Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Over a glass of the 2011 Chardonnay Cascadia, Brick House winemaker Doug Tunnell spoke about the influence of Burgundian winemaking techniques and philosophies on the young Willamette Valley wine region. 2011, he said, was a formative year that changed how he approached making Chardonnay. A cool season and October harvest in Oregon allowed Doug to travel to Burgundy, where he visited Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey and other domaines and participated in the harvest. "They start the oxidative process from the very first day," Tunnell recalls. "So, I came back to Oregon and found a crusher, added it to our destemmer, and for the first time, crushed fruit going into the press. Prior to that, we had only done whole-cluster pressing." The 2011 Cascadia has aged gracefully, offering complex aromas of candied apples, crème brûlée, honey and candle smoke. The palate is luxuriously satiny and expansive with mature, savory flavors that shift as it airs in the glass.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
Ribbon Ridge is a regular span of uplifted, marine, sedimentary soils (called Willakenzie), whose highest ridge elevations twist like a ribbon. An early settler from Missouri named Colby Carter noticed this unique topography and gave the region its name in 1865—though it wasn’t declared its own AVA until 140 years later, in 2005. The AVA is enclosed by mountains on all sides between Yamhill-Carlton and the Chehalem Mountains, and is actually part of the larger Chehalem Mountains AVA. Its soils have a finer texture than its neighbors with parent materials composed of sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone. Given its presence of natural aquifers in this five square mile area, most vineyards are actually easily dry farmed!