95 Decanter, 94 Jeb Dunnuck

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Even while Pinot Noir from Oregon was catching the imagination of wine lovers everywhere some 30 years ago, Chardonnay from the northwest was proving to be a very hard sell. Even when they were good- and that wasn’t too often back then- customers preferred the predictability and style of those tried-and-true Chards from Burgundy and California. My, how times have changed! As experience working with this hard-to-master grape in Oregon has increased and vintners have found the right spots to plant it, so has its quality improved, and the best Willamette Valley Chards can finally now drink with any Chardonnay made anywhere in the world and, just as importantly, the best wines have a sense of style all their own and don’t simply mimic the competition. And I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that one of the best examples of Oregon Chardonnay we’ve ever tried was made at Nicolas-Jay. This Franco-American marriage between California music mogul Jay Boberg and native Burgundian Jean-Nicolas Meo of the iconic Meo-Camuzet estate is thoroughly dedicated to creating something new and uniquely expressive of the Bishop Creek Vineyard terroir they’ve chosen to work with in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA. Farming organically and using as light a touch as possible in the cellar, Meo has proven to be as adept as working with Chard as with Pinot Noir, producing a single cuvee that exudes a level of class in an Oregon Chardonnay we’ve simply not seen before! And, having had wines like Doug Tunnell’s wonderful Brick House Cascadia, the benchmark Ponzi Reserve and, more recently, Louis Jadot’s Resonance, in the past, that’s really saying something! The 2022 Nicolas-Jay Affinités Chardonnay sets a very high bar for the variety in the state with its elegance and finesse- a sort of sublime sense of understatement that starts with a fresh nose of lemongrass or lemon thyme and lightly lees-infused Asian pear that gives way to a palate that’s not at all heavy but somehow, still, full and satisfying. Lots of people in the wine biz speak of ‘weight without heaviness,’ and that’s exactly how this uniquely Oregonian Chardonnay feels in the mouth. Taut, bright and more savory than sweet, there’s an impossibly long finish that belies its elegance. Intrigued? We were. Try some with some seared scallops with a lemon-thyme or tarragon butter sauce, an herby quail with grill marks on it or a poached salmon or halibut with a corn-pepper salsa. Will it age? We’re guessing yes.

Burgundy lovers already are well acquainted with Meo because of his other job, owning and operating the long-venerated Meo-Camuzet domaine in Vosne-Romanee. The story goes that it was in the pursuit of a personal allocation of Meo’s wines that brought renowned music and media entrepreneur Jay Boberg together with Nicolas in the first place. Boberg, a longtime fan of Meo-Camuzet, on a pilgrimage to Vosne, arranged to meet Meo and the two hit it off. Jay not only earned himself an allocation of Nicolas’ wines, but also a lifelong friend. It was apparently over a few glasses of said Burgundy that Boberg planted the seed of a mutual project in Oregon, something that would take advantage of both their talents. The idea was originally to comb the Willamette Valley’s best vineyards to create an Oregon Pinot Noir with a definite Meo-esque point of view. This was, of course, nothing revolutionary. Joseph Drouhin’s winery in the Dundee Hills may have been the first, but Burgundy’s winemakers have been exploring the Willamette Valley for decades in the hopes of finding just that right spot. One of the sites the new Nicolas-Jay partnership initially contracted with to make their debut 2013 was the Bishop Creek Vineyard in Yamhill-Carlton. This spot had a long track record of producing great fruit with just the qualities and personality they were looking for. When the vineyard suddenly came up for sale the next year, the paradigm for the original Nicolas-Jay project shifted and they went from a negociant sort of concept to that of an estate that would also purchase grapes. The 2014 vintage, the first commercially available Nicolas-Jay, contained a good portion of the old vine Pinot fruit from Bishop Creek along with smatterings from the likes of Maresh, Shea, Montazi, Zenith and Nysa- true Oregon aristocracy, and that dynamic combination of sites also defines the just-released 2022 L’Ensemble cuvee. This wine, according to Meo, is the winery’s ‘Super Blend,’ a reserve-level offering to show their ‘Best of the Best,’ a cuvée comprised of the most expressive barrels from each vineyard astutely assembled to bring forth extraordinary depth, complexity, age-ability, and finesse. Thing of Meo combining his best barrels of Clos Vougeot, Corton Perrieres and Vosne-Romanee Les Suchots! Harvested in small cherry-picking bins, fermented on its native yeast and bottled unfined and unfiltered, the 2022 L’Ensemble is comprised entirely of either bio-dynamic, organic or LIVE certified vineyards and is, in short, a particularly stunning bottle of Oregon Pinot Noir! The 2022 vintage is already garnering all sorts of amazing press and was exactly the sort of vintage that Nicolas-Jay was waiting for- a chance to create a wine of sophistication, polish and panache. Though a third of the wine was aged in new oak, it seems to just melt into all that deep, dark, lustrous fruit. Full for a Willamette Valley Pinot, the palate is plush and generous, but finishes with that only-in-Oregon verve, structure and zip that combines the best attributes of Pinot Noir from California and, dare I say, Burgundy. This dynamic project truly has, we think, the wherewithal to change the way we think about Oregon Pinot for good! Drink now as the perfect Pinot for some lamb chops off the grill, and feel free to see what it’s like in about five or six years too. Simply fabulous!