Can Oregon pinots capture Burgundy's soul?

DUNDEE, Ore. - One of Véronique Boss-Drouhin’s finest vintages is tossing a beach ball around her fermentation room. 

Laurène is both her oldest daughter, born in 1992, and the name of her reserve pinot noir. In the 55-degree cool of the winery, away from a blistering July afternoon, she considers her ties to the Old World. Thanks in part to her efforts, Oregon has grasped the mantle of that place the French call Bourgogne.

“The thing is not to compare, too much, the wines. But there is a lot of inspiration from Burgundy,” Boss-Drouhin says. “It’s important that Oregon has its own style and isn’t trying to become another Burgundy.”

She should know. Her great-grandfather, Joseph Drouhin, established what has become one of Burgundy’s best-known houses. In 1986, she came to Oregon to work with the freshly-grown crop of Oregon winemakers who were just beginning to mature the state’s wine industry.

They had in common pinot noir — that most fickle, but perhaps most extraordinary, of all wine grapes. A year later, she and her father Robert extended their family’s domain into the New World, purchasing 225 acres on gentle hills above this small town southwest of Portland, merging old and new in a new winery: Domaine Drouhin Oregon.

Keeping it small
While the U.S. wine industry grows ever more corporate, and ever more confident of its New World values, Oregon’s wine industry keeps a solid eye across the Atlantic. As with the Burgundians, most Oregon winemakers are tiny, turning out just a few thousand cases each year. While its northern neighbor, Washington, produces 112,000 tons of wine grapes annually, Oregon grows one-fifth of that.

“Oregonians are kind of like Burgundians in that we’re just simple, dirt farmer kind of people,” says Scott Paul Wright of Domaine Drouhin Oregon, who also makes his own pinot under the Scott Paul label.

Domaine Drouhin Oregon Véronique Boss-Drouhin splits her time between her family's Oregon winery and its business in Burgundy.

Though California predated Oregon in its pinot efforts, Oregonians pride themselves on a cooler climate that more resembles Burgundy’s, and on their generally fastidious use of Pommard and Dijon clones, often cut from the very vineyards in France they hope to emulate.

After a 1979 tasting, when Oregon’s Eyrie Vineyards outpaced Burgundy premier crus, the state found itself on the global map. In part, it has succeeded because it adheres to what La Bete winemaker John Eliassen, who trained in Dijon, calls a "very traditionalist" approach: spare use, for example, of the new oak barrels that pushed many California wines over the top.

Long considered a rising star, has Oregon captured the soul of Burgundy? There was little agreement last weekend, as winemakers and hundreds of pinot fans descended on the town of McMinnville for this year’s International Pinot Noir Celebration.

These are serious folk, the sort who can unblinkingly ask winemakers about “delestage” and “barrel regimen,” expecting a precise answer. Even vintners occasionally looked baffled by the level of detail.

But Oregon’s place in the world remained a bit hard to pin down.

'Quicker than we did'
Even most Burgundian winemakers quietly demurred. These were not, incidentally, the cantankerous French winemakers of old; they’re a new, fresh-faced generation that would seem as comfortable on the pages of a J. Crew catalog as in a dank wine cellar. They hope to balance tradition with modern pragmatism; yet they quietly hearkened back to Oregon’s reliance on the old country.

“You will do it quicker than we did, but at the beginning, you need a point of reference,” says Roman Taupenot of Domaine Taupenot-Merme.

The two regions’ wines separate themselves even on first taste. Oregon pinots from 2001 and 2002 are generally bold and full, ready to drink, often with hints of spice and frequently elegant finishes. The Burgundians’ efforts are far more austere, with mouthy tannins in need of time to mellow; they are, as one taster described it, the skeletons of beautiful wines to come.

While Burgundy wines often take years to emerge, many Oregon bottlings have rapidly lost their edge. Some mid-90s vintages are lovely and profound; some are just nasty. Vintages aside, each year brings big leaps in quality.

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“You can make some great pinot noir, but there is an American style,” says Cyril Audoin of  Domaine Charles Audoin. “Sometimes your pinot here … the first wine I tasted, I believed it was a merlot.”

The French have good reason to draw lines. Not only do they sit upon hundreds of years of winemaking history, but in Burgundy, perhaps more than anywhere else, winemakers believe in the virtues of terroir — that undefinable blend of soil, climate, geography and mystique that gives wines their pride of place. 

Burgundy’s appellations are divided down to the village level, with specific types of wines often produced just a couple dozen acres. Producers there often make as many specific appellations — a Vosne-Romanée, say, right next to a Chambolle-Musigny — as American winemakers do reserve bottlings from individual vineyards.

A tough market
Oregon, like the rest of the United States, has yet to experience the same subdivisions. Many winemakers here often feel their vines and vineyards may take another 20 years to express their own true sense of terroir, and hope to leave their own stylistic imprints on a still-nascent industry. But they hope, in time, the land will acquire a signature of its own.

Jon Bonne / MSNBC.com Bill Stoller's vineyard in Dundee, Ore., is situated on property his family has owned since 1943. Stoller -- co-founder of Express Personnel Services, which should net $1.2 billion in revenue next year -- returned to Oregon to take the property, a foundering turkey farm, and plant it in vines.

“Terroir, we hope, will allow us to create something unique here. You can have a style, but it starts with the climate and the soil,” says vineyard owner Bill Stoller, who co-owns the Chehalem winery. “I think it’s setting in, but you have to go to the second-generation vines to really see where you are.”

Plus, Oregonians are competing not only with pinot noir from France but from California, New Zealand and even Chile. With so many options, drinkers may end up siding with a style that retains a bit of Old World soul while speaking to New World palates. 

In traditional Burgundy, where winemakers have struggled in the past 30 years to embrace modernity, the call of the market may resonate even more deeply in coming years. After all, most wine drinkers aren’t willing to take a risk on a $50 bottle.

“Selling Burgundy is tough,” says vintner Alex Gambal, an Washington, D.C., native who has been making wine in Burgundy since 1997. “Burgundy is a contact sport, it’s not a spectator sport. You’ve got to get in and taste and taste and taste.”

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