World of Wine judge Elaine Marshall
"Southern Oregon winemakers are in the process of getting great extraction, but they need to throttle back and let the nature of the grape shine," says World of Wine Festival judge Elaine Marshall, a former restaurant sommelier and one of the first to achieve the designation of an Advanced Certified Wine Professional of the Culinary Institute of America.
Marshall, the founder of the First Street Wine Company in Livermore, CA., had tasted a handful of Southern Oregon wines years ago as a buyer for her retail store. Recently, she contacted Pat Spangler of Roseburg-based Spangler Vineyards to request samples for the Sunset Magazine Wine Club. Then she was invited to be a judge for this Saturday’s World of Wine Festival at Del Rio Vineyards.
Experts – Marshall as well as author Lisa Shara Hall, John W. Buechsenstein, who is the winemaker of Sauvignon Republic, and Desmond Echavarrie, wine director for Switch restaurant at Steve Wynn’s Encore Hotel in Las Vegas -- met in Jacksonville Aug. 20 to judge wines made from Southern Oregon grapes.
"I was very impressed with the quality, especially the Bordeaux blends and the Syrahs," says Marshall, who has worked with the Kapcsandy Family Winery, Brooks Wines and eWinery Solutions. "I was a red wine judge, so I didn’t get a chance to judge whites in a formal way.
"It was exciting to see the level of quality and commercial appeal that is being generated. The wines were both interesting and commercially viable," she continues. "Sometimes you get smaller regions producing unusual wines with a unique signature, but they may not play to a larger commercial audience."
The two wines named Best of Show were South Stage Cellars’ 2008 Early Muscat and Misty Oaks’ 2007 Jones Road Cabernet Franc. Marshall was able to vote for the Cab Franc. "What I liked about it is it walked like a Cab Franc, it smelled like a Cab Franc and the alcohol wasn’t too high. It was a spot-on representation of what I was looking for in the distinct style of a Cab Franc."
Lisa Shara Hall, the author of "Wines of the Pacific Northwest" and the co-author of "The Food Lover’s Companion to Portland," also liked Misty Oaks' Cab Franc. "I thought it showed great Cabernet Franc character: a tobacco leaf aroma with clear and crisp flavors.”
Hall, senior editor for Wine Business Monthly and an observer of the market, states: "Southern Oregon wines need a bit better marketing and wider availability to catch more attention.”
She adds that Southern Oregon wines can be hard to define: There are many mesoclimates n the Umpqua Valley, from hot and dry to cool and wet. “You can't generalize in the Umpqua,” she says. The weather in the Rogue Valley is universally hotter so it can support growing warmer climate varieties such as Cabernet and Syrah. And the Applegate Valley gets very good acidity in its wines because of the diurnal switch in temperatures.
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