circumstances, 35 years seems far too short a time to expect a clear view of Willamette Valley terroir to have evolved. They need more time. Let’s give it to them, and watch what happens along the way.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Ray Wells of the U. S. Geological Survey for his work on the geology of the Pacific Northwest. The brief account of the geologic history of the Willamette Valley is based on his work, inaccuracies are of course my own. John Haeger, who knows American Pinot Noir (the title of his fine book) better than anyone, led me to some people who I might have otherwise overlooked. His aid and insight were invaluable. Most of all I express my gratitude to the winegrowers of the Willamette Valley, particularly those relative few whom I interviewed for this article. Their thoughts and observations provided much of the substance of this work. The population sample might have been statistically small, but if they are typical of the larger group it is a fine bunch indeed.
References
Huaeger, John, 2004. American Pinot Noir. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California. 445 pp.
Moran, Warren, 2001. Terroir— the human factor. A talk given at Pinot Noir New Zealand, 2001.
Moran, Warren, 2006. You said Terroir? Approaches, science, and explanations. Keynote address, Terroir 2006, University of California at Davis, March 19-23, 2006.