2011 Bergström Pinot Noir Temperance Hill Vineyard

From four mostly old-vine Pommard blocks, BergstrOm’s 2011 Pinot Noir Temperance Hill was the nail-biter among nail-biters this vintage, and he says that even after the experience of 2010, this was the last site to convince him that it would actually ripen, much less excel. But excel it did! Wild cherry laced with tangerine and lemon rinds on the nose lead to a spine-tinglingly bright and piquant palate of tartly bright berry fruit mingled with citrus oils. Where the amazingly successful 2010 led me to imagine that “Riesling, Viognier or perhaps even Gruner Veltliner had been blended in,” given how invigoratingly piquant, bright and incisive that wine was (and is), here we have practically a black Riesling. “I think a cool site in a cool vintage like this can deliver that on-the-fringe-of-disaster satisfaction,” suggests Bergstrom. Extremity of location compounded by extremity of season has led to something quite remarkable, though it will by no means please everybody. Exhilaratingly bright and mouthwateringly saline, intensely citric yet also stuffed with ripe fresh berries, this penetrating and improbably exercise in Pinot will probably prove worth following through 2022 if not beyond; but there isn’t really any precedent (other than its immediate 2010 predecessor). Tasted alongside, I still give the 2010 reported on in Issue 202 the edge in clarity, refinement and complexity; but what a pair they will be compare all the way down the stretch (whenever that occurs)! Josh Bergstrom – for much more about whose history, methods, and vineyard sources consult my Issue 202 report – was among those to comment while showing me his 2011s already in June of last year that he was amazed at how excitingly they were turning out; as well as how different from the 2010s, given the superficial similarity of their gross chemistries. “When I saw and tasted some of the fruit on the sorting table in 2011,” says Bergstrom, “I almost wept. But then something just happened, and the wines came together.” I wasn’t able to elicit from him any hypotheses to explain the character difference between 2010 and 2011 (though others’ hypotheses are canvased in my introduction to this report); but Bergstrom was adamant that severe crop-dropping was essential for 2011 quality, “and even at a ton or a ton-and-a-half per acres and harvesting into the second week of November, we still reached just 13% (natural) alcohol.” He performed only selective and minor chaptalization. Bergstrom continues to put great emphasis on the Willamette potential of Chardonnay and he has become convinced from his time spent working in Burgundy (where he still regularly does stints) that “they pick there for a style, rather than for maximum ripeness; and we need to determine what should be the style of Willamette Chardonnay.” That said, it’s pretty clear from talking with him as well as tasting his wines that Bergstrom takes Burgundy as something of a stylistic model, too, counting on the very different soils in which his vines are rooted to set a Willamette signature on his whites. “As a Willamette grower,” advocates Bergstrom, “you have to look at a great slope and say ‘I’m not going to put just Pinot Noir there, but also some Chardonnay.’ I think experimenting with co-fermentation like in Cote Rotie is a great idea. But for now the amount of Chardonnay we grow is so precious that I have not put any into a Pinot Noir.” Bergstrom likes to emphasize continuity and consistency of winemaking regimen because, as he puts it, “I want the vineyard to be what makes the difference, not what I do to it.” Nonetheless, one of the things he reports having devoted considerable time to in recent years, both with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, is matching each vineyard to the cooperages he determines to be best suited. (Perhaps not surprisingly, the chosen regimen of white wine barrels reflects those Burgundian coopers responsible for the lion’s share of barriques at the Cote d’Or addresses he most admires.) Bottling times for the different Pinots are another aspect being increasingly varied in an attempt to match them with site. The bottling of Shea, for example, has been moved up, and that of Bergstrom Vineyard delayed. Since I tasted most of the 2010s alongside their corresponding 2011s, I have included brief comments on the former – or even updated tasting notes in instances where they performed significantly differently 13 months after my having recorded the tasting notes published in Issue 202. And incidentally, the 2012 material in barrel here is awesome! Tel. (503) 554-0463