Bailey’s Hosts Soter Vineyards

Soter Vineyards wine maker James Cahill addresses the diners on Oregon wine

One of the titans of California, and later, Oregon, winemaking is Tony Soter. After successes consulting to Araujo, Niebaum-Coppola, Shafer, Spottswoode, Viader and Dalle Valle he scaled back to focus on his Californian venture, Etude and, more recently, his Oregon property Soter Vineyards. Last week his winemaker at the Oregon property, James Cahill, worked the crowd at Bailey’s Prime Plus in the latest in a series of impressive wine dinners that the restaurant has hosted.

I was an invited guest and had the opportunity to talk to Cahill directly about some puzzling questions that surround Oregon wine. For example: In Europe, the most successful Chardonnay is found growing in the same region as the most successful Pinot Noir (the French region of Burgundy). Yet in Oregon, world-class Pinot Noir has been accompanied by generally average to forgettable Chardonnay. Cahill agrees with this widely leveled view. He attributes the situation to early plantings of the wrong clone of Chardonnay grape. He explained that early growers took a lot of their cues from California Chardonnay growers (who, after all, were a model of success). That included the Wente clone of the Chardonnay grape. It did poorly in Oregon’s cooler climate. Later plantings using Dijon clones, he noted, had started to produce impressive Chardonnays. Continue reading "Bailey’s Hosts Soter Vineyards"