Dec 03, 2009

2009 Harvest Report

As the final leaves senesce and cover the vineyard floor, the last 2009 barrels of Cristom Pinot noir are being topped and put to rest for the winter. The best vintage of the year, 2009 has all the potential to be another exceptional year for Willamette Valley Pinot noir. Congratulations Steve, Mark, Andy, Salomon and the whole Cristom family and crew for helping to produce our 18th vintage!

Cristom would like to thank the great harvest crew we were fortunate to have this year. Our interns Andy Meyer, Colin Shirek, and Peter DeMaar, three Americans who have been traveling to New Zealand, Australia and France learning to make wine were an integral part of the Cristom family this year. Thanks again guys for all your help and hard work! And thank you to all of the volunteers we were fortunate to have this year including Stefan our vocation vacationer, Linda Hirschy, Brad Boyle, Aaron Babcock, Ellen and Vijay who were all a valued part of the team. We hope you had a great experience with us. And thank you to all of you for your continued interest in coming to Cristom to learn from Steve and assistant winemaker Andy Zorzi – we appreciate your support and we look forward to another great crew next year.

Also joining our family this year was Chef Shannon Hiller–Webb who served delicious cuisine every day for the crew. Some of the highlights included red snapper with gribiche sauce; Pinot noir braised duck legs with roasted pears and kale; chanterelle mushroom, gruyere scalloped potatoes; sauteed ling cod with coriander beurre blanc and celeriac puree; brussel sprouts and bacon with Dijon cream sauce; and the list continues! We were lucky to have Shannon and we wish her the best of luck at her new position at Genoa in Portland.

The weather here at Cristom cooperated all growing season long and dry conditions continued through harvest allowing vineyard manager Mark Feltz and winemaker Steve Doerner to pick the fruit when they wanted – at optimal physiological and phenolic ripeness to achieve greater complexity in the bottle.

Grapevines need the temperature of the soil and ambient temperature to be above 50 degrees Fahrenheit in order to be photosynthetically active. A growing degree day (GDD) is a heat unit that is found by taking the average temperature for the day and subtracting 50. Any positive number above 50 is a heat unit that contributes to grapevine growth. The heat units are added up and totaled at the end of the growing season to give a grower an idea of how much sun and heat a vine was exposed to throughout the growing season. Sufficient heat accumulation is important for grape and ultimately wine quality. It takes roughly 2,200 – 2,800 heat units (GDD) to get Pinot noir optimally ripe in the Willamette Valley. The twenty five year average for the Eola – Amity Hills is roughly 2,500 heat units (GDD). In each month of the season during 2009 the temperatures were very close to the twenty five year average with the exception of a relatively warm July and a cool October.

Significantly, the pattern of heat accumulation during 2009 can be directly compared to the 2002 and 2005 growing seasons – both exceptional years for our Pinot noirs and throughout the Eola -Amity Hills. The 2002 vintage was one of the best vintages we had seen out of a string of strong vintages. The harvest was warm and dry, and like 2009 we were able to pick at our leisure when the fruit was optimally ripe. Contact Jeri, our tasting room manager as we still have a limited quantity of 2002 Sommers Reserve available for sale. The flavors are ripe and juicy with hints of meat and toasty oak in the background. The mid palate is medium weight with nice juicy acidity and just enough tannin to give the wine a nice long finish.

There is also limited availability of 2005 Marjorie for sale through our tasting room. Another above average vintage, 2005 also afforded us to pick as we so chose giving the clusters a maximum amount of hang time to develop more complex flavors and aromas. The 2005 Marjorie is a deep garnet colored Pinot noir exuding great aromas of black cherries, currants, and orange zest, with hints of leather and vanilla. The well integrated flavors include ripe cherries, pomegranate, cinnamon, and sweet oak. This well balanced, beautifully concentrated wine shows a lot of complexity and will continue to for years to come.

The first few tons of Pinot noir were harvested September 22nd and the ’09 crush was underway with a newly established vineyard in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA run by the Hirschy family. We are excited to work with John and Linda Hirschy, long time friends of Cristom, and their first crop of Pinot from their vineyard.

And speaking of newly planted vineyards, Cristom is excited and proud to announce that Eileen has a new 4.5 acre block of Wadenswil clone Pinot noir that produced its first crop in 2009. Eileen is still a young vineyard but it has undeniable potential and the addition of this important clone will likely give the Eileen single vineyard Pinot greater texture, length, and complexity in the bottle. Get ready for the best Eileen Pinot yet!

Forecasted heavy rains for early October held off until the middle of the month allowing Steve to choose when he wanted to harvest – giving the berries significant hang time to develop optimum phenolic ripeness for complex flavors and aromas. Paul, Steve and Mark decided to increase yields intentionally to gain hang time in what we all thought was going to be an early hot year. The additional tonnage will make ’09 an abundant vintage that will not be as dark and concentrated as the 2008 wines. However, the additional fruit slowed the ripening process down and we were able to gain valuable hang time into mid October. We harvested the estate Pinot noir from October 1st through the 12th and the last Syrah was picked and processed October 20th making it a very compressed vintage but one that will prove itself in the bottle.

Steve noted that we had a lot of long fermentations that exceeded three weeks and fermented at low temperatures which he usually associates with high quality and good complexity – yet another sign that we can be excited about the 2009 vintage. You can expect the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Cristom wines to be outstanding expressions of Oregon Pinot noir – so get your glasses ready for three stellar vintages in a row.

~Tom Gerrie