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At 30, Aging Well

Willamette Valley's Amity took the risk and keeps on trying

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COURTESY OF AMITY VINEYARDS Jockeying a tractor at Amity Vineyards in 1978, Myron Redford was a pioneer in the Oregon wine industry. COURTESY OF AMITY VINEYARDS After 30 years of harvests, Redford, left, is still at it, and his winery is celebrating with anniversary dinners and tastings. COURTESY OF AMITY VINEYARDS Redford and his wife, Vikki Wetle, enjoy a break at the winery's annual harvest party in the fall of 2005.

HE'S GRIZZLED and gray, and weariness seems to emanate from the steel-blue eyes. There is a slight tremble in his wrist as he carefully pours the wine from a bottle that is ancient by Oregon standards. "I think there are just four bottles of this left in my cellar," Myron Redford tells me as he fills my glass with his 1978 Amity Vineyards Winemaker's Reserve Pinot Noir.

We gaze at it together. The wine is the color of sunset. Its aromas drift up from the glass like ghosts, sniffable memories of distant summer days, the last remnants of a time when the winemaker, and the wine industry, were young, fresh, eager and bursting with promise. A fascinating, evocative wine, its flavors suggest dried fig, fruit leather, cooked prune, cigar box laced with incense, coffee and caramel. As it sits in the glass, time slides by, yet the flavors don't change dramatically, it's more of a gentle slide to oblivion.

Thirty years have passed since Redford made his first vintage of pinot noir in the Willamette Valley. In 1976 there were only a dozen or so wineries in all of Oregon. A surprising number of those pioneers have survived — most notably Adelsheim, Eyrie, Erath, Oak Knoll and Ponzi — but Amity may lay claim to having weathered more storms than any of them.

Never mind the difficulties of planting, tending and harvesting grapes in untested soil, or the constant invention required to crush, ferment, barrel and bottle wine on a shoestring budget. Selling it was the hardest part, Redford recalls. Even Portland proved to be a tough market. More than once he was told, "You can't grow wine in Oregon; what are you thinking?"

"In 1974, the year that I arrived," says Redford, "Oregon state had just put out a publication stating that you couldn't grow vinifera grapes in Oregon. So let us say the situation was very challenging."

In fact, it remains challenging to this day, after more than 300 new wineries and 30 more vintages have proved that wine — sometimes great wine — can be made there. To a large degree, Oregon's fortunes rise and fall with the popularity of a single grape: pinot noir. When the influential critic Robert Parker reviewed the 1983 vintage and called Oregon America's new wine star, the state's reputation soared.

Those were Amity's glory days. The wines sold and prices rose dramatically, for grapes as well as finished wines. Then came what Redford calls the "ugly" vintages — 1984, 1986 — and less-than-spectacular years in 1987 and 1988. Suddenly, his wine stacked up in warehouses, and just as suddenly as they had begun, the good times ceased to roll.

In the years since, Redford has been criticized for making tannic, monster wines; for making stemmy wines; for making wines that are too expensive. In response he's changed his varietal mix, dropped his prices, cut his production, redesigned his labels and traveled tirelessly. He admits that "In 2003 I was burning out, spending six months a year on the road, just trying to pay my bills. I've stopped buying grapes from people just because they are my friends," he notes ruefully. "I'm trying to reassess what I'm doing."

Part of that reassessment is revisiting old vintages and celebrating with a series of 30th-anniversary dinners and tastings. Together we enjoyed his 1983 Amity Vineyards Winemaker's Reserve Pinot Noir (herbal, minty and acidic); 1985 Amity Vineyards Estate Bottled Pinot Noir (round and warm and surprisingly fruity); and 1994 Amity Vineyards Winemaker's Reserve Pinot Noir (caught in mid-life, with cherry and raspberry fruit, good length and finesse).

None of these wines exceeded 13.2 percent alcohol, and all were still in thoroughly enjoyable condition, albeit moving toward life's end. Amity, much like Eyrie, favors elegance over power in its pinots. The new vintages are riper, more polished than those that came before. Amity has always made glorious dry white wines (we tasted a 1998 pinot blanc, rich with mature flavors of melon and pear, honey and spice). Now the reds seem to be their equal.

"I want to make elegant wines, like (Burgundy's) Roumier," Redford confirms. "When I first came to Oregon, (David) Lett and (Dick) Erath were my two heroes. David Lett made light wines, a bit too light, but great structure; Erath made silky, fleshy wines that I thought needed more of a corset to hold that flesh in. I wanted to go between them. I think I'm returning to that."

Paul Gregutt writes the Wednesday wine column for The Seattle Times and covers Northwest wine for the Wine Enthusiast magazine. Write to him at wine@seattletimes.com.