Today’s Story: Walter Scott Wines
Walter Scott Wines was established in 2008 by husband and wife Ken Pahlow and Erica Landon in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Ken comes from a background in wine, which began in 1994 in production, sales, and harvests at St. Innocent Winery. He later moved to Patricia Green Cellars in 2009, coinciding with the first vintage of Walter Scott La Combe Verte Pinot Noir in exchange for harvest labor. Erica, on the other hand, has a background in the restaurant industry and wine education. Her impressive resume includes sommelier and GM for the Ponzi Family’s Dundee Bistro, wine director at one of Portland’s best restaurants Ten 01, and wine director for Bruce Carey Restaurants. Erica has also taught classes for Wine & Spirits Archive, WSET, and the International Sommelier Guild. Lastly I would be remiss if I forgot to mention the youngest member of the Walter Scott team, Lucille who is the daughter of Ken and Erica. She “joined the team” in 2014, the same year Ken and Erica quit their main jobs to focus 100% on Walter Scott.
Walter Scott sources their fruit from a number of growers in the Willamette Valley AVA, with many in the Eola-Amity Hills area around their “home base.” All of the growers are friends of Ken and Erica, who in their words are people they like to sit around a table with while enjoying a glass of wine. All of these vineyard partners practice dry farming without the use of herbicides, pesticides, or fungicides, while some are also organic or biodynamic. This meshes well with Walter Scott’s goal of producing single vineyard and blended bottlings from old vines that offer clonal diversity from expressive terroir.
In the cellar, Ken practices a more “dynamic” winemaking style in that he never follows a recipe and adapts vintage to vintage. The end goal is to purely let the wines speak for themselves and showcase each unique vineyard site with freshness and purity. Ken only ferments with native or ambient yeasts, minimizes punch-downs or extractive techniques, and remains committed in his attention to detail vintage to vintage in order to seek constant improvement. All of the wines age in French oak barrels, with each barrel a small part of the larger whole.
I previously wrote about the Walter Scott 2018 X Novo Vineyard Chardonnay. To learn more about Walter Scott Wines, view pictures of the team and vineyards, or purchase some bottles of your own, check out their website here.
Today’s Wine: 2020 Bois-Moi Chardonnay
100% Chardonnay; 13% ABV
The 2020 Bois-Moi Chardonnay is pale gold in color. Given some time to open up in the glass, the wine blossoms with aromas of medium (+) intensity and a nose of lemon zest, white peach, crisp pear, nectarine, flint, oyster shell, saline mineral, and mild oaky spice. Meanwhile the flavors are of medium intensity, with the palate showcasing notes of Meyer lemon, nectarine, underripe pear, green apple, limestone, sage, and raw almond. This dry white is medium-bodied with medium (+) acidity, medium alcohol, and a medium length finish. Quality is good, and this is much rounder and more plush than the typical Walter Scott Chardonnay bottlings I’ve had in the past. I do wish the intensity on the palate was more pronounced and the finish a bit longer, but this is still quite enjoyable.
Price: $28. This is a really solid price-point for this wine and I’ve gone ahead and purchased more already. While it’s not the most intense or complex and seems ready for earlier drinking, I think that could be due to the vintage conditions and this offers a great fix of Walter Scott while you wait on the 2021s.
If this wine seems like something you might enjoy, I encourage you to purchase directly from the winery here since it’s still available at the time of this writing. Otherwise, you may find this link helpful in locating it.
JB's Wine Talk 