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Meet Oregon’s French Winemakers

These pioneering expats have ventured to Oregon and are showing the world why this state is called the Burgundy of the Pacific Northwest.By Paul Gregutt | Posted November 7, 2018To some degree, the diversity and excellence of Oregon wines makes comparisons to Old World styles irrelevant. But those factors should not undercut the influence French-born and trained winemakers have had on the state’s success.Along with the pioneering Drouhin family, which enters its fourth decade making Oregon wine, a number of more recent arrivals have put their winemaking expertise to work in the state, which remains one of America’s leading producers of Pinot Noir.These French winemakers praise Oregon’s welcoming winemaking community and open horizons. Moreover, they seem to have a lot of fun as they revel in the palpable sense of freedom that the state’s wineries enjoy.Perhaps it’s simply the break from the constraints of tradition, but the biggest reward to leave home, and...

Larry Stone & Thomas Savre

Lingua Franca makes Wine & Spirits Top 100 List

We're pleased to announce Lingua Franca's well-earned place on Wine & Spirits Top 100 list this year, with Lingua Franca Bunker Hill and Avni Chardonnay making the year’s best Top Chardonnay list. In addition, the winery was also recently featured as one of the Wine Spectator's Rising Stars in Oregon. Earlier this month, the winery released the last two wines of the year for wholesale: Hope Well Pinot Noir 2016 and The Plow Pinot Noir 2016.The Plow has already received a 94-point score from Tim Fish of the Wine Spectator. Hope Well is a Dijon-clone PN667 expression of Mimi Casteel’s vineyard which also produces our Mimi’s Mind Pinots. It is more nuanced and delicate than The Plow, which comes primarily from Elton, the neighboring vineyard, among the oldest in the region....

Wine & Spirits Top 50 Wine's In America's Best Restaurants

Cristom’s 2015 Mt. Jefferson Cuvée is the “No. 1 Pinot Noir on the wine lists of the best restaurants in America.” by Wine & Spirits Magazine

The dining room at Bâtard in Tribeca was full at noon on a recent Tuesday, when the restaurant is usually closed. The yellow walls looked brighter than at night, when they contrast less with the raised pattern of branches in a paler shade, more the color of limestone in a vineyard in Puligny. Comte Louis Michel Liger-Belair, who farms a domaine centered on La Romanée in Vosne, was in town to present a project in Oregon, one he had helped found five years ago. Liger-Belair described the first wine—a blend of fruit from snaking ribbons of vines, selected to follow the edge of lava flows at different vineyards in the Eola–Amity Hills, the Chehalem Mountains and the coast range—alongside a wine from an estate vineyard, Black Walnut, in Dundee. Both wines were savory, with more mineral than fruit flavor in the tannins, though the Dundee Hills wine was fuller, richer, more...