At the end of my first full year living in California we decided to head to Portland, Oregon to visit the Pinot Noir up there. I had made my first trip to the Willamette Valley with my sister in 2006, and I longed for the opportunity to go back. A cheap pre-New Year's Eve flight got me there. The Willamette Valley is probably what Napa was like in the 1980s - quiet, quaint, relaxed, with rolling hills, new money, and new wines just being discovered. I had heard of a small family-owned outfit called
Holloran Vineyard Wines, so I contacted them to arrange a visit. After touring a couple of places in the Willamette Valley region of Oregon just south of Portland, we headed to Holloran. Off the beaten path, in more of a residential neighborhood, I was sure we were lost. But the address was correct, and we started down the driveway. I got the feeling we were about to make a house call. We parked, and Eva came out to greet us. She said Bill was running late but she would get us started in the meantime. She took us around to the back of the house (Her house! Just a regular house!) and behind it stretched an acre of Pinot Noir vines and a beautiful view of the Willamette Valley. She started telling us how they got there, having sold property in the DC area and trading it for this house and vines. Bill, a software engineer, arrived and told us about how he read every viticulture book he could get his hands on and made winemaking his "night job." They originally grew the grapes and made wine for someone else, converting the old horse barn on the property into a working winery. Then they decided to get in on the action, and now they produce 3-4,000 cases per year under their own labels. Everything about their winemaking process is hands-on. They hand-harvest into small bins and ferment the grapes in those bins. They have a few tanks housed in the horse barn, along with their wood barrels. They bottle by hand and have a small hand-labeling machine. And they don't just make Pinot Noir; in addition to 4 Pinot bottlings, some single vineyard, they make Riesling, Chardonnay and Tempranillo from their own grapes and others sourced from the region.
We tasted all of these wines and enjoyed every one; they were balanced, refined and pretty, unassuming, earthy and fresh. And compared to most of the Pinots we tasted that day, the best ones starting at $40/bottle, Holloran Vineyard Wines were extremely high-quality and a fantastic deal at around $20/bottle. We ordered a case as soon as we got back to San Francisco.
Holla!
