"Winemaker's Notes: The initial nose offers warm raspberry jam, chili pepper and chipotle balanced by flinty notes of gunsmoke and red clay. These notes open to rose petals, magnolia, cloves, and salt air. The mouth holds long, dark tannins of cola, white pepper, and spices of star anise, cardamom, and juniper, finishing with an explosion of blue fruit."
Established in 1970 by Oregon wine pioneers Dick & Nancy Ponzi, Ponzi Vineyards was among the first founding wineries to put the Willamette Valley on the map as a world-class wine region. In May 2021, Groupe Bollinger acquired Ponzi Vineyards—the family-owned company’s first property outside France—bringing new life and opportunity to the winery.
In a nutshell: Founders Dick and Nancy Ponzi moved to the Willamette Valley in the late 1960s with a spirit of adventure and a dream to produce world-class, cool climate-grown Pinot Noir. After an extensive search for the perfect location, they invested everything they had into a small 20-acre farm on the northern end of the verdant Willamette Valley. They planted their first vines in 1968, establishing Ponzi Vineyards at a time when there were only a small number of other wineries in the region, forever solidifying their place as Oregon wine pioneers. As the winery grew, the family constructed a sustainably focused gravity-flow winery in 2008 and a state-of-the-art tasting room in 2013. Ponzi Vineyards’ low-intervention, natural approach to winemaking and viticulture, along with consistent high-level acclaim and accolades, have kept the brand as a vanguard Oregon producer.
The Terroir: Ponzi’s estate vineyards lie entirely within the Laurelwood District AVA, nestled within the broader Chehalem Mountains AVA in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Lending name to the region, the Laurelwood soil series here is distinctive and known to produce wines of great elegance and complexity. Found exclusively in the northern edges of the Willamette Valley, the Laurelwood soil series consists of windblown loess atop ancient basalt bedrock. This composition yields wines with abundant spice notes—white pepper, anise, cardamom, and cola. The wines exhibit a beautiful structure, featuring dark, brambly tannins. Soil composition in the region fluctuates depending upon elevation, and further adds to the inherent complexity in finshed wines. In the first 10-15 years of a vines life, the loess layer is dominant, resulting in wines with redder fruit flavours and a lighter structure. The duration of influence depends upon topsoil depth, with lower elevations having thicker loess layers—up to 6 feet—maintaining loess characteristics longer. Higher elevations, with only 6 inches of topsoil, shift to the basalt layer more quickly, revealing darker, richer flavors in wines.
Eric Guido, Vinous.com January 2024
Having taken an early look at 2022, long-time Oregon Pinot Noir and Chardonnay collectors should be excited. While my tastings covered just over 150 wines... I expect to return to Oregon later this year, when 2022 will be the primary focus. From this current selection, I’m finding classic, almost throwback-style wines that impress with their perfumed personalities, finesse, cool-toned fruits and elevated acidity. Winemaker Aaron Bell of Domaine Drouhin described the season as “a cool and wet spring going into June followed by an average summer… during harvest, we were blessed with the most unbelievable conditions, 78-80 degrees well into October.”
While the big topic early in the season was frost, most producers reported yields that were on average or even larger than expected. Isabelle Meunier of Lavinea commented, "The summer was glorious, and we had a huge set. Yields were really high in 2022, really high. I had to ask many growers to crop down to one bunch per shoot.” Tom Gerrie, owner of Cristom Vineyards, had a similar perspective: “We dropped more than half the fruit, and we still ended up with yields a touch higher than 2021.” Overall, 2022 was a warm and dry yet balanced vintage, which is a breath of fresh air for most producers. At Evening Land Vineyards, winemaker Sashi Moorman explained that “the 2022s were made with much lower amounts of sulfur due to the low pH of the vintage, giving the wines a more lifted and energetic feel.” He commented on the compact nature of the season, detailing how “rainstorms around harvest made it a big rush to get everything in.”
Ultimately, this is a vintage that I’m very excited about and looking forward to exploring in greater depth. As a fan of Oregon wines going back nearly twenty years, the 2022s have a nostalgic feel to them.
