2007 Oregon Pinot Noir
2007 Oregon Pinot Noir
As of this writing I have tasted more than 50 2007 Pinots from all over Oregon and the bottom line is - taste before you buy. Overall the vintage provided many challenges to grape growers and winemakers. Some faired better than others. Why am I writing this? Mostly because there has been a significant amount of negative press concerning the vintage and specifically because a certain hair-follicle-challenged local wine critic wrote the vintage off before most of the wines had even been released - in my opinion an unwarranted criticism based on limited data and extrapolation based on expectation not real tasting.
To be sure, 2007 Pinots are much lighter than their 2006 counterparts. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so if you are looking for wines that pair well with food and have the potential to age gracefully. The cooler growing temperatures during 2007 allowed the grapes to retain more of their natural acidity which bodes well for enjoyment with food and is a prerequisite for longer ageing. Will these wines last 20 years, probably not, but I would wager that after 8 or 9 years the best of 2007 will be in better shape that most of the 2006's which are very enjoyable as cocktail wines (read jammy fruit, low natural acidity), but don't have the stuff to go long term.
Don't get me wrong, I like the 2006 vintage for its in-your-face, voluptuous fruit and silky tannins, but a string of vintages producing like-type wines seems to have jaded consumers into expecting these big fruit bomb wines every year. Let's face it, all around the globe modern viticulture techniques have provided the means to produce riper fruit which leads to juicier, more accessible wines earlier in their evolution. Thats' a good thing, but let's not forget that Mother Nature dishes out the weather and that has meaning for farmers and wine makers alike. I like to taste the vintage in the wines I drink. I don't want the same big fruit every vintage. Sometimes it's nice to actually see through a glass of Oregon Pinot Noir too!
The 2007 vintage of Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs is a minefield - some good, some very good, not many great, and lots of mediocre wines. In general the best have wonderful aromatics, lower alcohol than in recent vintages and are more delicately structured wines with less new oak because there wasn't enough big fruit to soak it up. So try before you buy and don't expect to be blown away by the 2007's, but don't pass up the opportunity to taste some very Burgundian Pinots either.
I've been tasting through the Oregon 2007s for way too long now. I agree that it's a minefield, and I have stopped buying, period. No more of these for me. The best producers who also have the resources to adapt came out of this all right, but on the whole the 2007 Pinot Noirs are disappointing and the desirables are very expensive.I no longer trust anything I hear about vintages. There are too many motivations to misrepresent. The 2001 wines were strangely underrated, The 2002s were overall pretty wonderful. There were plenty of good wines from 2003 through 2006 if you had some experience with the vineyards and producers. But the 2007 was greatly disappointing--though you wouldn't have known it until you were hit with how much money you paid for such empty wine. I hope that you're right about aging. I have a few of the better bottles put away in hope of such an outcome, but I'm not counting on it. I just drank my last 2002--a Le Puits Sec from Evesham Wood. Perfectly balanced and beautiful and integrated but actually still lively and young feeling too. I cannot imagine any of my 2007s evolving in anything like the same way. I'm going into the 2008s with no expectations. Every bottle's going to have to prove itself.
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