Oregon’s 00 Wines: Producer profile and 18 wines to try

Before creation, the void. Naught as a concept is a somewhat recent creation, thought to date to fifth-century India. However, it was not introduced to Europe until the twelfth century when the Italian mathematician Fibonacci explained his ‘Modus Indorum’.

To Chris and Kathryn Hermann, the founders of 00 Wines, the number symbolizes ‘potential’. The Hermanns are great believers in the potential of the Willamette Valley. Still, their vision extends far beyond local boundaries. The quest that truly motivates 00 Wines is to produce Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the world’s greatest cool-climate sites.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 18 wines from 00 Wines

Founder Chris Hermann is neither a grape grower nor a winemaker by training. Yet his connection to winemaking runs deep. His father was a professor of botany at Oregon State University. Originally from Germany, the family emigrated in the 1950s and raised their children with a love of food and wine. European wines were served at the Hermann home since no wine was being made in Oregon. Chris grew up exposed to top-quality Riesling and Burgundy. Law studies followed, and Hermann specialized in the burgeoning beverage alcohol industry.

He mainly worked with wineries in California and Oregon, counting Dominique Lafon, Veronique Drouhin, Jean-Nicolas Méo, and countless other Oregon pioneers as friends and clients. Hermann commented, ‘I had plenty of time to see the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of the wine business.’

Oregonian from the outset

Despite exposure to the occasional cautionary tale, Chris Hermann nurtured a dream to establish a winery with his father. He credits Lafon with particular inspiration. When asked, ‘Why are you here (in Oregon)? You make some of the greatest wines in Burgundy,’ Lafon replied. ‘Because the potential here is enormous. There are things here that are completely unexplored.’

Hermann and his father set off to explore them. They began to visit Burgundy often and were mentored by Dominique Lafon, Raphaël Coche, and particularly by Jean-Marc Roulot, who was very forthcoming with the technical arcana of press cycles and turbidity levels. The Hermanns hired oenologist Pierre Millemann, who had consulted for the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and many other Domaines in his bustling consulting practice.

The winemaker for the first vintage of 00 Wines was Léa Lafon, who returned to Burgundy after the vintage. She was replaced by Millemann protégé Alban Debeaulieu (currently the winemaker at Abbott Claim). The Oregon wines are currently made at the custom-crush facility of the Carlton Winemakers Studio. Crafted by winemaker Matt Perry with consulting winemaker Felipe Ramirez, who was the former technical director for the Chapter 24 project of Louis-Michel Liger-Belair.

‘Our wines are consistent across winemakers because of the protocols we’ve developed,’ says Chris Hermann. ‘They don’t do their own thing. These protocols are the driver for our 00 style.’

‘For example,’ Hermann continues. ‘When we bring in the fruit, we do a very specific foot crush in the picking bins. Then, I go back personally through each bin. It takes me hours, but I check the berries that were crushed to ensure that the quality and character of the juice will produce the aromatics, flavours and textures that are the hallmark of our wines.’

French roots realised

In 2016, 00 Wines began to produce champagne in consultation with Julien Launois of Champagne Paul Launois. They use grapes exclusively from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. The fermentation of the base wines is done in casks. In addition to nonvintage champagne blended with reserve wines from Launois, the team has fermented a ‘single barrel’ champagne produced using casks from the Tonnellerie de Champagne and local oak from the Ardennes Forest.

‘We started the project with the focus on exploring the potential of Chardonnay in Oregon; we wanted to see what happens when you use Burgundian methods here,’ says Hermann. ‘It made sense then that we’d want to go to Chardonnay’s motherland. The three greatest Chardonnay regions in the world are the Côte-d’Or Côte des Blancs and the Willamette Valley. We’ve been focused on sourcing from the greatest vineyards in the best terroirs in the world. It’s all about Chardonnay for us.’

In 2017, Millemann helped the team to produce a Corton Charlemagne sourced from grapes from the Le Corton lieu-dit at the top of the slope. Today the range of Burgundy has expanded, and in 2022, the team produced Chambertin, Charmes-Chambertin (from the lieu-dit Aux Charmes), and Corton Charlemagne (now blended from grapes in En Charlemagne and Les Languettes as well as Le Corton), and the premier crus Meursault Charmes, Pommard Clos des Epenots, and Beane Cent Vignes.

Although Millemann has left the project to focus on his own label, he has installed his student Max Lecat as the full-time winemaker in France, who makes the wines at Dominique Lafon’s facility at the Château de Bligny.

‘Max was our winemaker here in Oregon, and he returned to Burgundy. It made sense that he’d make our wines over there,’ says Chris Hermann. ‘It’s exciting to us from a consistency point of view. It makes everything a little bit easier.’

The methodology behind 00

There are several components to the methods developed by Millemann for white wine and implemented by the team at 00 Wines. It starts with picking at lower sugar levels than ordinary in Oregon to retain lots of fresh, natural acidity. The grapes are foot-crushed to develop the must’s phenolic content and slowly and firmly pressed (up to three hours at up to two bars of pressure).

As Hermann describes it, ‘tannin is the foundation of their Coche-style’. The must is not sulfured in the press but oxidizes and turns brown, only to fall bright again during fermentation, which improves the stability of the wine and avoids oxidation later. This technique is what Hermann calls the ‘black Chardonnay’ method. The wines are all aged in a cask. Sourced mainly from the Damy cooperage for at least twelve months and another six in the tank. The top 00 wines are treated to a full two years in a cask before bottling in a combination of lightly toasted 228-litre and 500-litre casks, both new and used.

The Pinot Noir is also produced according to a rigorous method. Each of the grapes is individually snipped from the bunch with scissors, and the unbroken grapes are sealed in 500-litre clay amphorae from Italy for a week to undergo semi-carbonic maceration. Dry ice is used to exclude oxygen at this point. After a week’s maceration, the amphorae are unsealed, the grapes are lightly crushed, and the fermentation continues until the wine is dry when it is pressed and run into top-quality Damy barrels.

According to Chris Hermann, the secret of the texture is in the selection of the clay for the amphorae. He believes that a relatively porous clay allows just the right amount of oxygen into the system to soften the tannins and give the wines the silken texture he desires.

Staying small

To produce wines with this level of attention to detail, the scale of the operation has necessarily remained small. Hermann notes, ‘For most people, wine production is a massive real estate business; we have opted for an ‘asset-lite’ method, where we buy the best grapes, hire the best winemakers, and buy the best barrels. We don’t have much wine and are not in the “wine entertainment” business.’

Last year, the winery produced 54,000 bottles, and the aim is to grow this to a total of 60,000 bottles from Oregon and 6,000 bottles each in Burgundy and Champagne. The distribution is also bespoke, relying on their mailing list and a limited number of points of sale, including Rare Wine Company in the U.S., Corney & Barrow in the U.K., and Grand Cru Wine Concierge throughout Asia.

Vineyards

00 Wines also works with a carefully selected range of vineyard sources. According to Hermann, they look for sites that can deliver minerality and tension, the characters that he found in the wines of his youth but are sometimes lacking in Oregon. His wide range of contacts in Oregon has allowed him access to an array of interesting sites, and his expertise lies in choosing the most expressive for his production.

‘We think Seven Springs is the greatest Chardonnay vineyard in Oregon, so we are thrilled to be getting so much fruit from there,’ says Chris Hermann.

‘The Chehalem Mountains Vineyard, though, is very special, and we want to make sure it’s celebrated,’ Kathryn Hermann adds. ‘The vines were originally planted by Dick Erath in 1968 (his original vineyard), and it’s now owned by the Gross family, who are in the process of converting it to biodynamic. Sometimes, this vineyard gets left out of the conversation when it comes to the best sites in the Willamette. The naming conventions with the AVA and the site itself compound some of that confusion.’

‘The Chehalem site gives us Wente Clone and sedimentary soils,’ says Chris Hermann. ‘It goes into our EGW every year; the Kathryn Hermann Cuvée is made from it. It is an important site to us. Seven Springs, on the other hand, has volcanic soils and the Dijon-96 Chardonnay clone. These two vineyards allow us to showcase the difference between two distinct Willamette Valley terroirs. Everything is at play here: elevation, soil types, and clone,’ says Chris Hermann.

00 Oregon Vineyard Sources

Seven Springs Vineyard: Some of the Chardonnay is sourced from the emblematic vineyard planted in the Eola-Amity Hills AVA in the 1980s by the MacDonald family. Seven Springs was later developed as Evening Land Vineyards by Hollywood producer Mark Tarlov and his partners, who brought Dominique Lafon to Oregon in 2007, and is today overseen by Rajat Parr and Sashi Moorman. The grapes for 00 Wines come from the ‘H Block’ on the north side of the property that Dominique and Tarlov planted, with both Dijon clones from Burgundy and older Wente clones from U.C. Davis that are vinified together.

Richard Hermann Cuvée: The Richard Hermann Cuvée is from an unnamed site in the Eola-Amity hills AVA, where Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are planted in volcanic soils. This cool site delivers wines of great finesse, elegance, and freshness that balance out the powerful fruit sourced elsewhere.

Hyland Vineyard: Hermann sources some of his Pinot Noir from this vineyard, among the oldest vineyards in the Willamette Valley. It is located on south-facing slopes in the McMinnville AVA. 00 shares block 1D with Nicolas Jay (Jean-Nicolas Méo’s project), Antica Terra, and Penner-Ash. The grapes are from the mysterious heritage ‘Coury Clone’, planted here without grafting in Jory soils that deliver a taste rich in iron.

Chehalem Mountains Old Vine: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are sourced from a vineyard that David Lett (of Eyrie Vineyards) and Dick Erath planted in this AVA but did not farm themselves. It is among the oldest vineyards in the district, planted with own-rooted vines of the Coury clone Pinot Noir and Wente clone Chardonnay. However, instead of Jory soils, this is entirely marine sedimentary soils.

This combination of unique sites ranging throughout the Willamette Valley to the Côte d’Or and Champagne’s Côte des Blancs and the carefully calibrated winemaking techniques allows 00 Wines to deliver on their dream of offering a range of cool-climate expressions of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in a most distinctive style.

00 Wines to try: 18 bottles from France, Oregon and Burgundy

Wines are listed in score order by style

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