"1313" Oregon Pinot Noir
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Despite having grown up in California I spent a fair bit of my early years in Oregon. I had an aunt who lived in Portland when I was a child, which was probably the original reason my family traveled there but soon we all came to love Oregon and we spent many summer vacations in various parts of the state. Enough so that I began to associate summer with a trip to Oregon, and as a kid I fantasized about living up there. This of course was long before I had any inkling that I would one day be a winemaker. From early in my career I wanted to try my hand at Oregon Pinot Noir. Over the years I have made Pinot Noir from all over the state of California and, more recently, in Chile. I even worked a little in the wineries of some friends in New Zealand, doing a few punchdowns and walking some of the vineyard blocks. And of course I made the requisite pilgrimage to Burgundy, although it was in the wintertime and the extent of my experience consisted of wandering among some of the great vineyards of the Cote d’Or and tasting a few wines, because of course their harvest comes at a time that I am busy with my own wines. But for a variety of reasons I had never made Oregon Pinot Noir. In 2008 the opportunity presented itself to purchase a small amount of fruit from the Roserock vineyard, in the Eola-Amity Hills. By the way, the government won’t let me put Eola-Amity Hills on the label because I brought the grapes down to California to ferment the wine, which is why the label says only Oregon. Roserock is on a gently southeast facing hill overlooking the greater Willamette Valley, just northwest of the town of Salem. The soil is reddish and volcanic, shallow and well drained. It is marginally cooler in the Eola Amity Hills than it is the northern Willamette Valley due to its location near what is known as the Van Duzer corridor, which is a break in the coastal mountains through which cool marine air enters the Willamette Valley. Some of my favorite Oregon wines have come from the Eola Hills, including Cristom and Seven Springs Vineyards. Where did the name “1313” come from? In the mid-1990’s, I began attending a winemaking conference in the mountains of central Oregon. Coming from California, I was pleasantly surprised at how laid back the proceedings were—my wife likes to call it “summer camp for winemakers.” During the afternoon of the first day of the conference, I tagged along some with some local winemakers to their favored swimming hole on a nearby creek. After a short swim and a very relaxing doze on a large, sun-warmed boulder I decided that it was the best swimming hole I had ever found and on subsequent visits I have always made a point to go back for a swim. That evening I learned that the swimming hole was named “1313,” after a road marker that used to stand near the head of the trail that leads down to the creek. I have to admit that 1313 just might be my favorite spot in all of Oregon, and so I named this wine in honor of it. But, just as I don't make it to the swimming hole every year, I will not make a 1313 every year. Only when the timing is right.
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