CARLTON, Ore. — Oregon is famous for its Pinot Noir, but that’s far from the only grape grown within its borders. This summer, the Alt Wine Festival at Abbey Road Farm in Carlton made that abundantly clear.
During an afternoon gathering, 35 wineries from around the state poured samples and sold wines made with varieties such as Mencia, Mondeuse, Tannat and many other unusual-for-Oregon grapes. This year’s event drew about 400 people eager to enjoy an afternoon of exploring, learning and spending time with friends. (Editor’s note: The Alt Wine Festival is scheduled to return to Abbey Road Farm on Saturday, July 16, 2023.)
Between sips and casual conversations with winemakers, attendees made delicious use of the popular event space created by Abbey Road Farm’s former owners John and Judi Stuart. In addition to sprawling across the lawn and enjoying the view, small groups ate tacos from a local food truck, checked out the farm animals and snapped photos in front of the selfie wall.
The Alt Wine Festival premiered in 2019 and is sponsored by Sunday School Wine, a (mostly) online educational platform and resource library. Co-founder Mallory Smith said the idea for the in-person Alt Wine Festival came to her while she was working her day job at a Portland bottle shop. She noticed most of the people buying Oregon Pinot Noir out of town.
“People from in town were excited about other things,” Smith said. “That’s when I realized that if you’re not in the wine world, you don’t know there are all these other things planted in Oregon.”
Martin Skegg, the other Sunday School Wine founder, said, “We knew about all these great winemakers and all these other grapes. It made sense to bring them together under one roof to show off something other than Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.”
Trousseau emerges at Beckham Estate
Andrew Beckham with Beckham Estate Vineyard is one of the Oregon winegrowers who doesn’t limit himself to the Willamette Valley’s most common grape varieties.
While he grows Pinot Noir, he also has a section of the vineyard dedicated to Trousseau, one of the main red grapes of Jura in eastern France and known as Bastardo in Portugal.
Trousseau is known for making fresh, savory, structured wines. Offering something unusual for tasting room visitors helps the Chehalem Mountains producer stand out among Newberg-area wineries.
As climate change continues to advance, many growers are looking to diversify their plantings and add varieties that ripen later or retain acidity in hotter temperatures. Trousseau fits that bill for Beckham.
“Trousseau is going to offer a lot of interpretations and styles,” Beckham says. “We are harvesting our Trousseau with freshness in mind, meaning lower sugars and higher acidity.
“It only spends between 7 and 10 days on the skins before we press off,” he adds. “Generally speaking, fermentation has barely begun. We finish fermentation in amphorae, then return it to clay for élevage.”
He’s also made a carbonic version in amphorae, which produced a different expression.
Friulano ascends at Cooper Mountain
Alt Wine Festival attendees also had a chance to try Friulano. It is widely grown in Italy’s northeastern region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, but it appears in only a few vineyards in Oregon. Among those is another Chehalem Mountains site — Johnson School Vineyard, one of the seven Biodynamically farmed estate plantings for Cooper Mountain Vineyards.
Friulano is a relative of Sauvignon Blanc, which explains why second-generation owner Barbara Gross describes it as similar to Sauvignon Blanc: clean, light, fruity and eminently drinkable. It’s also ideal for today’s more adventurous wine lovers.
“Consumers are wanting to explore these days,” she says. “This is why we made it.”
Gross says working with a variety that consumers don’t expect to see ties nicely into the Oregon wine industry’s pioneering spirit. Echoing Beckham, she plans to keep producing Friulano because she believes it will do well as the Willamette Valley’s climate becomes warmer.
David Hill showcases Chasselas
David Hill Vineyard & Winery in Forest Grove was planted in the 1960s by Charles Coury, who championed Oregon as an ideal location for high-elevation varieties. While the vineyard has a number of whites not widely grown in Oregon — including Pearl of Csaba (Hungary), Silvaner (Alsace) and Müller-Thurgau (Switzerland) — winemaker Chad Stock decided to showcase his Chasselas at the Alt Wine Festival.
Chasselas is the most widely grown grape in Switzerland and produced with acclaim in British Columbia, but it’s unusual to find it growing in the U.S. Stock, a small-batch winemaker for much of his career, says, “It’s hard to get people to be aware of these wines because the quantity is so small.”
There’s a single row of Chasselas planted at David Hill, from which Stock produces about a barrel and a half of wine each vintage.
“Promoting the Chasselas at an event with 400 people was a way to turn the volume up on the microphone,” Stock says.
The grape can transform into anything from a low-alcohol aperitif to an intense wine packed with texture and flavor. David Hill is in a relatively cool area, so Stock can hang the fruit for a long time and create a wine on the medium-plus end of the spectrum.
Years ago, Mike Hinds with Franchère Wine Co., near Silverton, was looking for Blaufränkisch (also known as Lemberger) and Zweigelt — two cool climate red wine grapes popular in Austria — when he discovered small plantings of Ehrenfelser and Kerner at Satori Springs Vineyard, the estate planting by Chris Carlsberg and Christopher Bridge Cellars near Oregon City. The two whites both thrive in cooler climates.
“I knew about Kerner because of the varietal bottling of it for northern Italy, especially Alto Adige, but I’d never heard of Ehrenfelser,” Hinds said.
The two grapes make ideal blending partners, he’s discovered.
“Kerner is very aromatic, and Ehrenfelser has a more restrained nose,” Hinds says. “It has a nice shape to it in the mouth that is both lin- ear and voluptuous. In some years, it can take on the character of ripe peaches. In other years, especially the way I ferment it, it has a lemon curd aspect to it.”
Hinds said it’s fun and educational to work with a wide variety of grapes.
“Viewing the terroir of Oregon through the lens of different grape varieties is interesting,” Hinds says. “It helps us learn more about this state we’re living in.”
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