Extreme Wine by Veseth Mike;Veseth Mike;

Author:Veseth, Mike;Veseth, Mike;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1318927
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

GRAPE TRANSFORMATIONS

Jason’s father, David Lett, is one of my heroes. I met him early in my teaching (and his wine-making) career when he was still working his day job as a college textbook salesman to finance his winery dreams. He was part of the group they call the Pioneers, who transformed Oregon from a place known for fruit and nuts rather than grapes to a region frequently mentioned in the same breath with Burgundy.

Lett’s story is remarkable. Trained at the University of California–Davis, he came north looking for terroir where he could make Pinot in the Burgundian style. His first Pinot vines were planted in 1965; 1970 was the first Eyrie Pinot vintage. After one or two false starts he hit pay dirt. Great wine. But from Oregon? Rainy old Oregon probably seemed like the last place on earth to make world-class wine in the 1970s. Then came the Wine Olympics of 1979. This was a competition, sponsored by the French food and wine magazine Gault Millau, that featured 330 wines from thirty-three countries tasted blind by sixty-two judges. The 1975 Eyrie Pinot Noir Reserve attracted attention by placing tenth among Pinots. A stunning achievement for a wine from a previously unknown wine region.

Robert Drouhin of Maison Joseph Drouhin, a Burgundy négociant and producer, was fascinated and sponsored a further competition where the Eyrie wine came close second behind Drouhin’s own 1959 Chambolle-Musigny. Thus was Eyrie’s reputation set (and Oregon’s, too). It wasn’t long before Domaine Drouhin Oregon (DDO) was built in the same Dundee Hills as Eyrie’s vineyards—a strong endorsement of the terroir and recognition of the achievement.

Writing about David Lett got me thinking about a particular kind of extreme wine person that I associate with “Grape Transformation” (pardon the pun)—individuals who have transformed the way that people think about wine or a particular wine region. Jesus is at the top of my list, of course, since he changed water into wine, the ultimate grape transformation. And there is a reason that we think of this as a miracle. As the always insightful Ken Bernsohn reminds me, inertia is a very strong force in the world of wine (and elsewhere). This is obviously true in the vineyard itself, where years are required to “turn the supertanker” from one grape variety to another. It is also true in the marketplace, where a visible iceberg of wine drinkers interested in trying new things sits atop an invisible bulk of consumers with preferences and habits that are frozen in place (most of them drink no wine at all). So it really is a miracle (although not in the “fishes and loaves” class) when wine makes a big turn. Who are some important examples for my Grape Transformations file? Please pardon a brief digression while I examine this type of extreme wine people.

Let me begin with Robert Mondavi, if only because I discussed his case at some length in my 2011 book Wine Wars. Here’s how the section on Mondavi begins:

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