Arterberry Maresh Pinots Advance to the Finals
Update March 2009
Read About Arterberry Maresh's
New 2007 Pinot noirs- Reviews and Tasting Notes
Guess who showed up at the store last week? Jim Maresh, bearing gifts- his 2007 Pinot noirs. Jim Maresh is the 24 year old winemaker we've followed with increasing excitement. His family own one of Oregon's oldest and highest rated vineyards, the Maresh Vineyard. And now the Maresh family is back as winemakers, with Jimmy heading the team. If Arterberry Maresh was an NCAA team, they'd be a top pick.
Popping the cork on his Arterberry Maresh Estate Hills Pinot noir 07 at the tasting bar, the wine faced a sterner test than normal - at 10 in the morning, it's hard to impress with even the best wine.
Propped up eyelids withstanding, the 2007 Estate was monumental. What a big Pinot noir - and the 30 year old vines add so very much more than usual to complexity and depth.
Jim Arterberry Maresh: A Three Generation legacy
March 3, 2008
At just 24 years old, Jim Maresh (third generation of the Maresh vineyard and winery family) looks more like a college student on spring break than a winemaker. His cell phone beeps intermittently while he makes plans to meet up with friends at the beach and he is constantly making references to up-coming basketball games. When we arrive he is casually shooting a game of pool and opening a few bottles of his Pinot noir.
Jim's workspace is housed in the basement of the Maresh retreat house, high in the Dundee Hills with sweeping views of Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Hood. The unfinished workspace is slightly cramped and a bit dingy, which is surprising given the beauty and grandeur of the retreat house just above our heads. The space is littered with the usual winemaking accoutrements of spigots and hoses but the walls are what tell the real story. They are tacked with faded family photos of vintages past, photos of Jim at age 2 or 3 standing over a crush barrel with his dad, photos with Governor Neal Goldschmidt (their former neighbor and former owner of Goldschmidt - now Winderlea - vineyard) and other photos of relatives and winemaker friends during the chaos of crush taken over the course of forty years. If a museum for Oregon pinot history was ever to open, this would be a good place to start.
Maresh Vineyard produces some of the most sought after and acclaimed fruit in Oregon sourced by the likes of Et Fille, Daedalus, and was initially made famous by Lynn Penner Ash during her tenure at Rex Hill. Planted predominately to Pommard clones, the vineyard contains some of the oldest vine Pinot in the state.
Jim's grandfather (also named Jim) bought the land that is now the Maresh Vineyard in 1959 and began converting the orchards to vineyard land shortly thereafter (at that time there were only 5 wineries in Oregon and less than 35 vineyard acres planted in the entire state). The acreage is a rolling vineyard planted predominately in Pinot noir but interspersed with Chardonnay, Pinot gris, Riesling, and Sauvignon Blanc. A few filbert and apple trees remain, but the focus is clearly on grape production.
Jim comes by his love of pinot noir naturally. His late father, Fred Arterberry Jr., was a Pinot pioneer in the 1980's. Fred was the first winemaker in Oregon to produce sparkling wine (Mark Vlosak apprenticed with Fred in 1987 and 1988 before going on to produce his own acclaimed sparkling and Pinot production at St. Innocent). Fred's 1985 Arterberry Pinot noir garnered a 95 point rating from Wine Spectator. As a tribute, Jim has kept his father's historic label, modified only slightly to incorporate the Maresh name.
Jim's wine operation is currently a one man band with an army of supporters. His grandfather Jim helps him farm the land, his mom helps him run the books, and his legions of winemaking friends help him with production. He has apprenticed with several heavy hitters including Lynn Penner Ash at Penner Ash in 2003, Mark Vlosak at St. Innocent in 2004, and John Paul at Cameron in 2005.
Maresh Vineyard
The Wines
The 2007 vintage of Arterberry Maresh Pinot noir $74.95/$67.45 is a testament to his tutelage and heritage. Sourced from one handpicked acre, Jim waited until October 23rd to pick the fruit (about one month later than other wineries) to ensure the grapes were fully ripe at the time of harvest. The non-irrigated Pommard vines require patience and time especially in cool vintages. After fermentation, the wine was stored for two years in barrel before being bottled.
According to Jim "leaving it in barrel longer gives the wine a beautiful ageability - so many winemakers put the wine into bottle too early and lose out on the complexity of oak ageing. I realize they need cash flow, we all do, but the integrity of the wine has to come first."
It is fascinating to listen to Jim as he speaks about Pinot and wine in general. He becomes transformed from easy going young person to a very mature adult with an incredible depth of information garnered from years of living at a winery. He discusses Oregon vintages like baseball junkies recite statistics. He is also well versed in Burgundy and has a penchant for Champagne.
As we lounged on futons near the pool table, Jim opened two bottles of his Pinot for us. The first was the 2005 Arterberry Maresh Pinot noir. Seamless in its integration and rich with big black fruit notes like boysenberry and ripe cherry, it is a wine to be cherished. There is a smidge of dried herbal notes and a light layer of dense earth that is integrated and pleasant. The wine evolves in the glass as we sit there chatting and opens to reveal little hints of red raspberry and a very faint whiff of violet. It is a dreamy type of wine, one that I would search out and cellar for special occasions or vertical profiling. Jim freely admits that he might not see another vintage like 05 for another ten or fifteen years and was pleased to have such a phenomenal product with his initial release.
At $75 a bottle, the 07 sits side by side in pricing with other high end Oregon producers like Shea, Ken Wright and Beaux Freres and rightfully so. It is elegant, seamlessly crafted and a great expression of the vintage.
The second wine we opened was the Arterberry Maresh White Rose Pinot noir 06. Though bottled only days before our visit and showing a bit of bottle shock, the wine was fantastic. I was expecting the delicate rose layers that are historic to aromas of wine from the White Rose vineyard but the smell of fresh spring rhubarb is so prevalent in the wine it takes you off guard. Bright, vibrant strawberry notes and then intense bits of clay earth follow. It's a bit like strawberry rhubarb pie at the brink of summer. It is important to note that Jim is one of only three winemakers lucky enough to source fruit from the White Rose vineyard (the other two are Mark Vlosak and the owners of White Rose themselves).
Jim is growing his production exponentially. He farmed and managed one acre in 05 and has since increased his production to 6 acres. He plans to continue to grow the operation as funding allows and has no intention of leaving Oregon. With thirty or more potential vintages ahead of him, it will be interesting to watch him and his wines mature to their full potential.
