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 voluptuous.
Liger-Belair had interpreted Dundee’s deep, rich soils to do what they do best, creating the kind of cool-fruited red that’s placed the Willamette as the most popular region for pinot noir in our Annual Restaurant Poll. But it was the intricate matrix of stored power in the blend from rockier sites that caught my attention. It was unlike any Willamette wine I had tasted before. His approach, and that of other Burgundy growers working in Oregon, lends a different perspective on the land and on the wine it might produce. I set out to explore that cultural perspective in an article for this issue (page 46), as the Willamette becomes an increasingly important source not only for finely grown red from pinot noir, but whites from chardonnay, pinot gris, and riesling as well.
This year, our Restaurant Poll revealed a parallel dialogue between the New World and the Old. A traditional Rioja, aged for ten years at the winery prior to release as a delicate, energy-infused red, topped the list of the most popular pours in our respondents’ restaurants. The California brands, long the most popular for rich chardonnays and fruit-forward cabernets, came down a notch—or did they? In fact, they are likely selling as much wine in the restaurants that feature them as ever before, while a host of new restaurants have popped up with lists that favor a different style of wine. What is striking about this moment in wine: There is not a single restaurant that listed R. López de Heredia Rioja among its top-selling brands that also listed Cakebread, now second in command of the Restaurant Top 50. The wines exist in separate, parallel universes.
If you wander into one of the restaurants we selected for our NYC50—the best places to eat and drink in New York City right now—you are likely to find more bottles of old Rioja on the tables than young Napa Valley cabernet, but that is less a statement of our own preferences than of structural issues in the market (like cost). The lists at our NYC50 reflect the preferences of a community of sommeliers taking deep dives into wine, looking for tastes that interact with the chef’s food in unexpected ways. You might notice that many of these places—though not all—designed their sound level to allow for conversation, which may be the crucial opening to bridge from one parallel universe to another.
— Joshua Greene
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Critics’ Scores for the 2015 Vintage
91 Points- Josh Raynolds, Vinous
“Bright red. Fresh red berry and candied rose scents show impressive clarity and energy. Sweet and vibrant in style, offering lively, mineral-tinged raspberry and spicecake flavors and seamless texture. Closes with very good focus and alluring spiciness; fine-grained tannins add shape and subtle grip.” Drinking Window 2020-2025
95 Points- JAMESSUCKLING.com
“The nose is fresh and shows great depth with raspberry crumble, dried wild strawberries, orange peel and milk chocolate shavings. Medium-to-full-bodied, with lots of spciy, crunchy red fruit, tangy acidity, firm tannins and a long finish.”
91 Points- “Editor’s Choice”, The Wine Enthusiast
“Mt. Jefferson Cuvée is a blend of the Cristom estate Pinot Noir vineyards along with exceptional fruit we source from neighboring vineyards in the Willamette Valley. These contributing sites have been thoughtfully selected over the years, and are planted on a variety of soil types, elevations and aspects, representing the Willamette Valley Appellation as a broader whole. Each of these vineyards are farmed by committed winegrowers we are proud to partner with, with each site adding to the character, fruit, and structure of the wine, giving “Mt. Jeff” its deserved reputation as one of the most stylistically consistent Pinot Noirs in the world.”