Five years in the making, King Estate’s 2019 sparkling wine is now being released, just in time for the holidays. Introducing the 2019 King Estate Brut Cuvée! Nothing quite compares to uncorking a bottle of bubbly to make any occasion festive.
The journey from field to table is a long one for fine sparkling wine, beginning years before the first grape is ever plucked from the vine. It starts with finding the right site. As it happens, Oregon is a great place to grow grapes for sparkling wine. Our cool climate conditions are similar to those of the Champagne region in France. King Estate predesignates the fruit that will be used for the sparkling program, planting it in blocks where the grapes will ripen the way we want them to. Fruit for our sparkling wine is always the first picked, when the brix, or sugar content, is low and acidity is high. Brut means dry, and Cuvée can mean both a blend and the first pressed and most desirable grape juice. In this case it’s both: a dry blend of the first pressed grapes and most desirable juice.
Our Brut Cuvée is made according to the strict French standards known as the méthode champenoise, or the traditional method from the Champagne region. Grapes used in true Champagne are almost exclusively Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and, to a lesser extent, Pinot Meunier. Our 2019 Brut Cuvée is from 100% Biodynamic® estate-grown grapes, 53% Pinot Noir and 47% Chardonnay, both premium varietals grown in the Willamette Valley.
2019 was a return to a classic Oregon vintage after a string of unusually warm and dry ones. Back in 2019, when the fruit was harvested, it was chilled overnight before pressing. Lightly pressing cold fruit releases fewer chemical compounds called phenolics that can cause bitterness. It takes more fruit to make the same amount of juice this way but it’s also what gives sparkling wine its softness and drinkability. After pressing, the base wines of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay were fermented separately in stainless steel until dryness before undergoing a second fermentation in bottle.
The wine was aged sur lie en tirage (or on the lees in bottle) for four years where it developed rich, complex flavors. When the wine was put down for aging, it was enclosed with a crown cap much like the cap on a bottle of soda. In the final stage in the process, the wine undergoes riddling and disgorgement to remove sediment, or lees, that result from aging. During riddling, the bottle is inverted so the lees fall to the neck of the bottle and are captured in the crown cap. The bottle neck is then dipped into dry ice. Once the contents are frozen, the cap is removed and the frozen lees are expelled. (It’s similar to what happens when you put a bottled beverage in the freezer and forget to take it out, only more controlled.) Following riddling and disgorging, the wine is finished with a liqueur d’expedition, a dosage of the blended wine that, while sweeter than the bottled wine, is still quite dry. Corking is the final step before the wine is ready for market.
When you pop the cork on the 2019 Brut Cuvée and pour yourself a glass, the first thing you will notice are the delicate and persistent bubbles that create a refined mousse – that’s the creamy layer at the top. The wine opens with aromas of strawberry, cherry, rhubarb, white flowers and lemon zest. Bright acidity lifts the fruit flavors of fresh strawberry, white peach, lemon curd and baked apple on the palate, along with notes of marzipan, pastry, toasted brioche, and strawberry shortcake. Four years of development in the bottle has yielded a beautifully balanced wine with nuanced flavors and succulent acidity that culminates in an elegant, complex finish. Five years from start to finish, this Brut Cuvée is well worth the wait.
