huevos con vino

Beaux Fréres is one of those wineries that you’ve either heard of because of Robert Parker’s attachment to the winery, or because you’re into Oregon Pinot Noir and you know about Robert Parker’s attachment to the winery.  It is hard to disassociate Parker’s name from this winery, although when you visit there are no obvious, direct connections to his legacy as one of the most influential wine reviewers and critics in history.

Exterior, rear view of the Beaux Fréres winery

All mention of Robert Parker aside, Beaux Fréres has built a reputation on its well-regarded Pinot Noir.  They make three different wines for general release, not including the Belle Soeurs and other random seasonal releases (such as the Grenache they were touting the day after Thanksgiving):

• Willamette Valley - their entry-level Pinot Noir, named the same as many other wineries’ entry-level Pinots
• The Vineyard - their mid-range Pinot Noir; the 2005 is particularly good
• The Upper Terrace - top-end Pinot Noir; they are already sold out of their 2005 futures only a few weeks after they went on sale

Exterior, front view of parking at the Beaux Fréres winery

The Beaux Frères winery is only open to the public for a few days each year.  Like many other high-end Oregon wineries, the Memorial Day weekend and the Thanksgiving holiday weekend are the only times when most average wine connoisseurs gain access to Beaux Frères.  I happened to pay a visit on the day after Thanksgiving in 2006.

Walking into Beaux Fréres on the day after Thanksgiving, 2006

The general vibe at Beaux Frères is odd.  On the one hand, the winery clearly isn’t set up to accomodate more than about 15 visitors at once.  When we arrived, I saw one of those wine limo tours pull up.  That put me off right away, although you can’t do much about it I suppose.  Why did it annoy me to see this huge limousine arrive?  Well, as soon as it stopped, it disgorged at least 8 mostly-drunk yuppie scum, one of whom insisted on skipping into the winery.  Seriously.

Now, a bit of a digression here: I think it’s wonderful to see people get excited about wine, particularly when it comes to visiting the winery whose wines are among your favorites.  I know I got weak in the knees when I first visited Domaine Drouhin.  But I also knew when to stop tasting, or at least cut back a bit on how much I was tasting.  Just because you paid for the limo doesn’t mean you’ve got an excuse to get totally sloshed, or act like it’s a bachelorette party everywhere you go.  I recognize that I sound like a crotchety old wine snob here, but really I’m just embarrassed to be in my 30s and watch other fellow youngsters behave like idiots and reinforce the opinions about us in the minds of the actual crotchety old wine snobs, who as a result of this sort of scene tend to treat me with as much disdain as they treat the bachelorette party-goers.

Back to the review.  I was interested to see what this winery had to offer, particularly with such limited visitation availability.  As we walked in, we each paid the $15 for a nice Ravenscroft glass and the right to taste 2005 futures of all three Pinot Noirs, plus their 2004 Belle Soeurs Pinot Noir and two Ana Vineyards bottlings as well, the 2004 and 2005.  At the time, I didn’t know yet how much I would come to love the Ana Vineyards’ wines, so I tried these at the end of the tasting.  Unfortunately, I didn’t bring any home.

The main tasting area at Beaux Fréres on the day after Thanksgiving, 2006

The main room (pictured above) of the winery is small, with huge doors leading…somewhere else (they were closed), and an upstairs where food could be prepared.  There was a small entry hall where they were selling futures and whatnot, and this room led into the main room.

The rest of the main tasting area at Beaux Fréres on the day after Thanksgiving, 2006

This photo shows the rest of the room; my back is against the huge doors at the rear of the room.  The Ana Vineyards tasting table is barely visible here (in front of the guy with the light sabre thing shining on his back from my flash).

So, how did the futures taste?  Well, as my mom and wife both pointed out later, the average wine drinker won’t like them.  The Willamette and Upper Terrace both tasted like acid and tannins with some wine thrown in for good measure, which is pretty much what you’d expect from wines like these at such a young age and before bottling.  Interestingly, the Vineyard Pinot Noir was pretty darn good already.  It was the only Beaux Fréres wine future I considered buying, but at $60/bottle it wasn’t really worth it yet.  This sentiment was well justified once I tried some other 2005 Pinots at other wineries that were actually ready to drink and were no longer considered “futures.”

As I said earlier, the vibe was odd.  On the one hand, the winery tried hard to be friendly and accomodate everyone by including water, cheese, bread, and some artwork for browsing/sale.  The people pouring the wines were mostly quite nice, even the ones who seemed to work for the winery (rather than just buddies of the winemakers).

On the other hand, the focus at this winery was very much on the exclusivity of the wines and their provenance, so to speak, rather than on the enjoyment of the wines themselves.  I guess when you can sell out much of your stock before it really hits the market, you get a little lazy about trying to showcase the flavors compared to previous vintages, for example.  None of us were particularly impressed with this winery because it seemed primarily like a place where rich people would go to mingle with other rich people, be seen, and pretend to enjoy expensive wine that isn’t ready to drink yet but that costs a lot so it must be good now, right?

I actually liked the winery and their wines, but I just felt a little put off by the idea of being limited to 2 bottles of Upper Terrace at $75/bottle direct from the winery.  Why even make the trip for 2 bottles?  If I had the money and I really liked the wine, I’d want to try and buy a case or two for the rest of the year.  That seems to be the point of opening your doors the day after Thanksgiving, right?

Bah, I’m just a crotchety old wine snob, even though I know next to nothing about wine.  But I do know what makes a good business and Beaux Fréres definitely have a good business going.  Now they just need to make the effort to personalize it a little bit.  And add some parking.

Until my recent trip to the Portland, Oregon area for Thanksgiving, I had not heard about JK Carriere.  But that’s hardly surprising: The winery has been in business since 1999, and their wines are distributed in 12 states right now.  So don’t feel bad if this post is the first time you’ve heard of this exciting winery.

The winery itself is a little hard to spot from the road.  We blew past the sign because it was pointing the other direction on the 4-lane highway off of which the winery sits.  We turned around and made the 250-yard dash to the old white barn that now serves as the tasting room and that houses part of the winery machinery.

Walking into JK Carriere the day after Thanksgiving

I like the winery building itself.  The idea of repurposing an old barn-type structure is terrific as it highlights the connection to the local territory, the agricultural “roots” of winemaking, etc.  It sure feels much less sterile than some of the postmodern, minimalist winery designs I’ve seen in California (which I do like on the whole).

Inside the winery, the tasting on the day after Thanksgiving was split across a few different tables with an Italian cheese table in between.  The wines of JK Carriere lend themselves well to this sort of tasting approach.  Here’s a list of the current releases; only the Pinot Noirs were available for tasting at the time, and all of these wines are 2004 vintage:

• Willamette Valley Pinot Noir ($42/bottle) - Their mid-range Pinot, so to speak, but at 667 cases this “mid-range” wine is the same price as the “entry-level” Domaine Drouhin Willamette Valley release.  The JK Carriere Provocateur is the comparable “entry-level” wine (at $24/bottle).
• Antoinette ($65/bottle) - Wine made from Temperance Hill grapes, which have a longer pedigree than many Oregon vineyards at 25+ years; I remember liking this wine but not enough to drop $65 on it.  As with all of the vineyard-designated wines, they made 75 cases in 2004.
• Shea Vineyard ($65/bottle) - Pure Dijon 777 wine; Shea is such a hot vineyard right now, particularly after the recent ratings in Pinot Report and Wine Spectator.  Very nice and ripe, but again I wonder whether $65 is too much to spend.
• Anderson Family ($65/bottle) - Pure Dijon 115 wine; interesting taste, much more red fruit than the Shea or Antoinette releases.  Very nice, and probably my favorite of the four wines I tasted right after Thanksgiving.

One note here, too: All of these wines, despite coming from different vineyards and despite being picked at different times (I assume), feature 13.75% alcohol content.  That’s really interesting to me as I can only assume they chose to stop fermentation at a specific point in each case regardless of the type of wine being produced.  Now, I don’t have any issues with that, but I would love to talk to the winemaker about this choice and how they came to make it.

JK Carriere does make a couple of other wines that were sold out already in November.  The following photo shows one of the interior views of the winery, along with a sample of these other wines.

Selection of JK Carriere wines

As a brand, JK Carriere really has its act together.  The wine labels are well done, the overall branding message and marketing story are clear and strong throughout the line of offerings, and the Web site is simple but very functional and content complete.  At the tasting, it made sense to offer the Italian cheeses through a third party, local cheesemaker.  They were delicious and they complemented the wines well, although the people serving cheese didn’t know much about the wines so combining the cheese and wine was a bit of a crapshoot.

They were even handing out M&M’s themed with JK Carriere logo and whatnot.  Very classy.

Sometimes, though, all the branding and classy logos and marketing speak on the Web site can drag down the overall premise of the winery.  Yes, they do distinguish themselves from the hundreds of other Pinot-focused Oregon wineries by producing such a strong marketing message.  But they also make me wonder how much of the $65/bottle cost goes into the marketing budget rather than the winemaking side of the house.  I guess I’d be a hypocrite to criticize JK Carriere too much here; I like how thoughtful and complete the entire visitation experience was (particularly compared to other wineries out there). 

I guess I felt like the visit was not unique to me.  I like going to a winery and feeling like I had a slightly different experience than everyone else, and maybe that sort of feeling only comes from visiting the really tiny, “mom ‘n’ pop” operations out there.  I know there are plenty such places in Eastern Washington and even in the Willamette Valley AVA, but the numbers seem to be dwindling as the stakes are raised to turn a profit.  With so many wineries competing for casual wine drinkers, the next 10 years should prove difficult for many wineries that don’t quite know who they are or where they fit into the marketplace.  JK Carriere appears to be very much aware of this situation, and their marketing story seems perfectly structured as a result.  But at $65/bottle for the really interesting wines (and 50-75 cases per year over the last couple of years), I don’t know if I can see buying too many bottles for myself.

So, in summary, I really do like the JK Carriere winery.  I really think they’ve got a good thing going, and I hope they are successful.  But I guess they have refined the experience of visiting and tasting their wine so carefully that it all felt a little too much like a larger-scale operation, and that was a tiny bit disappointing to me.  Still, their wines are delicious and I’d love to try their “Glass” Pinot Noir, a rosé that retails for $20/bottle when it’s available.  Now that sounds cool!

Lachini Vineyards is relatively new, assuming your scale of measurement is broader than the release date of the movie Sideways.  Started in 2001, this winery hadn’t registered with me until a few weeks before Thanksgiving.  I searched around for what the search engines regard as the “best Pinots in Oregon” and Lachini was one of the hits I got back.  In this case, the Internet was correct: Lachini is certainly among the best Pinot-focused wineries in Oregon.

Grape vines outside Lachini 

We paid Lachini a visit the day after Thanksgiving, 2006.  The winery abuts Bergstrom and is also very close to Adelsheim, so they are certainly in well-known company on Calkins Lane.  From the road, you cannot see much of anything; the road rises up to meet you, so to speak.

At the end of the lengthy gravel driveway, a lovely winery building awaited us.  When we visited, we noticed a large pavilion tent set up out in front of the winery, ostensibly to accomodate all the visitors.  The winery is typically “by appointment only” like so many of the high-end, low-production Pinot wineries in this part of the country.

When I say “low production,” I’m talking about a total harvest of about 3,500 cases of wine in 2006, up from about 2,550 in 2005.  Nearly half of that production seems to go into the Family Estate Pinot Noir, a blend of their different blocks of Estate fruit.  Other wines include the Giselle (at 100 cases, this wine uses the best barrels of the vintage blended together), the Ana Vineyard and ‘S’ releases (both under 300 cases produced), and a Pinot Gris that is extremely limited (133 cases in 2005) and sold out.

Much of Lachini’s wines will probably sell out rapidly as they rely on a mailing list and point-of-sale approach so far.  I got the strong sense at this winery that the entire family was helping out: Ron and Marianne Lachini were there, along with a couple of parents and some friends who were pouring wine and collecting money.  The following photo gives you a sense of what it was like in the tent that afternoon: 

The crowd at Lachini, 11/24/06

The good folks at Lachini figured out a few of the best tactics for a successful tasting event on a busy day:

• Provide enough parking to match the approximate capacity of the tasting area
• Provide good snack food that pairs well with Pinot Noir, such as mild olives, bread, mild cheeses, and good dark chocolate truffles
• Offer free bottled water and wine alternatives to those who must drive or who don’t really want to drink
• Let everyone in without forcing them to pay; only charge those who taste
• Give each taster a terrific wine glass as part of the fee; include your logo on the glass
• Space out the different wines so you move in a discernible, logical order from wine to wine, preventing major queues at any one table
• Place one-page wine fact briefs at each table
• Educate your helpers so they can talk about wine as much or as little as the tasters want
• If you are the winemaker or winery owner, show up and press the flesh in person

Lachini did all of these things and more: They were so friendly and helpful, it was a fun experience to be there.  Even if the wine had been subpar somehow, I would have enjoyed myself.

But let me tell you: The wines at Lachini are fantastic!  They will have no trouble selling out every vintage of these wines.

• The ‘S’ is a great crowd-pleaser, with its smooth mouthfeel and delicious fruit aromas and flavors.  Women love this wine, and men are happy because they enjoy it too and because women love this wine.  Great with dark chocolate.
• The ‘Ana Vineyard’ is a massive Pommard browbeater.  I love this wine because it’s 13.4% alcohol and because it tastes like a French wine in all the best ways.  The ‘Ana Vineyard’ is focused on supple earthy flavors and, better yet, the subtleties behind the dusty, mushroomy textures.
• The ‘Family Estate’ is an excellent blend of all the Lachini Estate fruit.  This blend is in keeping with the Burgundian style of Pinot Noir rather than some of those California blends that feature 15% alcohol content or more.  Robust, delicious, clearly meant to be opened and consumed with food.
• The ‘Giselle’ wasn’t available when I visited; the price went up a lot since 2005 because, as the winery owner told me, he needs to better distinguish his “top of the line” wine from the rest of his offerings.
• The Pinot Gris sounds interesting but it was sold out and unavailable.

As I said earlier, Lachini is moving toward the mailing list allocation model for selling their wine.  I think many more wineries will be shifting in this direction as the market continues to expand for top quality Pinot Noir.  I also think that the more this progression occurs, the less inherent prestige each new winery will be accorded simply because they sell on allocation only.  If everyone is doing it, the differentiation value of mailing list allocation diminishes, although it won’t vanish altogether.

Lachini is a very promising young winery.  They have the right focus, attitude, and range of wines: They aren’t trying to be all things to all people.  I think it is commendable that they don’t release a “cheap” ($20-$25) Pinot Noir, although their ‘Family Estate’ release lacks sufficient price differentiation from the other more limited releases (the ‘S’ and ‘Ana Vineyard’ cost $42/bottle right now, same as the ‘Family Estate’).  Compared to other fairly new wineries in the Willamette Valley AVA, I believe Lachini stands an excellent chance for future success.  I know I’m looking forward to each successive vintage from them!