The Wine

Right in the middle of Harvest 2018, in a somewhat delusional and sleep-deprived what-the-heck moment, we decided to make a true carbonic maceration wine. With everyone in the Willamette Valley making a whole-cluster Pinot noir, why shouldn’t we?

For this Erratic Rock wine, we followed the textbook à la Beaujolais. Maybe we should have named this wine SOB—Straight Outta Beaujolais! While we use partial whole-cluster judiciously in our blends, Erratic Rock is a first totally whole-cluster, full-carbonic-maceration wine for us.

The aim was to show off the dense and rich fruit of the Dijon 667 vines planted on the volcanic soil of our Delfina Vineyard in the hills west of McMinnville. Dijon 667 is known for densely compact, baseball-sized, deeply colored clusters with ample tannins thanks to its high skin-to-juice ratio.

Into one of our stainless fermenters, we layered a couple bins of the small 667 clusters with dry ice to purge the oxygen. Making our own little pressure cooker, we bolted on the lid and got on with the rest of processing. This whole-cluster stuff sure is easy compared to destemming for whole-berry fermentation!

Twice, we unbolted the fermenter and gave it a good old-fashioned foot stomp. We did not inoculate the must; all yeast fermentation resulted from indigenous yeast. Total fermentation time was about 25 days. Ultimately, we pressed the lot and pumped the freakishly purple new wine into four neutral barrels. And by neutral, we mean old. Six years old.

After stealing a barrel to release as Pinot Nouveau in November 2018, we left the remainder in the cellar, untouched except for topping. After about 14 months on the lees, we bottled in January 2020. Erratic Rock was neither fined nor filtered before bottling, being carefully racked off the lees.

So, what’s the wine like? The color is a deep dark blue-purple, and while the Dijon 667 is a dark clone, this wine is super dark for a Pinot. A marked whole-cluster nose jumps from the glass with wafts of black pepper, spicy cherry, and a hint of bergamot tea as the wine opens.

The massive palate is lush and fruit-driven as you would expect any carbonic whole cluster wine to be. We liken the palate to a height-of-summer adult berry smoothie, exhibiting gobs and gobs of blue-purple-black fruit: blueberry, blackberry, black raspberry.

All this fruit is balanced with the bright acid so typical of the Delfina Vineyard and the whole is framed with copious medium tannins. All in all, we feel this beast needs to age for five years to come into its own and has the acidity and structure to keep on improving for a couple of decades.

The WInery

Now in our 15th vintage, Coelho Winery has grown to farm vineyards in three Willamette Valley nested AVAs, bottling single-vineyard Pinot noir from each. Raising our own fruit, we control every step in the process from pruning to bottle. In addition to crafting Pinot noir that honors the terroir of our three vineyards with three diverse soil types, we also farm crisp Oregon-style Pinot gris and exciting, nervy Chardonnay. Honoring the Portuguese heritage of owners Dave and Deolinda Coelho, we also produce a red blend of six Portuguese varieties and a full range of Port-style dessert wines, including 10- and 15-year old tawnies.

Learn more about Coehlo Winery
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