Bergstrom

Bergström Wines sits above Dundee, on Worden Hill Road, in Oregon's Willamette Valley. John and Karen Bergström put the first vines in the ground in the Dundee Hills; their son Josh returned from France in 1999 with his wife Caroline, and the pair have run the place ever since. Josh is owner, chief executive and director of winemaking, Caroline owner and director of sales. He took a postgraduate degree in viticulture and oenology at the CFPPA in Beaune, which is where the two of them met; Caroline was born in Beaune, trained at the Lycée Viticole and worked at the Hospice de Beaune. If you want one fact that explains the wines, that is it. This is an Oregon estate run by someone who learned the job in Burgundy, and it shows in the structure of the reds far more than in any American sense of ripeness.

The family farms five estate vineyards, around 70 acres in total, spread across three appellations: the Dundee Hills, the Chehalem Mountains and Ribbon Ridge. Bergström Vineyard in the Dundee Hills was planted in 1999 and is the home site, a south-facing bowl at about 380 feet. Silice, in the Chehalem Mountains, went in during 2001; it is the sandiest ground they own, twenty acres spread over four rolling hillsides that were most likely a sixty-million-year-old beach. Winery Block, also in the Chehalem Mountains and planted in 2002, is a mere two acres. Over in Ribbon Ridge there is La Spirale, twenty-two acres bought from the Redman family in 2018, and Le Pré du Col, sixteen acres of marine sedimentary soil planted in 2006, owned by the Hill family and farmed by Bergström in partnership.

The farming is worth setting out in some detail. From the moment the vineyards went in in 1999 the estates have been worked without herbicides, pesticides, insecticides or systemic chemicals. Each year the team builds hundreds of tons of its own compost from local organic cow manure and straw, the previous harvest's skins, seeds, stems and winter prunings, and curative herbs including chamomile, yarrow, valerian, dandelion and stinging nettle. In place of synthetic fertiliser they treat with homeopathic herbal and mineral teas. Those are biodynamic methods and Bergström describe them in those terms, though the winery publishes no organic or Demeter certification.

What they are known for is Pinot Noir and Chardonnay at the serious end of Oregon, and Sigrid in particular has become one of the reference Chardonnays of the state. Josh also makes a Syrah project called gargantua, sourced from Oregon, Washington and California, on the argument that West Coast Syrah belongs in the same conversation as the Northern Rhône. The full range runs to a couple of dozen bottlings, including Old Stones Chardonnay, Homage, Cuvée Caroline and a Riesling.

Cumberland Reserve is the blend of barrels from all five estate vineyards and the sensible place to begin. Silice and Le Pré du Col are single-vineyard Pinot Noirs from the Chehalem Mountains and Ribbon Ridge respectively. Sigrid is the flagship Chardonnay, named after Josh's Swedish grandmother and made from a selection of the best barrels. The Bergström Vineyard Pinot Noir is the single-vineyard red from the Dundee Hills home site.