Oregon Solidarity Wines Bails Out

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Winemaking involves plenty of science, but it doesn’t have to be an exact science. And much of what is good or bad can often be chalked up to someone’s personal tastes or preconceived notions.

 

Four Oregon wineries recently proved this point — and in the process, they bailed a bunch of wine grape growers in the state out of a bad situation.

Oregon Solidarity Wines, the first of which debuted this month, were not originally planned for the 2019 release calendar. Instead, the project was forged out of misfortune: Last fall, the California-based brand Copper Cane Wine and Provisions cancelled orders for over 2,000 tons of grapes from growers in Oregon’s Rogue Valley, claiming that the fruit had high levels of smoke taint which can imbue the final wine with unwanted smoky notes due to the Klondike Fire that burned over the summer.

Jim Blumbling, VP of operations for Copper Cane told NPR’s The Salt that “we felt like [the test wine] was expressing too much smoke and it was incongruent with what the wine would typically taste like.”

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