Sivilli Wine Co. is making delicious, complex, and wonderfully COMPELLING sparkling wine with traditional methods in the heart of the Willamette Valley.
We’ve all been there. We’ve witnessed the dramatic scene unfold and the doom of all sparkling wines dispensed. The foil is cut, the cage is loosened, and after a soft
pffffftttttt
, the cork is eased from the bottle. The audience holds its breath in suspense. Well...the skilled audience members remember that they actually need air to be able to taste….but you get my point.
“Look at those bubbles…”
“How fine are they?”
A glass is raised to the light.
“How long will the mousse linger?”
A swirl. A sniff.
“Is that brioche on the nose?”
From somewhere in the back:
“I wonder how long it aged on the lees before disgorgement?”
A sip. A contemplative pause.
And then, inevitably:
“Wow. This
almost
tastes like Champagne!”
Ah. Yes. Almost tastes like it. If only it could have been Champagne and then the party really could have gotten started! And not only that, the party itself would be blessed with the divine mercy of knowing one is drinking the very best of the best. The good stuff. The
REAL stuff.
And my, my, what generous hosts for having procured the nectar of Heaven for dispensation at this most regular of housewarming parties.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Champagne. I love Champagne like a hound loves the side of beef he is tossed annually from the holiday table. Grateful and immediately pacified. But lately (and by lately I mean for the last few years….my wife knows I use such terms liberally) I’ve been wondering if I’ve been hard on myself. Do I not deserve my prime rib more regularly? Am I not the hardest-working of hounds?…Uhhh I think so?
But maybe I need to leave prime rib on the Christmas table. What if for instance I decided I was worthy of eating a succulent brisket somewhat regularly? That’s a less
formal
cut right? I could totally get away with it……yes! And honestly I’d feel so much better each year not having to make sure my prime rib did some sort of magic trick because I’m eating it on a special day. And come to think of it…what would be the point in even comparing the two experiences? A smoked brisket is nothing like a prime rib other than the fact they’re both a form of recreational hedonism. Texturally totally distinct. Entirely different flavor experiences of beef. I behave like a total animal with either of them no matter if I’m wearing jeans or slacks.
If you’ll pardon my lengthy elaboration, I must say I feel the exact same way about sparkling wine. We spend so much of our evaluation of it as a game of comparison rather than an exercise in appreciation of quality. I’ve enjoyed many sparkling wines that taste like Champagne, and many that have an utterly different yet compelling character. Let’s come back to our roots to remember that fine wine is predicated upon the concept of terroir. Why would we ever even wonder whether domestic or other foreign sparkling will some day taste like Champagne? I hope it never does. Yet this is the circle of life with fine wine. Napa wanted to replicate Bordeaux. Oregon wanted to replicate Burgundy. Walla Walla figured it could replicate the Rhone because it has some large oval rocks…….?
And so I come to the wines I want to offer you today. In perhaps the most round about way possible, and with the promise of not telling you they are the heir to Champagne’s throne. They occupy a rival kingdom all their own.
Sivilli Wine Co. is making delicious, complex, and wonderfully COMPELLING sparkling wine with traditional methods in the heart of the Willamette Valley. Tom Sivilli is the winemaker at Cameron and longtime protégé of John Paul the founder. If you know Cameron you know that these wines are some of the absolute best coming out of the Valley, with each vintage often representing the most choice slice of quality that the region can offer. What Tom is doing with sparkling wine is causing a buzz around the Valley akin to the awakening of a horde of cicadas. I’m not saying he made sparkling wine first, but for my palate he was one of the first to make me do a double take.
Tom is working with a set diverse vineyard sites that are enabling him to craft single-vineyard sparkling examples from Pinot Noir, each with distinct character. Temperance Hill has ungrafted old vines which create real power and intensity of fruit while maintaining the perfect thread of tension every great sparkling wine needs. His La Colina bottling is the opposite; a Pommard clone-based Blanc de Noir with fine-boned acidity and precision; a fencer moving quickly versus the weightier swings of Temperance Hill.
Sivilli sparklings express the wild abundance of Oregon’s landscape without shrouding it in winemaking technique. There’s the characteristic richness of lees aging and precise dosage, but also a wonderful aromatic display of things like fresh berries and nuts. Peter Liem, one of the world’s foremost experts on sparkling wine, has been known to say that the best sparkling winemakers treat each vintage and wine with the approach needed to best balance its structure and natural characteristics. In essence, a sparkling wine should never be destined to be Brut, Extra-Dry, Demi-Sec, or Brut Nature….rather its destiny is to be revealed as something delicious. Well, I find Tom Sivilli’s wines to be utterly delicious, and I’ll drink them with brisket or prime rib whenever I want.
