HO HO Hope Santa Somm filled your stockings with good wines!
THE VARIETAL SHOW discusses the wine wonders of Oregon’s Willamette Valley with Adam Campbell of Elk Cove Vineyards, including the French connection, clones, estate vineyards &
IPNC. Join us to taste the 2022 Estate Pinot Gris, Willamette Valley; 2021 Estate Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley; and 2021 Pinot Noir, Five Mountains, Laurelwood District.
Sleigh on over! https://elkcove.com/
Hey everyone Chris Sawyer here the verial show is back I am in Oregon wamit Valley and in fact and you can see I’m wearing my big sweater because lamit um gets a little cold in the the winter time and I’m with my great friend Adam
Campbell and we are at El Cove Winery um this is a amazing brand that was founded in 1974 their first vintage was 1977 and Adam and I have been friends pretty much since we both got involved in the industry um this has been a long time I’ve been following What’s Happening
Here in in willit Valley this is the 40-year anniversary uh 2023 and of the appalation itself and it’s a big appalachi it’s actually behind us on that big um map up there but you know Adam’s family is actually of the original families that came here
Let’s just put it this way a lot of them came from UC Davis the the original David Le and uh Chuck uh Corey and these people all came from UC Davis that’s where I went to school I take a little bit of pride in that that they came up
Here to Oregon it’s smart and I did live in asoria Oregon for 2 and A2 years when Goonies was filmed there and short circuit and kindergarten cop and when that was all happening some others came up here Soo blouser and ponies and David adim and these people came up here and
Started founding these wineries in the 70s but your family was like the original family from that were pear farmers in the Hood River area this is crazy what were parents thinking about coming moving this direction uh towards the coast here and planting grapes well I think that you know they spent time in
The Bay Area and had traveled quite a bit um and I think they just really realized that uh they wanted to do an agricultural um Farm uh like my grandfather but they were just super passionate about wine yeah and so uh there was just kind of the the beginning
Uh discussions of maybe there was possibilities of a cool climate area to grow grapes here in the wam Valley so they pack their bags and and move west and uh and bought this old abandoned uh Homestead here uh which uh again yeah we’re on almost 50th year this year uh
And going yeah next year will be your 50th right y 2024 will be the 50e anniversary of of El Cove brand and a lot of you have seen El Cove wines out there I mean if you look at wamit Valley and the wamit valley section of a great
Restaurant list you chances are you’re going to find a little bit of el Co we all love these guys I mean like Adam’s just my buddy and he’s on my phone and and call him and we we hang out we have fun times we’ve got a lot of things but
It’s really the kind of the the marks that you guys have made you’ve learned a lot about these this land and this these vintages have been all off the estate property so this is a very big difference if it says will lam it that means you can get fruit from all over
The place and you’ve got friends here they’re really great and you’ve you’ve sourced some from other people who’s just like great friendships but this is now you’ve really come to your own where it’s all about the estate you control your own destiny and you’ve got some really great wines so we’re going to
Taste in just a second yeah we weren’t able to be aate in the early days just cuz if we wanted to grow production uh we basically relied on family friends that also own Vineyards um but I think it was an really a a special thing for my parents in particular when we
Realized hey you know we’ve got 400 Acres we’ve got six different Vineyard sites on the three main soil types in the lamit valley we have all the ingredients that it takes to do an Estate Winery where we own the land we Farm the grapes and we take it all the
Way to the finished product uh we say from Prov v a bottle uh we we are responsible for it and uh we like it that way Vine a bottle never forget that you guys uh speaking of which um Pino gree this is a great one that they’ve
Helped put on the map you know uh Peno gree uh little tidbit for you uh when David L came here in the mid 1960s and the first planting he did was right down near Coralis which is a little bit south of us right where Oregon State
University is um he planted not only P noira but he also planted P gree and that was a really big step in where we’re at today P gree thanks to alve and King ofate and and adim and Lang and all these kinds of Brands it’s something
That we drink today and we don’t it is the same grape as Pino ggio let’s not let’s not think it’s not uh but the the fact is it is made in ulaan style and when you look at all sauce where it’s at it’s kind of actually on the same you
Know part of the globe that we are right here in in W and it just works doesn’t it yeah I mean I I yeah a lot of credit to David lead I mean essentially those early plantings uh of penree in Oregon were the first place in the new world
Outside of Europe that was growing uh P gree and uh we started in a big way through the kind of mid 80s planting um I love the fact that it’s it’s a fresh White wine we stainless steel ferment it it tastes like the grape um and we can
You know sell it in like nice restaurants Port by the glass it might be people’s first um opportunity to taste the wine from from Oregon yeah so we’re we’re proud of it it’s really amazing so this is just I mean on the nose I mean those peaches are just like
They’re roaring out of here and you’re a pear family too like back in the old days it’s got the pear note isn’t that funny yeah yeah def you know what we see with Pino gree is like if we pick the grapes at the right possible time we get
That stone fruit character pair some apple um if you pick the grapes when they’re too ripe they go kind of tropical and less interesting if you pick them too early they’re just about Citrus and uh if we can get it in that middle track uh we get stone fruit uh we
Get richness uh but we also get freshness exactly so this is fantastic and I mean i’ I’ve been a big fan of this and I I I just think I I thank Oregon and wamit Valley for putting this on the map to be really honest I mean
It’s a funny thing I talked with um uh Miss Don Lang uh yesterday and he said you know the pro the problem Chris that we were having was that a lot of people couldn’t even pronounce Oregon uh they Oregon you know like things like this
And like at one point they went to New York City and uh they started going would you like to taste our wines they’re all oh yeah the Somalia started going oh yeah yeah where where’s that from in willit Valley where what you know do you have any clones do you have
I mean the education that has kind of gone on as a group here has been amazing your your camaraderie with others it’s helped build this brand uh of Oregon wines and not just willamet but Oregon wines and putting it on the map and having people pronounce it right hello
Uh but you know will amit’s gone so far I mean since you started here I mean what what are some of the steps like what is like a point where you’re like oh man that was like crazy what just happened you know you know some success
That you’ve had yeah I mean even when it in the when I started back with my family uh full-time obviously I grew up working here helping my parents you know my dad was the wine maker for the first 20 years and it was all hands- on Deck
But I love the fact that uh you know and through that kind of early 90s uh up into the late 90s things really changed and I think some of it is that you know Oregon really focused on working together um supporting our peers and then um working on telling our story to
Other storytellers yourself included but also Fier um wine buyers at really good restaurants at this point folks from um you know the media not just in the US but around the world and if we can tell our story to other storytellers and hope that they’ll tell that story Beyond us
Um you know we don’t have massive marketing budgets so this is how we’re going to get uh the word out about what we do and what we love to do yeah and it’s worked you guys and that’s why I’m here again I come back at least once a
Year um like I said I do have a connection here in asor Oregon love asoria and please do watch um I do like The Goonies it’s good and yeah those buildings are still there but actually uh Kindergarten Cop actually talks about atoria often and I give I give Arnold
Schwarz and eger some credit credit for that um moving on um to Great Pian Noir so P Noir is um one of the the trademarks Grapes of this area there’s no doubt about it we’ve we’ve all discovered piir and have learned so much about it because of what’s happened here
In wamit Valley it’s not just us it’s also the people from burgundy who really fell in love with this area to have invested in here and this is like the late 80s when we really had a big brand um uh the the Duren family uh so domain
Duren and as we call it DDO uh domain Duren Oran uh DDO um and they came here and it kind of happens like this in different areas where there is some investment by the French in these areas because they start believing in them 100% And this is a very interesting
Place if you look where will lamut Valley is on the map on the globe it actually kind of goes exactly around the globe to to exactly where burgundy is located so there’s something very very similar here the interesting thing is the soils are different here uh and they
See it they understand that and we understand what they have we’ll never have here on this West Coast but we have unique um sell types don’t we and what’s what’s in this one this is the estate pioir you guys this is the new 2021 vintage and it’s tasting great so yeah
Though this this is basically a taste of the seller 80 to 85% of the pinoir estate pinoir that I produce goes into this wine and it’s got you know elements from uh Vineyards that I own on Marine sediment soils a lot of that dark fruit character comes from that uh laurawood
Soils which have this really great spiciness uh as well as the Jory or volcanic soils um which gives this lifted red fruit character so they all kind of come together with the swine here uh again it’s often People’s First first experience with a el Cove wine
Would be either the pin gree or this PIR absolutely and as we get farther away from Oregon as a base um and certainly when you know we sell in about 20 export markets around the world it’s really primarily about P Noir when they think of Oregon and wam Valley they think P
Noir which is just fine by us and with me too um P Noir is a grape that is very thin skinned needs to be in cool climate conditions the biggest thing about or wamit Valley here and the difference between where I grew up in the other
Part of where I grew up in Russian River Valley Russian River Valley we have plenty of Sun we are we’re budding the buds are coming out a month before they come out here and it’s because they’re still dormant they’re still resting it’s still cold and wintry here when we’re
Getting into spring and we’re getting warm there and it is because of that that we do have certain clones like the Dijon clones that came into uh University of uh Oregon State University here and it’s because of that to speed up the process of ripening but we had
These older clones that were already planted here that we were learning from and that’s the pomard Clone and the 2A which is called venville uh which is a Swiss clone and they were being coming successful with these things and so now there’s a whole plethora of different
Flavors that are being explored in these different zones and and everything is inside this glass basically that I just talked about I mean we’ve got different clones we’ve got different sites we’ve got but they estate and that’s the most important thing here is that these are ones that you’ve worked on to develop
And there’s things that you know they some of these Vines actually are being pulled out because they were own rooted uh this was something that was done here and um now we have all these um kinds of specialty root uh you know grap roots that we put down first and now we we
Really we’ve learned so much since you know the 1970s when this was really being super developed and and when 1983 rolled around but this is everything inside of a glass yeah I think it’s pretty cool that you know and I think it’s one of the things that really
Helped Oregon in those early days is starting with really good plant material to begin with and probably you know pomard is the best example of that this wine is still 60% pomard clone when we plant new Vineyards um we’re still planting at least half venville and
Perard from our own own uh cuttings off our own Vineyards because I think at the end of the day they’re really good quality clones that that give plenty of fruit qualities but also earthiness and spiciness and great length on the pallet and um I just think that um we’re
Fortunate we started with some good plant material and when people think of Oregon and they think of an Oregon Wine they’re really thinking about pomard clone in particular absolutely and I want you guys to take a when you see this on lists coming up here you’re
Going to see El Cove and you’re going to see pioir wamit Valley but you got to look at one thing there estate and that’s what’s different than than ever before is that these are estate they’re all grown by the family they’re all grown in these special conditions you’ve
Learned so much about them and you do have your you control your own destiny when you own your own Vineyard and I want to say you know it’s like the same thing in somoma County NAPA Santa Barbara wherever up in Walla Wala if you don’t own your own Estate Vineyards now
And popularity of wine is there um people might sell their Vineyards and and then you lose that fruit you lose that that relationship that you had because they just they’re selling and having your own controlling your own destiny is really important now yeah and we love the fact that we through our
Farming our 400 Acres you know we have our own um Vineyard cre crew that you know guys and gals that I’ve worked with some up to 20 years um here on the property and they have so much pride in what they do they just do an amazing uh
Vineyard job and then we’re also able to um you know because we have a value added product um there’s a little more ability for us to you know we provide living wage Healthcare um PTO U 401K for not just our production workers and sales folks for us but for
Guys and GS that work for us in the vineyard and we’re super proud of that you know when people think about you know how to uh support PE support businesses that are doing the right thing we want to be able to tell that story and uh a big part of that is being
A state absolutely that’s that’s awesome so the next sne we’re going to taste well let me just before we go too far this is the class that last one is the classic the estate pioir is the classic salmon pairing um I mean here we are are
I me it’s Oregon you guys they fish here the lewi and Clark came out to the ocean here on the Columbia River it’s loaded with Fish And so you start going in the old days HCK teachers would tell you white white wines go with Fish And that’s that’s it basically they never
Had Peno like this and so that’s the difference that we were going into and believe me International pioir celebration which I always love going to it’s an amazing uh phenomenon that happened here in Oregon and at lynfield college and those great people that really are the producers that you get to
See not only from Oregon and wamit Valley but also California and burgundy um we do a big salmon roast and man that salmon roast and that wine right there would be like money I mean it’s like what I would want you know and it is that signature kind of style that is
Very very Oregonian and I did say it Oregonian and I did pronounce it right as well speaking of pronouncing right um five mountains uh this is um an amazing Vineyard um this is something that really goes back into the heritage of what we’re doing here in wamit Valley
Laurelwood is uh this is Laurelwood District uh that’s a newer Ava or Appalachian here in the wamit valley wamit Valley was the was n the first to cross county lines but it was the biggest by far it’s it was five five counties in the original layout um they
Crossed the lines of those most are are within a county because you could put a County on the the the actual label before appalachi were invented so like you could just say somoma County Napa County uh some County up here Washington County um you could put that on there
But getting it very finite and saying wamit Valley this is actually a valley that was actually carved out by the Missoula floods and these are glaciers that came down here and cut through this soil and created these M helped create these mountains and before this whole
Thing started in the 60s here it was really well known for basically farming um and a lot of the turf that you guys play on in golf courses comes from here and hazelnuts that you eat come from here and blueberries and all sorts of things it’s crazy but this is all on the
Hillsides that we’re talking about and Laurelwood is a hillside that actually kind of looks at Portland it’s up there on that side and this this tell us a little bit about this Vineyard cuz this goes way back yeah so it’s a historic Vineyard planted in 1978 um dick Ponzi was really
Instrumental in planting it but the Ponzi family didn’t own it and so it kind of went through other owners um and uh but a lot of the early Ponzi Reserve wines they even made a single Vineyard wine in 1982 I believe uh from five Mountain uh
But it was a Vineyard that we ended up Leasing and uh becoming good buddies with the owners and when they’re ready to sell they said we don’t want to sell it to anybody but you so uh we uh we made it happen and I I love the fact
That you know here we have a historic Vineyard pomard clone almost as old as our El coova State Vineyards um and yet I was able to to kind of come in uh after it been in the ground for 20 30 years and and uh really make it our own
Um we planted new Vineyards there but this single Vineyard comes from that special 4 and a half acre block of pomard that dick planted in in the 70s it’s amazing I mean these these families the Campbell you know Adam and his family they’ve really been you know revolutionaries here the potential was
Here just we didn’t have the grapes to do it I mean p Noir was not anything of note um until really the 60s I mean there were some good plantings in California but we exploring up here it’s very different Southern Oregon it gets warm it’s like California temperatures
Up here it’s a little you know there’s a reason that there’s a lot of cows and why you have chill mil cheese you guys just think about that and it’s because they cows there’s tons of land here for cows and there’s tons of land for these
Other things to grow and there’s tons of Seaside and there’s tons of big rivers and everything that we think about with Oregon we think about the the actual grape of Oregon we’ve realized that really what we can do here is panir and this was like way ahead of its time I
Mean this is crazy and I I I’m glad when did you start um actually doing this designate um I guess when we purchased it in’ 04 would have been our first vintage with it and we love that it’s so different from our marine sediment soils
That we have like here and over at our Mount Richmond or good Rich properties um and uh and I love that it’s you know with the old Vines it’s got that great length on the pallet it’s got great fruit but also really good freshness and
Um you know I guess when I think about you know why folks essentially chose to be up here and move north to to it’s basically a searching out of how to grow grapes on the climactic edge coolest climate possible and still get them ripe yeah that means you know in even in 2021
Which is a warmer vintage we still pick these own rooted Old Vine P Noir in late October uh after it been 110 120 days Bloom to harvest uh that’s how you get that much freshness with that much richness it’s amazing and and these wines are amazing you guys this is
Really complex it’s got layers a complexity old Vines matter like hashtag old Vines matter and this is still unrooted so this is like this is like a real historical Vineyard and there’s a few here in in Oregon and it’s before all these things came in the pomard Clone came from California it actually
Came through Dro at at UC Davis and this is like traced back to 1951 and we know exactly the vineyard in burgundy that it came from but what when it’s pled here in Oregon soils it’s different than California soils and these are the things that I mean dick dick Ponzi was a
Fore thinker of a lot of the future of us and and you guys tell us a little bit about the other Vineyard designates that you do and why they’re so separate from one another yeah a number of them are on these Marine sediment soils when I look for single Vineyard opportunities again
We own six different Vineyards on these different soil types and different Vine age but to me like they can’t just be a really good wine it has to has to tell a story right yeah and uh um I think each of the ones tell a unique uh story and
Uh you know ones like labm yeah uh we’ve been making since the 80s and uh that’s Marine sediment soils maybe like a uh sister wine to this one and similar Vine age but uh um our Mount Richmond Vineyard which is our largest Vineyard we’ve got a um we can pick and choose
Where we get those grapes from on that Vineyard but we have Vines back to the mid 80 mid 90s over there yeah and uh it’s amazing yeah I love that we’ve also been able to not just with five Mountain but also have a Vineyard called wind Hill clay court and Goodrich where all
Planted Vineyards that we bought from other people yeah and uh when their time was done growing grapes um I feel honored that they wanted to sell their Vineyards to us and uh we can utilize them in our estate P GRE and P Noir but also if there’s an opportunity we will
Make single Vineyard LS for those well I’m I’m very impressed by these new releases um you know the 2021 was a very good one very showy 2022 like the penino gree there you know what they got hit by um Frost and you know what the grapes came back um and
That’s an amazing thing about this area and and about the you know the stamina of these grapes and the vines themselves and and how you just want to hug these Vines up here you know like they have they have uh really weathered the storm and they do and I mean it rains here
Earlier than it rains in California and believe me he and I can tell you July is the craziest hot weather period you’ll ever come across when we go to the ipnc and you just want beer and and resing because it’s just so hot and you’re like
Oh how do they how did Peno Vines survive all this stuff but they do and that’s the magic of of or Oregon and I think that really what we’re tasting here is Oregon in a glass and and I feel like the Campbell have done such a great
Job for that and this El Cove brand is one of my favorites I will say that right out loud um and it’s just because I I really I’ve been following you since the beginning you you and I have known each other forever but we sure like drinking these great wines together and
I hope you guys will check them out the El Cove uh website and come here and visit this is in the little town of Gaston or if you want to be Frenchy about G you know but it’s not really that French it’s actually it’s actually really Oregonian and that’s cool so
Thank you for having me once again always a pleasure always a pleasure and uh drink more Oregonian wines and drink more wamit Valley and El Cove cheers you guys cheers Che Cheers Cheers