Pinot noir has been called the “masochist’s grape.” A single mistake at harvest or in the cellar can ruin the taste of the aromatic, but highly volatile wine – and for generations, the French had preached that only the soil of a 32-mile stretch in Burgundy could nurture it.
Lett was convinced it wasn’t the soil. If you could match the climate, he thought, the delicate grape would take hold.
“The word you’re looking for is ‘preposterous,’ ” said wine critic Matt Kramer, author of Making Sense of Burgundy.
But in 1979, when Lett’s 1975 vintage almost unseated a glass of Burgundy’s best in a blind judging at a wine olympiad in Paris, one of France’s famous winemakers took notice.
“Quite frankly, I thought it was a mistake,” said Robert Drouhin, who ordered a retasting in his 13th-century cellar in the village of Beaune, the capital of Burgundy’s Cote D’Or.
Drouhin is the vice president of the Institut National des Appelations d’Origine, the body that controls all French winemaking. His family is the guardian of the statue of St. Vincent, the patron saint of winegrowers in Burgundy.
He thought that Lett’s wine would falter against his own creation, but when the Oregon Pinot finished second by two-tenths of a point to one of Drouhin’s coveted 1959 vintages, Drouhin began dreaming of Oregon.
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