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Doppleganger: or There's Another World Out There!

By Harry Peterson-Nedry


	Bernard Huber in a steep vineyard block


	Prime Pinot noir Vineyard of Dr. Heger, Ihringen


	A New Planting in Burkheim, Looking West across the Rhine into Alsace, with the Vosges Mountains in the distance

Looking beyond phalanx after phalanx of aggressively growing vines, verdant and breathing silently in early summer optimism, looking out over layers of pewter hills in the distance, each grading lighter as it fades into the sky at sunset, there is comfort as well as beauty, because this is home. Or is it? Could this be halfway around the planet?

There are philosophies and religions and science fictions that argue parallel worlds exist. Perhaps. The ticklish thing would seem to be moving between these enantiomeric worlds, giving credence to each by acting in both. And then, perhaps to bring something back upon return.

In May I visited southern Germany with my daughter, Wynne, freshly graduated from college and yet tolerating another wine event in her life as we represented Oregon at the International Pinot Gris Symposium. And, although we confronted a strange glottal, multi-syllabic language and postcard narrow cobblestone street villages with clocktower gates, it seemed strangely familiar. As we were to find, the little-exported wine region in Baden known as the Kaiserstuhl is remarkably interesting and is almost Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Twins separated at birth. Parallel universes. Dopplegangers.

There’s such a thing as a "cellar palate." If you taste your own, or your region’s wines exclusively, eventually you get a myopic view of the wine world. You miss the differences that add to the richness of the wine experience, you miss the strides made by an always improving and dynamic worldwide wine industry, and you miss the fun.


Harry and Wynne at Pinot Gris Symposium Grand Menu Dinner, with Chamber Music, 30 Pinot gris over 8 courses and 2am ending! (photo credit: Dr. Chris Hofmaier)

If nothing else, the 2002 International Grauburgunder Symposium in Endingen was a great cellar palate cleanser. With appropriately PC subtitling acknowledging the other names of pinot gris and pinot grigio, the gathering attempted to bridge differences on behalf of a cool climate grape varietal of which we at Chehalem are very fond. We found the differences worth investigating. But the similarities were unnerving.

All significant regions in the world growing pinot gris were represented. We were the only Americans. We were welcomed as long-lost friends returned, our petty German attempts excused as an opportunity for them to practice school or TV English, delivered with great humor and friendly inclusion in activities and meals that stretched well into tomorrow, a time travel fueled by after dinner drinking of wine and schnapps or eau de vies. Our hosts observed that the French drag out meals interminably, drinking all their wines in contrived pairings and leaving after the last course, whereas Germans eat their meal with a little wine, then hang around drinking double what was consumed in the meal during conversation and Brueghel revelry.


	Weingut Bercher in Burkheim

Differences in the Kaiserstuhl include pinot gris styling, with very heavy, new oak fermented, low acid dry wines as the new style, replacing an older reflection of the variety called Rulander that is even heavier and very sweet, reflecting a late, warm ripening. The new style was initiated in the mid-eighties to reinvigorate the variety, being given the Grauburgunder name to differentiate it, while those slow to collaborate continued a sweeter late-harvest style. The same innovators urging this change, primarily Eckhardt Bercher from Weingut Bercher in Burkheim, also began the Symposium, the event being partially a promotion for the region in a similar way that the International Pinot Noir Conference (IPNC) promotes the Willamette Valley. Martin Bercher, his son, having visited Chehalem during an around-the-world backpacking tour several years back, was our translator and primary host, receiving us as first and second generations of our winemaking family. Martin himself moved his young family into the ancestral winery home in January, his parents moving downhill into the village, as Martin assumed control, the eleventh generation on this site since immigrating from Switzerland in the 1400s!

And since the 1200s this region has had its complement of grape varieties, brought in by monastic orders whose ruins still stand in Burkheim and in which the first Symposium was inaugurated. Here is where the similarities begin to be significant, especially considering the grapes, topography, soils and adjoining lands. The Kaiserstuhl grows primarily pinot noir (spatburgunder). The whites are pinot gris and pinot blanc (blauburgunder), with a little riesling, sylvaner, muller-thurgau and chardonnay. Since the beginning. Like us.

The growing region is very much like ours, the Kaiserstuhl name given because the hillsides approximate a grand, regal chair or stool, with the parallel Vosges mountains to the west and the Black Forest to the east the two arms of the chair, and the low volcanic hillsides in-between, where the grapegrowing is done, is the seat. Simple maps of the Willamette Valley reveal our twinship, with the Coast Range to the west, Cascades to the east, and our volcanic uplifts in-between the well-known grapegrowing hillsides of Red Hills of Dundee, Eola Hills, Chehalem Mountains, etc.

Their soils are volcanic, except in lower areas where there is a blown sedimentary called loess, similar to our Laurelwood soils in the Chehalem Mountains. Elevations are almost identical. And, although they are at the cool 49th parallel as far as latitude, whereas we are at the 45th, heat accumulation is very close.

The Kaiserstuhl region is separated only by the Rhine and fifteen or twenty miles (and several major wars) from Alsace, our German-French speaking standard for pinot gris, pinot blanc, gewürztraminer and riesling. (It was interesting to have Eckhardt and Christiane Bercher accompany us to visit our single Alsace producer for the trip, crossing the Rhine on the way to Strasbourg, startling to realize it was a trip almost never taken between regions, even though from their vineyards you can look across the Rhine to Colmar and Alsace’s vineyards).

In this global communications and travel environment, there were few surprises technically in grapegrowing and winemaking, although differing approaches always stimulate reappraisal and experimentation, especially when wines are very good but different stylistically. Dijon clones are the newest plantings; small amounts of drip irrigation augment the shallow soils on the tops of southern-facing terraces; with facades and cellars that are ancient, equipment and tanks and technologies are what you’d expect from German engineering.


	Bernard Huber's Winery

For example, Bernard Huber’s winery is as intelligently engineered as any I’ve ever seen and embodies all modern approaches for pinot noir winemaking we know. He, plus others such as Heger, Bercher, Salwey, Johner and others (even in more distant regions, like Werner Knipser in Pfalz), makes pinot noir that would be indistinguishable from the best Oregons: The same coopers we use; the same fermentors and punchdown processes, with strange names and new innovations in stainless steel; use, and possibly overuse, of wine manufacturing machinery like concentrators in only a couple cellars; cooperative organic and biodynamic groups, plus sensitive recycling extending to capture of rainwater.

There is comfort in finding others like you, in reconnecting with long-lost kin, even if you never knew them or even if they aren’t. There is reassurance that you are on the right path, that you could help or seek help from each other—that there’s intelligent life out there and we are not alone.