Tuesday, May. 01, 2001

Capturing the Light: Ken Wright's quest for pinot perfection

By Yvette Saarinen

Perhaps no wine conveys the character of "place" like pinot noir. Altitude, climate, soil and the rocks beneath it help form the innate quality of the grape.

And perhaps nobody embodies Oregon pinot noir more than Ken Wright.

"When people drink wine, they want a visceral connection to the earth, to the characteristics of the place," says the owner of Ken Wright Cellars. "Our job is to protect the inherent character, the genius loci, so that the quality is evidenced in the bottle."

He has been making wine in the Willamette Valley since 1986 and worked with California vintners for nine years before that. After various associations, he opened Ken Wright Cellars in a stunning new building designed by his wife, Karen, in Carlton, in Yamhill County southwest of Portland.

For Wright, making great pinot noir starts before the grapes are harvested. Long, long before.

It has been his quest to find the best sites to plant pinot noir. Having found a dozen or so great places in the North Willamette Valley, he and a band of like-minded vintners made dramatic changes in their approach to the vineyards and the winery and developed cutting-edge techniques of stewardship.

The driving force was the valley's marginal climate.

"Our varieties, particularly pinot noir, just reach ripeness at the end of the season," Wright says. "It's what you want, but you also want intense character in the fruit and to reach it as early as possible to avoid early season rainfall. The Pineapple Express — the Jet Stream — often brings rain fairly early in the fall. Rain causes dissolution in the fruit, rot and mildew, and delays may mean damage by migrant birds, then bees. The problem compounds quickly.

"The focus for the best work in the industry has been to do whatever is necessary to achieve full ripeness as early as possible."

That translates to the most efficient capture of light — the basis for the creation of sugar — in the vineyard, Wright says.

One step is the time-consuming and labor-intensive removal of leaves around the fruit zone. The goal is to strike a balance between exposing the fruit to light and not destroying too many leaves. Shading compromises photosynthesis, Wright explains. The first leaf facing the sun gets 100 percent photosythesis, the second leaf, shaded by the first, gets 5 to 10 percent, and the third gets none, thus draining energy that ought to be going toward ripening the grapes.

In the '90s, Wright and his fellow wine growers imported new clones from the Dijon Experiment Station in Burgundy, France. They ripen earlier, and the rootstocks are phylloxera-resistant.

Growers also are using a trellising technique called vertical shoot positioning, developed at Scott Henry Estate Winery in Oregon's Umpqua Valley. Basically, the technique controls vine energy and avoids shading. As an added bonus, it allows vines to be spaced closer together.

"The ripest fruit comes from those trellises," Wright says. "It makes a gorgeous wall of leaf surface. It truly takes advantage of available sunlight — it's a V-8 engine that's got a Volkswagen body."

The grapes themselves also are thinned. About 10 days after fruit set, before seed hardening, the wings and shoulders of the clusters are removed to further concentrate energy.

"We are thinning to incredibly low levels," Wright says. "By removing the crop load, the energy goes to much less fruit. This makes more intense flavors sooner because there is less fruit to ripen."

Removing so much fruit has required a major shift in thinking about purchasing grapes. A standard yield used to be about 3 tons per acre. The new methods pare that to 1.8 to 2 tons per acre. This has set up a natural conflict with growers who depended on tonnage for their living. Growers and winemakers take crop level out of the equation by agreeing on a set price for a set amount of fruit. The arrangement provides a more stable income for the grower and a budgeting tool for the vintner, Wright says.

The intensive hands-on methods mean higher labor costs for vintners — an increase to more than $5,000 per acre from about $4,000. Of course, this means higher prices at the checkstand, but Wright believes the return will be in the bottle.

"The biggest difficulty (for Oregon pinot noirs) in the national marketplace has been consistency. For people who have an international frame of reference, their take has been, weather permitting, we have fabulous wines. They feel that's not too often, that our wines are average at best. I found a lot of truth in that statement, and it caused me and many others to look for new technology to allow us to be in the barn, dry, with very high-quality fruit year in and year out," Wright says.

Wright says wines produced from the newer techniques are "barely out there" and as more reach the marketplace, consumers will be impressed with the results. He predicted the issue of unreliable quality will be resolved and consumers will be drinking awesome wines.

"Pinot noir is a grape that demands attention," he says. "We must do everything possible to protect its character. We can't be lazy. When you do the work, it pays off, but we have to charge for it. We're getting smarter, better focused, elevating the quality of the wine. Unfortunately, this means it will be more expensive. If we don't utilize these techniques, we will get wine of inconsistent quality."

Yvette Saarinen is a freelance writer and pinot noir lover who lives in Newberg, Ore. She is a regular contributor to Wine Press Northwest.

Evaporating early rain problems

While "cutting" is the operative word in the cutting-edge techniques Ken Wright uses in the vineyard, he also applies a forward-looking philosophy to his winery.

The evaporator that Wright has been using for more than four years is emerging from a crush of criticism to be regarded as a valuable tool for Willamette Valley winemakers. Always in the vanguard, Wright says the evaporator, or concentrator, which has its origins in Italy, is useful in combating one of the constant threats to Willamette Valley wine grapes: rain.

The evaporator was used for decades in other industries before winemakers in France, Italy and Switzerland took notice about 15 years ago. Wright was the first Oregon vintner to use the machine. Since then, others have begun singing its praises.

Wright, who has been making wine in the Willamette Valley for more than 15 years, says, "Our biggest problem has been September and October rainfall. Since I've been here, we've suffered from dilution by rainfall that affects the quality of wine. The effects of rainfall are that it dilutes fruit flavor, aromatics and color."

Usually when rain falls on ripening fruit, people just wait and hope for good weather to dehydrate the grapes back to the quality they were before it rained, Wright said. But that usually doesn't happen. Once there's been a substantial rain, the fruit begins to break down, then degrade in quality. Mold, splitting, bacterial infection and attacks from insects and migrating birds compound the threat.

Wright prefers to take action rather than chances with Oregon's unpredictable autumns.

Assuming the fruit is ripe prior to the rain, the grapes are harvested and on the same day are crushed and put into vats. Then the evaporator causes the juice to become more concentrated by removing water. The process must begin before fermentation, Wright stresses. The evaporator restores the sugar content to within 1 or 2 percent of the content before the rain.

The evaporator works on the principle that when liquid is placed in a vacuum, the boiling point is depressed. The water begins to boil at room temperature, or around 68 degrees Farenheit.

"Visually, it looks violent because it is boiling," Wright said. "But the two greatest enemies to juice or wine — oxygen and heat — have been removed."

Depending on the size of the evaporator, the output of juice is between eight and 20 gallons per hour. The distilled water is piped off and goes down the drain. It has some aromatics but represents a minor loss to the juice.

The evaporator performs only the one function, Wright emphasizes. "It won't give you quality. That has to come from the field. If you put in junk, you get concentrated junk."

And it's only useful if there is an unseasonable rain. "It's a mistake to remove water from already balanced fruit," he says. "The result is severe, very coarse, tannic, acidic, unfriendly and monolithic wine,"

Some vintners view the evaporator with distaste, labeling its use unnatural and even cheating. Wright thinks it's controversial just because it's new.

To a particular critic, he responded, "Why is it more acceptable if Mother Nature robs you of all the months of work in the vineyard that led to ripe fruit filled with character? Those who feel the technology is unnatural or cheating give this machine far too much credit. It doesn't create inherent quality. The factors that play a role in inherent quality will not change.

"What you can say is that this machine is an insurance policy and a tool. If, after so much time and money spent over a season, you have managed to bring your fruit to maturity and rainfall dilutes what would otherwise be a compelling wine, you now have a tool — not a magic wand — that can help return the intensity of flavor, aroma and body that already existed prior to the rainfall. Is reverence for Mother Nature so important that it becomes your duty to provide an inferior wine to your clamoring fans?

"I think our duty is to do our best to protect the inherent character of the fruit so that it may provide the greatest pleasure to those who purchase our wine."

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