Wine & Spirits - Spring 2022 - 31

TRISAETUM WINERY IN
OREgON'S COAST RANgE
O
regon's Willamette Valley is bordered by
mountains running north to south on its western
flank. Much of the valley floor is low-lying floodplain,
so that edge is readily visible, more or less forming
the western horizon for 120 miles, especially when seen
from Highway 99W, the through line of civilization that
runs from Portland to Eugene.
West of 99W, things get weird. Hills rise sharply, huge
and forested, so dark in afternoon shadow they look as if
they're swallowing light. Evidence of logging is starkly visible;
on many ridgelines, the jagged stubble of partly felled
trees juts into the sky like the remnants of a bad haircut.
This is the Coast Range, formed by tectonic collisions
65 million years ago, when the Juan de Fuca plate dove
beneath the continent. The resulting uplift bequeathed a
jumble of ridges, valleys folds and buckles ranging in elevation
from 2,500 to just over 4,000 feet. Running the length
of the state, the Range serves as a critical buffer between
the ocean and the vineyard slopes of the Willamette Valley.
With a few notable exceptions, the Coast Range is
defined by this role, as a buffer, a barrier, a regulator of
inland temperatures and weather, and the Range itself
has largely been considered too cool to plant. But climate
change has altered that calculus, and after last year's heat
event, where temperatures soared in late June, planting
vines in places once thought inhospitable became a talking
point. Where to do this, and whether it's a good idea,
is another matter.
ELEVATION
deVelopment in the Coast range isn't exaCtly neW.
One of the valley's first vineyard sites, David Hill Vineyard,
was planted west of Portland in 1965. There, Charles
Coury, a contemporary of the Eyrie's David Lett, planted
Alsace varieties on a long south-facing parcel near Forest
Grove. Other sites saw vines go in the ground in the early
eighties; Wren, Dai Crisp's home vineyard in Philomath,
was planted then by his father, also on the advice of Lett.
If David Hill is the oldest Coast Range development,
King Estate is probably the largest. Ed King, Jr., started
planting the vineyard in 1991 on the site of an old horse
farm and pasture; the property's 1,000 acres are situated
where the Coast Range creeps south and east, forming the
southern border of the Willamette Valley. Ray Nuclo, who
farms King Estate's vineyard under biodynamics, refers to
this part of the Coast Range as the West Slope; the property
rises in elevation from 700 to nearly 1,200 feet, higher and
cooler than most other parts of the Valley. That worked for
King's founder, Ed, Jr., who sought to kick-start an ambitious
pinot gris program.
Nuclo thinks the coolness of the King Estate site has as
much to do with its proximity to the coast as with its elevation.
" There's a breeze pattern that comes in every afternoon
like clockwork, " he says. It cools the entire property,
lingering into the early morning hours. Nuclo, who buys
fruit all over the Willamette Valley, knows few properties
as cool as the estate. Whites are accordingly nervy, with
low alcohols and high natural acids; estate reds are firmly
structured and long-lived.
Both here and at Crisp's Wren Vineyard nearby, spring
frosts were once a scourge, and are no longer. " It gets a
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