SommSelect Editorial Director David Lynch reflects on our recent field trip to Oregon’s Willamette Valley, and how each visit to this special place deepens our appreciation for the world-class Pinot Noir being produced there.
It’s been years since I read Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity” (or watched the film version), but I remember well the two record-store clerks, Dick and Barry, and how they both, in their different ways, were like sommeliers. Both are fanatical purists, first and foremost: one is the introspective, inquisitive type; the other is outwardly, and profanely, disdainful of opposing opinions. I’m a little of both, I suppose, and like both Dick and Barry I’m reflexively attracted to what might be called the “classic rockers” of wine—the early adopters who haven’t just hung around but have continued to deliver at the highest level. I only became acquainted with Mark Vlossak and his St. Innocent wines about five years ago (as probably the oldest sommelier in attendance at the Willamette Valley’s annual “Oregon Pinot Camp”) but I became an acolyte immediately and wore my fandom as a badge of honor. Did I subsequently profess to having a longer history with the wines than I did? Probably. Don’t judge—just try this 2013 “Zenith Vineyard” Pinot Noir and acquaint (or re-acquaint) yourself with one of Willamette Valley’s enduring classics. I don’t care if I sound like Barry here: You need to know St. Innocent!
Just a few weeks ago, SommSelect co-founders Ian Cauble and Brandon Carneiro took me along on a tasting/buying excursion in the Willamette Valley. We have a lot to share with you from that visit, and first up is this wine, from the relatively cool 2013 vintage—a year which, as we learned firsthand, has been (wrongly) overlooked in the rush to buy the vastly more-hyped 2014s. At both St. Innocent and elsewhere, we found a host of 2013s that we actually preferred over the '14s, as exemplified by this “Zenith Vineyard” bottling.
Mark Vlossak got his start in the Willamette Valley in the late-1980s, as an apprentice to Fred Arterberry, who was the original cellar master at David Lett’s pioneering Eyrie Vineyards. Vlossak produced his first St. Innocent wines in 1988 at Arterberry’s facility—which was across the street from Eyrie—using fruit sourced primarily from the Seven Springs Vineyard. Over the years, as his vineyard sources expanded and his production grew, Vlossak constructed a winery in Salem, which served him well up until 2006, when he entered into a unique partnership with Tim and Kari Ramey, who had purchased the former O’Connor Vineyard (from which Vlossak had long bottled a vineyard-designate wine) and re-named it Zenith. The St. Innocent winery is now located at the Zenith Vineyard, sharing space with an events facility run by the Rameys. The back label of this 2013 bottling proudly refers to Zenith, with its classic marine sedimentary soils, as St. Innocent’s “estate vineyard,” and it was here where Ian, Brandon, and I got to taste and talk with Mark.
Since I knew him and his wines better than he knew me and SommSelect, Vlossak greeted us with a mixture of wariness and irritation (although he was in the middle of dealing with an emergency repair in the winery when we arrived), but as that wore off we were treated to a master class in Willamette Valley vineyards and vintages. In addition to Zenith Vineyard, which is within the Eola-Amity Hills AVA, St. Innocent works with six other prime sites across the Willamette Valley, including Temperance Hill (also Eola-Amity), Shea Vineyard (Yamhill-Carlton AVA), and the Momtazi Vineyard (McMinnville AVA). As we tasted a wide variety of his vineyard-designated Pinots—all of them amazing values—Mark described growing up with a wine-importer father and a mother who was trained by a French master chef. He is known to host lunches for his wine-club members at which he does all the cooking, and at one point he and Ian launched into an animated discussion about cassoulet, which was as informative as it was entertaining.
Among the many “winners” for us in that tasting was this 2013 “Zenith Vineyard” Pinot Noir, a wine of great energy and grace and a textbook Willamette Valley wine of the old school. Grapes for this wine were fully destemmed and fermented in a mix of stainless steel and Burgundian oak vats, followed by 16 months’ aging in (22% new) French oak barrels. In the glass it’s a medium ruby-red with garnet highlights at the rim, with aromas of strawberry, rhubarb, black cherry, ground spices, dried roses, turned earth and underbrush. Medium-bodied and nicely framed by dusty tannins, it is a lifted, perfumed expression of Pinot Noir with the perfect combination of fruit concentration and mineral grip. It drinks beautifully right out of the bottle, but, like all St. Innocent Pinots, it shows considerable aging potential as well: Lay some of this wine down and expect it to really peak between 2020-25. If you’re enjoying a bottle tonight, I’d say simply open the bottle about a half-hour before service and keep it in a cool place; serve it just above cellar temp, around 60 degrees, in Burgundy stems. In Vlossak’s honor, here’s a cassoulet recipe we’re especially fond of. Should be a great fit. Enjoy!
— D.L.
