Steve Doerner and the Burgundian Bicyclists I'll Drink to That! Wine Talk

Steve Doerner is Winemaker Emeritus at Cristom Vineyards in Oregon.




Steve discusses his shift from being a Biochemistry Major at UC Davis in the mid-1970s to his first Job working for Josh Jensen at Calera Wine Company. Steve arrived at Calera for the 1978 harvest, the first vintage for Pinot Noir at Calera. Josh had begun making wine at Calera in 1975, first planting a Pinot Noir vineyard in 1974. Josh hired Steve after a blind tasting test that included tasting a La Tâche. Steve worked at Calera for a total of 14 years. During that period of time, Steve met some of Josh's peer/friend group in Burgundy, a circle of people that included Jacques Seysses of Domaine Dujac.




Steve recalls his early years working at Calera in its limited facilities, working highly physical harvests that left him questioning if this was really the career path for him. He talks about his early days tasting wine, mostly Zinfandel from California. He also talks about utilizing different fermenting techniques in response to certain winemaking tools, and his growing knowledge of the techniques being implemented in Burgundy by the likes of Jacques Seysses and others. Steve comes to the conclusion that in California in the 1980s, Pinot Noir was often treated like Cabernet in the wineries. He also concluded that this was problematic, and began teasing out the nuances of practical meaning from adages he heard in Burgundy.




A serious accident left Steve questioning his relationship to his job, but his perception of his worked changed after his first trip to Burgundy. Steve encountered Jacques Seysses as an outsider to Burgundy who was actively experimenting with different ways of doing things with his winemaking. Steve developed a friendship with Christophe Morin, who eventually worked for many years at Domaine Dujac, and who later died in a motorcycle accident 




Although Calera was in an isolated location, Steve tasted fairly regularly with other top American vintners, including Dick Graff of Chalone, Jeffrey Patterson of Mount Eden Vineyards, and Ken Wright. Eventually Josh and Steve began to make white wine at Calera, including from Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, and Viognier. Josh brought back Viognier from France to the United States. And Steve recalls going to France to speak with vigneron in the Rhône Valley about Viognier. For the red wine from Pinot Noir, they contended with very low yields from the Calera vineyards, with limited access to water.

 

Steve leaves Calera and transitions to working at Cristom Vineyards in Oregon from 1992, encountering a supportive winemaking community in Oregon. He recalls his early days at Cristom, and his first harvests there. He talks about planting vineyards at Cristom, and how they went about it. He also shares his realization that over the years the ripeness levels in the vineyards have changed, and that he has been rethinking vineyard planting decisions that were made in the 1990s. He also believes it is now possible to achieve ripeness at higher elevations in their vineyards. He further asserts that keeping the vineyard yields low, with a lot of thinning, is less necessary than it once was.




Steve discusses where Cristom is located in the Willamette Valley, inside what is now the Eola-Amity Hills AVA. He talks about the influence of wind from the Van Duzer Corridor, and also the Columbia Gorge. He asserts that lower humidity in the area implies lower disease pressure, and points out that due to the wind, fruit typically gets dry on the vine after rainfall in the vineyards. Steve notes that the soils at Cristom are primarily volcanic, and that they retain water due to their clay content. He contrasts this situation with the sedimentary soils that are found elsewhere in the Willamette Valley. Steve goes into detail about the ripeness levels in the vineyards, and how they have changed since the 1990s. He notes that more extreme vintages have occurred more recently. He talks about the difference