Chemistry Pinot Noir 2021

If you have been visiting—or trying to visit—vineyards on the West Coast in the last few years, you may have run into some serious difficulty because they were on fire. And not “on fire” in the sense that they were having great vintages making stellar wine, but rather, actually, literally On Fire. Unfortunately, it happened up and down the West Coast, hitting almost all wine regions. 

But not hitting them uniformly - in and out of years, in and out of areas, not always the same area, and not always at the same time. This is, of course, very hard on vintners. You can’t actually pick up a vineyard and move it out of harm's way. But what you can do is get creative in where you're picking, when you're picking and, ultimately, what you're blending. Which brings us to this wine. 

You’ve probably not heard of this one before, but you probably have tasted something very similar. Chemistry is now a “sub-label” of the Willamette Valley winery Stoller. Stoller has one of the biggest tasting rooms in the Valley, and if you’ve been to Willamette, you’ve probably experienced Stoller. Stoller wInery, along with its founder Bill Stoller, are actually a larger corporation, which includes farming many other vineyards in Willamette, as well as now owning another winery, Chehalem. All of this is to say that they’ve got a lot of excellent fruit around, and Chemistry was designed to showcase that fruit but at a more competitive price than Stoller’s estate wines. Chemistry was already darn good stuff, but then, nature intervened - the fires came. What to do?

Bill Stoller is kind of a giant in the Oregon wine industry, having first started farming grapes in 1983. He’s got the means, and he’s got the contacts. So he reformatted Chemistry and went looking for non-fire-affected grapes. And he found them, but across borders. Some in Oregon, but some in California. As the winery notes:

“Kindled in transition, the winemakers at Stoller Family Estate and Chehalem seized an opportunity to collaborate, allowing the two estate-driven, tenured wineries to further explore. The Chemistry brand was formed from that original bond. Now, our winemakers are bringing together Pinot Noir from two of the new world’s most acclaimed grape-growing regions: Oregon and California. Superior quality at a fair price. Alliance, by Chemistry.”

And I happen to very much agree with them. Here, you're getting the best of California Pinot, and the best of Oregon Pinot. The sum really is greater than the parts. The wine opens with ripe red raspberry aromas, Rainier strawberries, and hints of orange zest. These aromatics remind me of Oregon. On the palate are notes of bright cherry, plush tannins and just a bit of baking spice from the barrel - to me, all notes of Carneros Pinot. And together, they perfectly harmonize, giving you a Pinot that at its price, just can’t be beat. 

And I am not the only one to appreciate this wine - Bill Stoller conceptualized Alliance as a one-off thing. One vintage to help make it through. Then, they got so many requests to have it back, that they made it again! It’s a heck of a find to score this much marvelous Pinot Noir at this low of a price.