Page 85 - Wine Spectator (January 2020)
P. 85
Drew Bledsoe (right) and winemaker Josh McDaniels
in 2018, a tasting room in Bend, Ore., that opened in 2019, and three more were wines that had a little more elegance to them, a little more nu-
brands, the most recent of which, Bledsoe-McDaniels, launched in ance. We drink a lot of Barolo and Barbaresco, from northern Italy; those
2019. (Josh McDaniels is Bledsoe’s director of winemaking.) It brings are probably my favorite wines in the world.
a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir into the Bledsoe family and will also How we decide what wines we’re going to make is: We try to make wines
encompass three single-vineyard estate Syrahs from Walla Walla. we like. And as I’ve evolved in terms of what I like to drink, you’ve seen us
Still, the ambitious vintner says, “We feel like after 12 years, we’re going toward that style of winemaking. With the Syrah and even now with
just now exiting the startup phase of our business and trying to figure some of our specific lots of Cabernet, we’re fermenting and also aging in
out what we want to be when we grow up.” concrete. I think you just get more purity of fruit with concrete than you
do sometimes with oak. So we’re continuing to evolve.
Wine Spectator: What led you to decide you were going to make wine
in Washington? WS: And these tastes informed your decision to start making single-
Drew Bledsoe: We were in New England playing for the Patriots, and vineyard Syrahs and Oregon Pinot?
there were a lot of guys that were into wine. So whenever guys came over, DB: We live in Oregon, so we’ve very close to the Willamette Valley. We
I told them to bring a bottle of red wine. They would generally bring some- probably drink more Willamette Valley Pinot Noir in our house than any-
thing from Napa or something from Bordeaux and we would do blind tast- thing else. And then we decided to do this single-vineyard Syrah from the
ings at the house—three, four, five wines. And I would always, of course, [estate] Lefore vineyard. It leans a little more Old World than New. We tend
include something from Walla Walla. I wasn’t playing for second place; I’d to harvest a little bit earlier than most. We try to capture some of that black
grab some Leonetti or some L’Ecole [No. 41] Apogee or Perigee or some pepper in Syrah—less fruit-driven and more mineral-driven. They’re pas-
Woodward Canyon. But we would always win! So that was sort of an epiph- sion projects based on our own preferences, and we hope other people
any for me. I could go back to my hometown and not just make wine, but like them too.
make wine that we would feel stands up on the world stage.
WS: Walla Walla is still an underdog region in some respects. Is there
WS: How have both your wine tastes and the wines you make evolved? “team spirit” in the winemaking community?
DB: I think I started where a lot of people start when they first get into DB: One of the striking differences between the way we competed in foot-
wine: with Napa. Over time, I’ve found that what I’ve started to appreciate ball and the way we compete in wine is, in football, whoever we played,
they had to lose so I could win. And in wine, particularly in Walla Walla, if
ANDRÉA JOHNSON Read the full interviews and check out the comprehensive my neighbor has success, it’s better for my business. So all of us collectively
EXTRA POINT
work together to grow the brand of the valley. That makes it a lot of fun;
roster of NFL wines WineSpectator.com/WineInTheNFL
—B.O.
there’s a great open sharing of information.
JAN. 31 - FEB. 29, 2020 • WINE SPECTATOR 79
