Elouan and the Oregon Wine Appellations

We recently got a case of Elouan Pinot Noir, which comes packaged in a good looking box that says, "Grown in Oregon, Made in California."  The obvious question here is, Can you do that?  Can you take grapes from one state and turn them into wine in another?

The American Viticultural Area wine appellation system is the ultimate legal arbiter in situations like this and in 2018, under pressure from Oregon wineries, they found Joe Wagner of Caymus fame did not have the right to name specific wine appellations on his wine labels or boxes.  So, no Willamette Valley may appear on Wagner's Oregon wines made in California.  Apparently, the Oregon place name is okay though.

Furthermore, Wagner was listing Rogue and Umpqua Valleys along with Willamette on his labels which sort of defeats the purpose of the appellation system.  If someone is purchasing a premium wine, they have the right to know where the grapes for that wine are sourced and you can bet if all three appellations are listed, most of the grapes will be from the lesser regions.  Willamette becomes just window dressing.

Why would vintners in Oregon care about the issue?  Oregon's wine laws are stricter than California's, so to take Oregon grapes to a California winery compromises the integrity of the Oregon product.  In Oregon (and much of the rest of the world) Pinot Noir is a single varietal wine.  In California they allow blending up to twenty-five percent.

So lets unpack this a little bit at this point.  Pinot Noir is the finest red wine grape in the world if you consider fineness to mean finesse and longer, finer and more nuanced complementary flavors.  When it's right, it's practically transcendent.  Unfortunately, that rarely happens.  Moreover, the American palate wants mouth-filling rich forward-fruit red wine, so that is what California gives them.  Hence you have blended reds masquerading as Pinot Noir.

Want to know if your pinot has been blended?  One way is to see if it's a cherry red color in the glass.  Another is to taste red fruit flavors in the wine as opposed to black fruit.  Want to know if other additives have been worked into it?  Can't help you there.  As long as California won't list ingredients on the back label of suspect wines, we'll never know.