Rogue River Valley

Southern Oregon Sauvignon Blanc from Leah Jørgensen

September 27, 2018
Leah Jørgensen Cellars 2017 Sauvignon Blanc

We have been talking with Leah Jørgensen of Leah Jørgensen Cellars about her inspirations as well as Southern Oregon.  We’ve discussed how her love of the wines from the Loire Valley in France influences her wines as well as the depth of history in the soils of Southern Oregon.  Now we are finally putting glass to lips and tasting some of her wines.  We begin with her 2017 Sauvignon Blanc.

Leah Jørgensen Cellars 2017 Sauvignon Blanc

Leah Jørgensen Cellars 2017 Sauvignon Blanc

Leah Jørgensen Cellars 2017 Sauvignon Blanc

“This is our Sauvignon Blanc from Rogue Valley.  It comes from the Crater View Vineyard that I was mentioning.  Hence we gave her a little makeover (she is a mermaid on the bottle) to inspire the fish and I think she has an oyster shell right there. So actually, I wanted to make white wines that go with shellfish.  We are here in Oregon right, we have incredible oyster beds, crab.  My cousins own the fisherman’s market in Eugene.  They are fishermen have fishing boats that go up to Alaska, that’s my Nordic heritage coming through.  This wine has got all kinds of bright acidity and gooseberry.  It’s not anything like a California Sauvignon Blanc and it’s nothing like a New Zealand, it’s much more along the lines of…sometimes it even gets a “gunflintiness”, so similar to a Pouilly-Fumé.  Definitely the Loire inspired Sauvignon Blancs.  We use stainless steel and Acacia barrels.”

Acacia Barrels?

“So a lot of the young guns in the Loire Valley have been moving to Acacia barrels for their whites; Chenin blanc, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc.  And the reason for that is that if you were to smell an oak barrel versus an acacia barrel, we know what oak is right, it gives that vanilla and caramel and all those wonderful notes coconut too, but if you smell an acacia barrel it’s much more herbal and floral, elderberry flower, gardenia, resin like from a fir tree, so it’s just much more interesting.  The grapes like Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc really lifts those herbal-floral notes and it makes a quite pretty difference than using oak. “

This wine was so different from other Sauvignon Blancs from California or New Zealand.  It’s softer on the nose, but with great acidity.  It’s clean and you get minerals off of it.

“It’s that wonderful thing about putting your nose in a wine glass and getting all these amazing things and then it’s all subjective, because it all depends on things that I have smelled or that I can imagine smelling.”

“And your biochemistry! We are biochemically individual people, so we will experience wine all so differently.  That’s why I never really take reviews, you kind of take it as a grain of salt that it should be something experienced Individually.”

This wine retails at $24.  It comes from the Crater View Vineyard in Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley AVA, just outside of Jackson Oregon.  This vineyard has some major elevation sitting between 1,500 and 1,675 feet.  This site has all the feel good attributes of Salmon-Safe, Oregon Certified Sustainable and L.I.V.E. Certified and… in 2015 they found 250 MILLION year old blue schist rocks and other marine rock as they were getting a new block ready for planting.

Want to find a bottle?  Head to Leah Jørgensen Cellars squarespace or look for one of the smart establishments that carry her wine.  There is a list here.

We are going to continue our chat with Leah Jørgensen.  Next up is her Blanc de Cabernet Franc! And check out our previous episodes with her Leah Jørgensen – Pirate Princess & Winemaker, Grapes of Southern Oregon with Leah Jørgensen.

Check out Leah’s updated website at https://leahjorgensencellars.com/

You can find her on on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram too!

And join us back here at Crushed Grape Chronicles  as we continue sharing our conversation with Leah!  And don’t forget, you can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

Grapes of Southern Oregon with Leah Jørgensen

September 25, 2018
Leah Jorgensen Pirate Princess

Leah Jørgensen makes wines from grapes in southern Oregon, primarily from the Rogue and Applegate Valleys.  In our previous post (link here) we discussed the soils of the region.  Now we get into the grapes she is growing and why the climate in Southern Oregon is good for these grapes.

Oregon-Wine-Map-Southern-OR-AVA Courtesy of Oregon Wine Board

Oregon-Wine-Map-Southern-OR-AVA
Courtesy of Oregon Wine Board

You’re making wines that are mostly from Rogue River Valley?

Rogue and Applegate, correct.

So much further south than this.  How is the climate different there?

Well for one thing, there is this perception that it is so much hotter down there, but you just have longer days of heat, that’s the biggest difference than when I compare it to the Willamette Valley.  And then the other thing is, the elevation, the valley floor starts at around 900 foot elevation, so by the time we get to some of our vineyards  you get some decent elevation right?  So that means in the evenings it cools off quite a bit in the vineyards.  So when we think of things like acid and sugar ripening, you get the long days you want for ripening that is necessary for grapes like Malbec and Cab Franc, but then you also get these cooler evenings that give off this wonderful balance of acidity with the fruit.  So when we pick we get…Cab franc just naturally has high acidity, so we’re just getting everything we want out of this particular fruit in Southern Oregon.

Are they growing a lot of Cab Franc in Southern Oregon?

There is not a lot of Cab Franc grown in Oregon in general, but it is still one of the most widely planted varietals in the world.  I even have some statistics in here from a report, the first official Cab Franc report* I’ve seen that we’ve been mentioned in and she kinda gives every question you’ve ever wanted to know about Cab Franc, about the plantings, including the plantings that are, I think it was based on 2010, so I know there has been more planted since then.  So when they do the next grape consensus I guess in 2020 they will see a bit of a jump. But there is not a lot of it to be honest.  I have to search for what I want to grow, but the growers I work with are also onboard with what I’m doing so they will plant more for me.  Which is great.

So  you work really closely with your growers?  So you are really in touch with what’s happening during the season.

Yes, exactly, so I’m in it.

For down there, when do you run into bud break and when do  you end up doing harvest?  Is the season longer there?

It actually usually starts earlier than up here for the whites and then for reds, just because these grapes require a little bit longer time on the vine, I make my wine at Raptor Ridge Winery so while they are bringing in their Pinot Noir, it’s great, we don’t butt heads on timing, my stuff’s coming in a little bit later.  My Cab Franc and even my Gamay, up here in the Willamette Valley is a late ripener, so that comes a little bit later.  Which is interesting, comparing the Willamette Valley to Southern Oregon, Gamay is one of our last picks, which is Willamette Valley.  It comes in after our Malbec, which would technically be our last pick.

*We happen to be big fans of Pam Heiligenthal and Enobytes and if you like getting geeky about wine The Cabernet Franc Report is an in depth and thorough look at Cab Franc as it is grown around the globe.

 

Check out Leah’s updated website at https://leahjorgensencellars.com/

You can find her on on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram too!

And join us back here at Crushed Grape Chronicles  as we continue sharing our conversation with Leah (Yes there is more.  Next we talk about her Sauvignon Blanc and her use of Acacia barrels for white wine)!  And don’t forget, you can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

Leah Jørgensen – Pirate Princess and Winemaker

September 24, 2018
Leah Jorgensen Pirate Princess

Leah Jørgensen – Pirate Princess and Winemaker, that’s what it reads on her business card.

Leah Jørgensen - Pirate Princess and Winemaker

Leah Jørgensen – Pirate Princess and Winemaker

I had heard about Leah Jørgensen.  There was a post of a great wine label on Instagram by a fellow wine writer, talking about this White Cab Franc.   Yep, you read that right, White Cab Franc.  I then saw her name as one of the winemakers that would be at the Uncommon Wine Festival at Vista Hills that we were planning to go to during our trip to the Willamette Valley, and I was anxious to taste this wine and talk with her about it.  I had no idea how enchanting her wines would be or that we would spend a fascinating hour talking with her, not just about her wines, but about the vineyards she sources from and the ancient seabed that lies beneath the top soil in the southern part of Oregon.

We are not alone in finding her fascinating; She was named one of “15 Women in Wine to Watch” by FOOD & WINE (March 2018) and her wines have been well reviewed by Wine Enthusiast on numerous occasions.  She is putting Cab Franc on the map in Oregon.

A little bit about the Pirate Princess and Winemaker

Leah was previously a representative for a wine distributor in Washington DC.  She worked with embassies, providing them wines from a portfolio she managed.  She is partial to the Loire Valley and many of her wines (most) are influenced by this love.

She comes from a family that has always been passionate about wine.  Her mother’s family has been making wine in Italy since the 1700’s, Her grandfather’s family made barrels in Austria.  Her father was raised on a farm outside of Eugene and her cousins own the fisherman’s market in Eugene, and are fishermen who run boats that go up to Alaska.  So creating great wines that pair with shellfish…well, that’s really in her blood.

We spent a bit of time at the Uncommon Wine Festival talking with Leah.  She’s incredibly knowledgeable and passionate.  Conversations with her, you just don’t want them to end.  As a result, we have a collection of 7 videos from our interview with her, discussing soils and climate in Southern Oregon, the grapes she uses, the influences of the Loire Valley and several of the wines she was pouring that day including her Sauvignon Blanc, Blanc de Cabernet Franc, Rosé of Cab Franc, her “Tour Rain” blend and her Malbec.

Leah Jørgensen on Southern Oregon and it’s soils

So we begin our conversation with her speaking about the Southern Oregon Soil series and how the Loire Valley influenced her wine making.

“…we are definitely inspired by the Loire Valley, but we are very fully aware that Southern Oregon is not the Loire Valley, just like the Willamette Valley is not Burgundy.  We have points of reference, reasons why we can grow some of the same varietals.  With Southern Oregon, looking at some of the vineyard sites that we have like Crater View Ranch which we work with, with our Malbec, our Sauvignon Blanc and some of our Cab Franc, there’s ancient marine shellfish, shell imprints, shell fossils and blue schist, ocean bottom rock and this is all present from a subduction that happened 250 million years ago.  So mostly when we talk about Oregon Wine and soil series, we are often talking about the Willamette Valley and the Missoula flood, and the influence of the Missoula Flood which happened about 17 million years ago, so now we are talking about really ancient 250 million years ago.  The stuff that we are seeing in those vineyards in the Rogue and Applegate, but especially in these particular vineyards in the Rogue, they even predate the Old World.  When we think of the Loire Valley, my inspiration, Paris used to be under a tidal basin, so all of the waters that were in that tidal basin around Paris are now the vineyards for the Loire valley.  So you find shellfish and ancient marine fossils in some of the vineyards of the Loire Valley.  That episode, when the water was all in those vineyards in that area, that was about 100 million years ago, So our geological episode happened 150 million years before that, so Old World, right?  I’m really proud of that, I love talking about these soil series and the ancient marine shellfish, because I think it’s a new dawn for Oregon wine to talk about other regions that have really fascinating geological stories.  So that’s really the inspiration for me, capturing the sense of place and the soils and then also the grapes that seem to make sense, Cab Franc Malbec, (in the Loire Valley they call it Côt), Sauvignon Blanc.”

 

This is just the start of our conversation with Leah.  We went on to learn about the grape varieties and how they grow in southern Oregon, and then we talked about each of her wines as we dipped our nose in the glass and tasted each.

Check out Leah’s updated website at https://leahjorgensencellars.com/

You can find her on on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram too!

And join us back here at Crushed Grape Chronicles  as we continue sharing our conversation with Leah!  And don’t forget, you can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram