Willamette Tour Part 3—Know Your Potstill

I became completely lost on the back roads trying to find Ransom in Sheridan at the very southern end of the Willamette in the foothills of the Coastal Range. Several dirt and hilly roads later I had arrived to a forty acre farm and distillery. I was greeted by the winemaker/distiller Tad Seestedt and his team with pizza topped with locally foraged mushrooms and local red wine. Life doesn't get any better then this.



There were two barns—one for the wine and one for the pot stills per Federal regulations. You can't make wine and spirits under the same roof. Honestly, I am more intrigued with the gins Tad and his team produce then the wines—they are amazing. I am constantly trying to understand the entire process from start to finish. Meeting the artisans that distill the spirits I admire is always inspiring and helps me find my passion for what I do.



They are currently making two gins. The first and most famous is the Old Tom. A gin style light brown in color from its oat/corn based mash and is then aged in oak casks. I got to barrel taste some of the gin and taste the oat based mash. The mash tasted just like oatmeal. Old Tom is a style that would be common during the Civil War Era. The other Gin they produce is called Small's, an American Dry Gin that would be common before 1850's. This particular gin is clear and has Oregon raspberries and leaves in the botanicals.



At the restaurant we are currently making two cocktails with Ransom Gin. The first is a classic Old Tom Martinez. It is argued to be the original martini with Sweet Vermouth and Marischino Liqueur. The second is made with Small's Gin and is called the Toad's Cup, a play on the British cocktail the Pimm's Cup. We take Small's Gin, add fresh raspberries, top with our housemade ginger beer, and garnish with a cucumber. It is refreshing and clean for the upcoming patio season.

Willamette Tour Part 2—Smell the Soil

I first stumbled across the sub-AVAs of the Willamette Valley in 2005. The real reason I went to the Willamette is to collect soil from all of its sub-AVAs. McMinnville, Eola-Amity, Yamhill-Carlton, Dundee Hills, Chelahem Mountains, and Ribbon Ridge—I think that’s all of them and I collected soil from them all—It took a couple days, wondering aimlessly from winery to winery.

At SugarToad, I have two mason jars full of terrior I am quite fond off to represent the Pinots from the 2008 vintage . The first is from the Red Hills of Dundee. The J. Christopher “Dundee Hills Cuvee” 2008 represents the volcanic red jory quite well. Dark Cherries with a barnyard to cedar quality is quite prevalent in the wine. In conversations with the winemaker Jay Somners, I learned how Pacific Northwest Salmon perhaps is not the best pairing—or maybe overdone—and the salmon brings out a metallic quality in the wine. A better fish pairing might be Alaskan halibut or diver sea scallops with a secondary pork element with pinot from Dundee.



The other mason jar consists of a more loamy soil from the Chelahem Mountains from the Bergstrom Winery***. Though the Bergstrom “Cumberland Reserve” Pinot Noir 2008 comes from several vineyard sites, one can definitely smell and taste the juicy black cherry to cola notes in the Missoula Flood influenced soils. (That childhood trip to Yellowstone is all making sense now.) After tasting this alongside some grilled blackmouth salmon, I found this to be a better salmon pairing then the pinots from Dundee.

***For sake of argument of the Armitage Crew, Bergstrom is Ubaldo's favorite Pinot of 2006-7.

Willamette Damm—it!

An infant sommelier once thought that wines labeled Willamette came from the North Shore of Chicago. It actually is in reference to a valley formed by the Willamette River in Oregon. It is a tributary of the Columbia River. The 2008 vintage has been declared the vintage of a lifetime by many. (Wine Critics say this every year—Sommeliers are not critics, but conscientious objectors of highly touted vintages—and for some strange reason, off-vintages seem to age better!). This sommelier will soon embark on a pilgrimage to unearth great Willamette Pinot Noir.

As the story goes, while at UC Davis, Vigneron David Lett had this crazy notion to plant pinot noir (Dijon Clones) in the Willamette Valley around 1966--give or take a year. A French Connection--Willamette shares a similar latitude with Burgundy, France, and is perfectly suited for growing this fickle red varietal, pinot noir. This cool climate grape loves the mild wet winters and warm dry summers the Willamette offers stretching about 150 miles from Portland in the North to Eugene in the South.

Willamette has some of the most distinctive terrior in the New World. Its Pinots are seductively earthy with many red to dark fruits, smell like a Northwest conifer to cedar forest at times, and are delicious with salmon. I will hopefully collect many soil samples in my travels, especially the red jory that gives Willamette Pinot such a rich earthy quality.

Stay tuned for the Willamette Valley Expedition version 2011.