Wayda’s Wine of the Week from Ohio’s Grand River Valley

It has been several weeks since I have published here because I have been wine traveling and hosting large food and wine parties – but I am back! Julie and I took a long, fabulous wine tasting trip in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, which you will be reading much more about in the next couple of weeks. We also have been entertaining this fall on a large scale, featuring some of our trip’s most interesting wine and food experiences, which I will write about as well.

Great wine and food make for great parties. Now, as we prepare our largest Thanksgiving dinner yet (and our second Thanksgiving of 2015 because Canada celebrates Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October, making Canadian Thanksgiving this year on October 12, right in the middle of our visit), I finally have time to put virtual pen to paper about an excellent wine from Ohio’s Grand River Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA).

Several months ago, just as harvest was about to kick off in the Grand River Valley, I spent some time with Matt Meineke, the owner, grape grower and winemaker at M Cellars in Geneva, Ohio. I have previously highly recommended Matt’s Chardonnay and Pinot Gris, and I was eager to learn more about them and the rest of Matt’s portfolio.

We went into the vineyards and tasted Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Riesling grapes straight from the vine. The fruit was beautiful, and while it was all at least two weeks from ready to harvest, it was already easy to see the connection between the tastes of the fruit and the tastes we will find in the finished wine. We saw the farm equipment and the winery, and finished in the tasting room. After tasting through his entire portfolio (and purchasing a few bottles for my cellar), Matt offered to introduce me to another winemaker in the area whose wines he thought I would appreciate.

Laurentia Vineyard and Winery

We drove a couple miles to Madison, Ohio. In the middle of heavily-wooded land and rows upon rows of grape vines, we turned up a long driveway that opened to a gorgeous new winery and tasting room overlooking acres of beautiful vineyards.

Laurentia Vineyard and Winery was founded and built by Leonard and Gary Blackie, native sons of Madison. They purchased land that included their former high school cross country track and have carved out nearly 37 acres of vineyard land which they began planting in 2011 with vitis vinifera varietals focusing on Chardonnay, Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir.

Like everything else at Laurentia, the tasting room and restaurant facility are new, having opened less than a year ago. It has a modern, spacious and open feel, yet maintains a rustic sensibility. Matt and I entered and walked over to the wine bar where Matt introduced me to Laurentia’s young winemaker (at 28, he seemed young to me!), Eric Schroeder.

Eric and I talked while we tasted through Laurentia’s current releases. Because grape vines need three or four years to become established sufficiently to support wine making, nearly all of Laurentia’s current releases have been made with fruit sourced from other growers in the Grand River Valley AVA, as well as Oregon and New York’s Finger Lakes region. The 2015 vintage will be the first that features a significant proportion of wine made from grapes grown by Laurentia, what the wine industry calls “estate grown.”

As a result, Eric has not yet been able to put much of his own imprint on Laurentia’s wines. But I was able to hear about Laurentia’s philosophy of wine making, the style of wine making they intend to practice. That preferred style also played a significant role in how Laurentia selected growers from which to source their fruit these past several vintages.

For Eric and for the owners, it all starts with quality fruit. They have made a tremendous investment of money, time and labor in prepping the vineyards and selecting and nurturing their vines. Eric talks about minimal interventions in the winery with a light and judicious hand on the oak and the use of both stainless steel and large concrete vats for aging, respecting the fruit that the vines give them.

I know that the wines I tasted that day were neither grown nor made by Eric and his team, but talking with Eric I am confident that the wines that currently bear the Laurentia label, even though that label may say Finger Lakes or Oregon instead of Ohio, represent the best of what Laurentia Vineyard and Wineries intends to produce. I find that prospect an exciting one for the Grand River Valley AVA and the future of Ohio winemaking.

The Wine: 2012 Laurentia Vineyard and Winery Pinot Noir

I brought home three bottles of the Laurentia Pinot Noir (along with three bottles of the 2012 Riesling), and I opened one on a Friday evening a few weeks ago when Julie and I were starting to prepare in earnest for our annual Halloween party. Our friends Dr. Mike and Kristin had stopped over after work so I opened and served the wine saying only that it was a Pinot Noir. Everyone had the same, immediate reaction, that this wine hailed from France.

I could not have agreed more. The first thing to know about this wine is that it is decidedly Old World in style: lightly extracted and not overly fruit forward or jammy. It was bright garnet in color with very slight bricking at the rim. Bricking is a phenomenon often seen in older red wines in which the edge of the wine in the glass starts to take on an orange tint. Interestingly, that bricking appeared to fade as the wine opened up in the glass, which I thought was unusual enough to record in my tasting notes. Several weeks later I opened a second bottle of this wine which exhibited the same bricking that seemed to dissolve into bright garnet as the wine opened.

Also emblematic of an Old World or at least a cool climate Pinot Noir, this wine is low in alcohol, about 12 percent, and has a decent amount of acid that makes your mouth water. The nose exhibited dark cherry, prune and some cola notes, and after 30 minutes or so, a little vanilla appeared. On the palate this wine seems a little more tart than suggested by the nose. The cherry shifts to a lighter, sour cherry and some raspberry notes appear, along with a little earth and minerality.

For the first ten or fifteen minutes, this wine was slightly disjointed, but it integrated nicely as the air hit it and a great balance between the fruit, the acid and the tannic structure at the back end emerged. The tannins are light and soft, but still pretty and apparent, giving the wine a great feeling in the mouth and suggesting at least five years of aging potential, with a medium finish.

The Judgment

This is a very nice wine that hits all the notes you want in a Pinot Noir, drinking beautifully today but with a real potential to get even better over the next five-to-seven years. At $30 per bottle, it is pretty easy to recommend this wine.

Currently, unfortunately, Laurentia wines are only available at the winery or, if you join their wine club, they will ship it to you. Check out their website for information on joining their wine club. If you happen to be in the area of northeast Ohio in the next couple days, stop at the winery and pick up a few bottles for your Thanksgiving dinner.

This is the kind of Pinot Noir that goes perfectly on the Thanksgiving table. Thanksgiving dinner has a lot of different tastes and flavors. It features a lot of heavy starches and mouth coating sauces and gravies, but there can also be sweet/tart combinations. A more austere, Old World-styled Pinot Noir brings enough acidity to refresh the palate and enough fruit to complement the cranberry, apple and sweet potato dishes that can make their way to the Thanksgiving table.

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving from Columbus!