“WINES FOR WINTER 2012″ ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE (tasting notes in column at right). Please visit our Online Wine Shop.

TASTING ROOM AT THE WINERY WILL BE OPEN Wednesday-Sunday, 12:00 until 5:00.

CLICK HERE to download a map to the winery in McMinnville.

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2011 Vintage - NOTES FROM THE WINEMAKER:

The vintage of 2011 will certainly be noted around the world as one of its most extraordinary. In Oregon, I am convinced that for growers who knew how to farm to a cool vintage, this will be one of the greats.

In Europe, my friend Martin Foradori in the Alto Adige of Italy emailed that his picking was complete by early September – about a month earlier than normal. The same was true in Burgundy and Champagne.

Early vintages do not always lend themselves to great wines (though Martin is pleased with his.) Though I’m never offered a choice, I tend to prefer later vintages myself. This is because sugar content doesn’t ripen grapes - time does. Picking 100 days after flowering gives you a good wine; picking 125 days after flowering can give you a great one.

Here in Oregon the harvest came a month later than normal, in fact, later than it ever has before. Last year I wrote that 2010 was our latest harvest start ever; I never thought that record would be broken so soon. I guess I got my wish.

We commenced the 2011 pick in earnest on October 23 at the Sisters Vineyard. We picked the South Block Pinot and the rest of the original vines on October 28. Our final pick was at the Daphne Vineyard on November 2nd. Picking was unusually pleasant this year, with a long strand of cool dry days.

Picking South Block on October 28? Unprecedented. Our latest prior pick in the South Block was on October 26…. 1976.

The 1976 South Block is stunning. It still stands as proof that extended ripening time leads to great wine – as long as the year is cool and dry enough to retain the flavors.

When 25-year employee Martin Ponce announced to me from the destemmer that the grapes seemed very ripe this year, I took great heart. The flavors bear out Martin’s assessment. Everything points to weightless power and poise for the 2011 vintage.

This year, as you enter the cellar to chose your favorites from our new releases, you may very well get first-hand experience of the new vintage 2011s. The barrels of Chardonnay you walk past will still be fermenting, and the Pinot noir will still be warm after being freshly barreled down. It is an exciting time at Eyrie, and we look forward to sharing it with you.

~ Jason Lett, The Eyrie Vineyards

Jason wrote these notes from a past Harvest time:

“The beginning is always hard to separate from the end. We started picking today, and it is the end of the vintage for every vine we harvest. The fruit has burgeoned over months, starting as a tiny, citrus-scented flower to reach this apotheosis: a quick snip in the cool of the morning. The life of the cluster has come to its end.

But that snip is the very beginning of the wine. An acre of grapes goes into one press. The berries, pressed, yield their juice–the first of the run of Pinot gris is tart and green. The press cycles—14 pounds of pressure, then 28, then 42—backing off the platen and fluffing the berries up again between each squeeze. Each cycle brings its own character to the wine, the last yielding juice the color of rose-hip tea and sweet with the sugars stored next to the skins. It takes three hours of slow respiration of the platen of our old basket-presses to finish the cycle. We are left with an empty press and a few hundred pounds of skins, but also with a full tank of heavy juice, giving leave to the yeasts to make it wine.

When you pick the grapes, you can almost hear the vine’s relief. The canes, unburdened of their fruit, spring straight again. The beautiful architecture of the vine, and all the hand labor that went into assisting it to its form, suddenly clarifies. The leaves change color almost immediately. Freed from the burden of photosynthesis, the vines secret their remaining sugars into their trunks and begin their preparations for the winter to come.

By the time the leaves have fallen, the juice has fermented to wine. The vines grow dormant. The cool of winter steals into the winery and the second fermentation begins, the long malolactic that carries the wine safely through winter. A period of age, the careful tumult into the bottle—and someday to the table, where another end, and another beginning, awaits the wine-to-be.”

~ Jason Lett, The Eyrie Vineyards

Re-introducing the Elva! “Something about our old ’70’s Swiss hand-bottler glittering under its dust stirred an idea: If a machine can fill a bottle, why can’t it empty one?” I began to see a solution to a problem that’s been occupying me ever since we opened our tasting room: “How can we serve library wines so that every glass is perfect?” - Jason Lett

Taste the new old Elva in action, at our winery tasting room, 935 NE 10th Avenue, McMinnville. Open Wednesdays through Sundays, 12:00 until 5:00. Closed on major holidays.

CLICK HERE to download a map.

“From grape-growing to elevage, this is an artisanal, non-interventionist, unique operation that continues to turn out some of the most fascinating wines on the planet.” Jay Miller, Wine Advocate

“The Eyrie Vineyards has not missed a beat since Jason Lett took over the reins from his late father, Oregon legend David Lett.” – 10/09 Wine Advocate

Hear about Oregon Pinot noir and The Eyrie Vineyards. In September 2008, just a few weeks before his death, David Lett and his son Jason Lett were visited by Lynne Rossetto Kasper, and interviewed for “The Splendid Table”. The interview aired on National Public Radio on 9/21/08, and was repeated in September 2009. You can still hear it here. “A great tribute to family love and endeavor.”-NPR

Click Here To Listen

or go to The Splendid Table website: splendidtable.publicradio.org

On July 23, The Eyrie Vineyards presented a Chardonnay tasting of historic proportions. 38 Eyrie vintages were poured, from Eyrie’s (and the Willamette Valley’s) first vintage in 1970, to our most recent release, the 2007 Reserve. Members of the international wine media, Eyrie staff and crew, and a group of friends and supporters gathered to taste the Chardonnays of Eyrie’s founder, David Lett, and son Jason Lett, who took the helm at Eyrie in 2005.

The reason for this Retrospective was, above all, to raise funds to benefit the young family of our cellarmaster, Julio Hernandez. Julio’s wife Lupe is suffering from renal failure, and needs a kidney transplant. Despite having insurance, the costs are monumental.

Proceeds from the sale of Eyrie Reserve Chardonnays will go to help cover Lupe’s uninsured medical expenses. We hope you will join our efforts, and enjoy some unique and beautiful Chardonnays at the same time.

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR A CHARDONNAY PRICE LIST AND ORDER FORM.

To learn more about this event, and to read British wine authority Jancis Robinson’s tasting notes, go to “Eyrie Chardonnay Retrospective” at the bottom of the column to your right.

David Lett, founder of The Eyrie Vineyards, was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science degree by the faculty and trustees of Linfield College at Commencement ceremonies on May 31, 2009. The honor was given in recognition of David’s “visionary work to establish Oregon’s world-renowned wine industry”.

Jason Lett accepted the posthumous degree on behalf of his father and family, and delivered the 2009 Linfield College commencement address “Castles in the Air”. The title of Jason’s address was based on a quotation from Henry David Thoreau, that David carried with him for 40 years: “If a man proceeds confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in the common hour….”

CLICK HERE FOR JASON’S ADDRESS, Part 1

CLICK HERE FOR JASON’S ADDRESS, Part 2

Click here to see photo and summary at the Linfield website.

Click here to see article in the McMinnville News-Register.

David Lett planted the first Pinot noir vines in the Willamette Valley, in 1965. A few years later, Pinot noir from The Eyrie Vineyards earned the first international recognition for Oregon wines. In 2005, David and Diana Lett passed the Eyrie legacy to 2nd-generation winemaker Jason Lett. To learn more about The Eyrie Vineyards, please visit our About page.