Through the pinot noir glass

Oregon's annual ode to pinot noir, the International Pinot Noir Celebration, was exceptional in almost every way this year. It was the 21st, and the group's president, Alex Sokol-Blosser, welcomed attendees by exclaiming, "We're 21 — we can drink now!"

The 2007 IPNC, held last month on the campus of McMinnville's Linfield College, brought together winemakers from Oregon, California, New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Burgundy.

The featured seminar, dubbed "The Secret Life of Pinot Noir," focused on champagne and sparkling wines made from the versatile grape, while the bus tours took small groups to visit wineries for a closer look at appellations in Oregon and elsewhere.

Keynote speaker Georg Riedel, the 10th generation to take the helm of his family's crystal-stemware company, came to introduce a new Oregon pinot noir glass. "The wine is the music, and the glass is the speaker," Riedel proclaimed. "It conveys the message that the winemaker has put into the bottle."

You may wonder, as I did, why Riedel needed yet another version of a pinot noir glass. Setting that question aside, I confess it was a lot of fun to schlub through dozens of wines while testing a new piece of gear. Wine drinkers, like golfers, never get enough gadgets. Perhaps, like a new putter, the Oregon pinot glass has a bit of magic in it.

With total attendance up to almost 800 this year, the emphasis on smaller, intimate group activities was welcome. Everyone got a mystery bus trip to an unknown destination, accompanied by several winemakers.

This year we visited Adelsheim winery, a welcome chance to see David Adelsheim, one of the original founders of the Oregon wine industry. Unlike his mostly retired peers (David Lett, Dick Erath and Dick Ponzi), Adelsheim remains very much involved with his winery and IPNC.

Joining Adelsheim were winemakers from Scott Paul, August West, New Zealand's Muddy Water winery and Burgundy's Domaine Aleth Girardin. The appellation seminar included nine different wines, four of them from Oregon, and was intended to help tasters discover flavor characteristics that might be typical for each region.

To put it bluntly, I am not a fan of the newly installed appellations, six in all, that have divvied up the old, familiar Willamette Valley AVA in Oregon. Yes, you can make the argument that by itself it is too broad, just as the Columbia Valley AVA here in Washington is too broad. But the six new AVAs that have recently been designated — Chehalem Mountains, Ribbon Ridge, Yamhill-Carlton District, Eola-Amity Hills, McMinnville and Dundee Hills — seem to me to be the uneasy result of political wrangling, obtuse soil studies and an almost slavish devotion to the Burgundian paradigm.

The argument that is most commonly offered for these hair-splitting appellations is that they have different soil types, but it was pointed out by more than one winemaker that most of them are not limited to a single soil type but are quite diverse. In fact, if soil type is to be the motivating factor for defining AVAs, then many individual vineyards could be chopped into bite-size pieces.

Furthermore, most Oregon pinot noir labels already give you a lot of useful information. Along with Willamette Valley, many have the option to use Yamhill County. The majority of bottlings carry the name of a single vineyard, and sometimes a specific vineyard block or clone. How does a new AVA add any value to all that?

In fact, the name of the winery is always your first and best indication of style and quality. With the possible exception of Dundee Hills, these AVAs simply create more confusion.

For many of us lucky enough to call the Northwest home, it is remarkable to see the tremendous growth, both in quality and sheer numbers, of the region's wineries. I visited some newcomers in Yamhill County, and I encourage you to add the region to your must-visit list.

The little town of Carlton is a great place to start. There are close to a dozen tasting rooms clustered there, along with another 10 wineries headquartered at the Carlton Winemakers' Studio. I stopped in at Scott Paul, a 3,000-case boutique making elegant pinots with no fining, no filtering, no laboratory yeasts, no enzymes, no additives, no concentrators and no mechanical manipulation. In other words, authentic, real, unfudged wine.

As owner Scott Wright explains, "We want to be one of the standard bearers for elegance. There can be tenderness in the heart of a lot of fruit." Wright also imports a fine selection of burgundies (available in Seattle through Cordon Selections) so tasting-room visitors may sample French pinots alongside the local juice.

Among my other visits were stops at Four Graces, where I enjoyed a lusciously leesy 2006 pinot gris; Winter's Hill, a family-run winery practicing salmon-safe, sustainable viticulture; and Sineann, where winemaker Peter Rosback served up samples of his soon-to-be-bottled 2006s, most notably a stunning Cold Creek vineyard cabernet sauvignon. Another treat was Aaron Lieberman's 2004 Cottonwood winery Marina Piper Pinot Noir, a soft and silky style of pinot that nicely captures the varietal essence of the finicky grape.

IPNC offers registration first to those who attended this year's event, but check the Web site (www.ipnc.org) or call 800-775-4762 if you'd like to be on the notification list for tickets to the 22nd celebration, scheduled July 25-27, 2008.

Finding the wines

Unless noted, all Wine Adviser recommendations are currently available, though vintages may sometimes differ. All wine shops and most groceries have a wine specialist on staff. Show them this column, and if they do not have the wine in stock, they can order it for you from the local distributor.

Paul Gregutt's column appears weekly in the Wine section. He can be reached by e-mail at wine@seattletimes.com.