Intriguingly mossy, saline, and alkaline notes in the nose of Adelsheim’s 2009 Pinot Noir Elizabeth’s Reserve put me in mind of both seaside and forest scents, though there is also a high-toned evocation of kirsch. Toasted almond and lentil sprouts mingle with cherry and the aforementioned mineral elements on a firm, slightly grainy palate, leading to a finish of some refreshment and intrigue but also considerable astringency. (While not notably high for the vintage, I wonder whether this wine’s 14.3% alcohol might not be accentuating that astringency to at least some extent.) I’d want to monitor this carefully if attempting to hold any for longer than the next couple of years.
Oregon pioneer David Adelsheim – who planted his original vineyard on Quarter Mile Lane in the Chehalem foothills north of Newberg in 1972 – hired Davis-trained David Paige in 2001, and the latter has been winemaker here since. Extensive new facilities were added to the 1993 Calkins Lane winery in 2008 to better accommodate what – thanks to an expansion of vineyards beginning in 1989, facilitated and accelerated by a partnership with Lynn and Jack Loackera begun in 1994 – has grown to 190 acres representing 11 different vineyard sites farmed by the Adelsheim team across the northern fringe of the Willamette Valley. (There are often nearly 200 different fermentations going on here in a vintage.) Fruit farmed by others – which constitutes at most 25% of total production – tends to be taken from sites that Adelsheim and Paige consider especially exciting and that complement their own vineyards geographically and stylistically, such as that from Temperance Hill or Zenith, both in the relatively distant and distinctly different Eola-Amity Hills. Pinot is nearly always destemmed; typically receives 4-6 days cold soak; is usually inoculated; occupies mostly small fermentors with cautious extraction via punch-down and occasionally pulse-air; with the young wine pressed before or after complete dryness depending on lot, and settled to remove all but the finest residue of lees before going to barrels, of which seldom more than 25% are new, and from which the wine is removed for bottling after only 9-10 months. Paige opines that “If you don’t got for much extraction or a lot of new oak character, we find the wines come around and make plenty of sense by the summer.” Chaptalization his been relatively infrequent in recent years, Paige suggests, and then only in small increments; whether to acidify is judged lot by lot “but we’ve done it somewhere in pretty much every vintage. We do get high natural acidity, but a lot of it is malic, especially in years like 2010.” At their best, understatement, firm structure, and brightness have, in my experience, counted among the virtues of Adelsheim wines, but I have to say that I would have welcomed a bit more emphatic and supple performance than that delivered by the majority of those I tasted on the occasion of my June visit, especially considering their prices. Adelsheim’s numerous single-vineyard Pinots are rendered in less (sometimes much less) than 300-case volumes and most are sold directly from the winery.
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