Caitlin's Reserve Chardonnay: The Story Behind the Label
from david adelsheim:
This is a piece about two things: the person on the label, Caitlin Wells, and the concept of a “Reserve” wine.
Portrait of Connie Kiener by Ginny Adelsheim
First Caitlin. Caitlin is the daughter of Connie Kiener, Ginny’s oldest friend, from kindergarten. Ginny (my ex-wife and Co-Founder of our winery) and Connie grew up together in Lake Oswego, but after high school took different routes to their involvement in the art world. Ginny went to Portland State University, Connie went to Otis School of Art & Design in Los Angeles. By the 1970’s, when Ginny and I were starting our vineyard, Connie was living in eastern British Columbia, in a commune on the Slocan River. After a son and her daughter, Caitlin, were born, Connie wanted to move back to the States but had little money. We took Connie and Caitlin into our home for a couple of years. Connie started her life’s work in ceramic sculpture; Caitlin started school; Ginny drew portraits of both of them that ended up on our labels. Connie was on our Merlot labels (first from Washington grapes in 1978, eventually from Applegate Valley grapes in the 1980s and 90’s.) Caitlin’s drawing became part of the second series, the Reserve wines.
Portrait of Caitlin Wells by Ginny Adelsheim, first appearing on a 1989 Chardonnay
To understand why we used the word “Reserve,” you really need to understand the evolution of the wine industry in the North Willamette Valley. The first grapes were planted in a vineyard in 1966, the first wine made from the 1970 vintage. Almost everyone that came to make wine in the next three decades shared the naïve dream of making great wine and building a reputation for our industry. We did everything we could to make our wines better. But there wasn’t very much we could do in our vineyards to improve quality (except plant better clones.) So, we focused on winemaking decisions – things we could do in the winery to quickly improve what was in the bottle. We could keep blocks separate in fermenter, use more (or less new) new oak barrels, filter the wines before bottling, or not. But the real tool available to use was blending – using a little of this wine to improve that wine. We couldn’t focus on what a vineyard in a certain place meant. First needed to get our winemaking under control.
Every winery started by making a single wine from each of the grape varieties they had planted. From our vineyard, we made one Pinot noir, one Chardonnay and one Riesling. Soon we were also buying some grapes from neighbors. By 1986, we realized that some blocks of Pinot noir just seemed to make better wine than others. So, that year we kept all the blocks of Pinot separate, eventually finding a blend of a block from our vineyard and one from Allen Holstein’s vineyard in the Dundee Hills that was the best wine we’d ever made.
Adelsheim Reserve wines
It took us a year and a half, but Ginny and I eventually came up with a name for this second Pinot noir. Since it was blend of grapes from two vineyards, we couldn’t name it after a single vineyard. In California, a number of wineries had named their higher-quality wine “Reserve” (perhaps because it had been “reserved,” i.e. held longer in barrel or held back in bottle before release.) Ours was neither but it was about the only word we could think of. So, the Pinot was named “Elizabeth’s Reserve,” adding our daughter’s name.
Three years later, when we created a second – and better – Chardonnay, it made sense to use another drawing from Ginny, again of someone from that younger generation. “Reserve” made it onto the label, as did Caitlin’s picture. But her name wasn’t added until the 2001. I can’t explain that logic!
Evolution in the wine industry continued. By around 2000, almost every winemaker was doing a great job in the winery. And their focus started to turn back to their vineyards. What could be done in the vineyard, long-term, to improve our wines. Organic, biodynamic, and sustainable systems were introduced. And we started to ask ourselves, what did having a vineyard planted in a certain place mean for our wine? Some of the most densely planted areas started to see consistent, common attributes from their area. And they wanted to be able to name their area on their label. In 2002, six areas petitioned the Federal government for designation as an American Viticultural Area (AVA.) Over the next four years, they were all approved, starting with Dundee Hills. Chehalem Mountains was the last.
The approval of the six AVAs shifted the conversation about what was a great wine. Specifically, what was a great Pinot noir? Sure, everything we’d learned over three decades about winemaking was critical. But now, that alone was not enough. A great wine had to come from a specific place with attributes of that place and be labeled with the name of a small AVA. And the best of the best had to come from a single vineyard, represent the consistent attributes of that vineyard, and be named for that vineyard.
Blends of grapes from multiple vineyards became the base of the pyramid. At the pinnacle were the single vineyard wines. We started with two single vineyard Pinots in 1989 and now make ten every year. We made a single vineyard Chardonnay, starting in 1999.
The wines we had proudly named “Reserve” in the 1980’s became more and more out of date in the 2000’s. Consumers wanted to know what vineyard a great (and expensive) wine came from. When we listed ten vineyards in a blend – ten vineyards that could change from vintage to vintage – you could watch their eyes glaze over. This “Reserve” wine didn’t have a story – it was a blend, and the story could change from year to year. The Reserve Chardonnay started off coming from our vineyard in the Chehalem Mountains. Eventually, it was made mostly from Stoller Vineyard in the Dundee Hills.
In 2001, the “Reserve” Chardonnay became “Caitlin’s Reserve,” putting it on a qualitative par with Elizabeth’s Reserve. That designation remained for 15 vintages. But in 2015, the concept of a top quality wine being a blend of vineyards had become so horribly outdated in the Willamette Valley that we decided that would be the last vintage for both the Elizabeth Reserve Pinot noir and the Caitlin’s Reserve Chardonnay.
These labels – and the wines they graced – are documentation of a period in the history of Willamette Valley wine when winemaking was king. When any wine could be improved by the careful work of a winemaker with access to a range of wines that could be blended in exactly the correct proportions to create perfection. At least, that’s what we thought at the time.