This week the trumpeter and bandleader Jaimie Branch passed away. I never met her, but the words spoken in tribute this week by her loved ones and through her music it is clear that she was a person with an overflowing type of love—a fearless, truthful and beautiful person. Her records cut through all the bullshit—of politics and indeed life itself—through frenetic jazz melded with punk rock sensibility. Rude and sweet. Harsh, spiky and sometimes chaotically astringent music that touched many deeply because the soul behind it was clear if you simply listened.
As a legendary badass, she was known to remark “Fuck your technique, sound first.”
This is a strange way of introducing another badass and a true dirty-boots-farming vigneron, Jess Miller—and while Jess may not exactly say “fuck your technique” as one of the most technically-skilled vineyard hands and a pruning teachers on this side of the Atlantic, I get the sense that the “sound first” sentiment would reverberate.
Jess worked for Clos Roche Blanche in the Loire Valley, De Moor in Chablis, Burn Cottage in New Zealand and Inglenook in Napa. Jess is that type of vigneron-dirty-fingernailed-philosopher-party-animal-recluse-pickup-driving-animal-spirit that radiates an energy and goodwill that is almost palpable.
Jess leases and does all the farming on a six-acre property in Chehalem Mountain AVA in the Willamette Valley and farms a 30-year-old site in the coastal foothills called Sunny Ridge where in exchange for the rehabilitation she receives payment in a small amount of Pinot Noir grapes. She also farms a few other small sites herself. It’s important to note that even in our world of small wineries, Jess’s project is MINISCULE. Her first vintage was barely more than 100 cases of wine in total.
The wines have an uncommon energy and a subtlety that is as loud as silence. There is the Sunny Ridge Pinot (farmed since 2017, first bottled with the 2019 vintage) made in a homage to the style of Bruno Debize; who perfected a style of tannic, dark, long-lived wines in southern Beaujolais that are also somehow lithe and elegant and constantly shapeshifting. LBJ is made in an opposite style: instead of destemming and daily punchdowns, a whole-cluster and partial-carbonic strategy is employed, leading to a crunchy, bright wine more in line with Ganevat than Debize.
And now, we have Sound Check, from Hollow Oak Acres in the Chehalem Mountains—six acres of Pinot Noir around 13 years old, planted at 500ft of elevation, farmed by Jess. This is also where Pet Sounds comes from, and in most vintages Sound Check is intended as a preview of the Pét-Nat’s style, however this year the wines have emerged with different personalities.
When first opened the reduction is savory, almost beef broth nose with herbal and sour fruit of rose, hibiscus and lemongrass. Bright acidity, but not sharp—the wine completed malo this vintage and is totally unfiltered—it has an airy, almost mineral water freshness to the palate, brisk and crisp with a firmly mineral and salty finish. Damn, this is mouthwatering and the tomato water-esque palate is exactly where my cravings are at this moment in late summer.
This isn’t exactly a dark rosé, but it certainly isn’t a poolside chugger either—while light and fresh it has bones and structure—this will do well for September and beyond.
It’s vulnerable to sing, to play trumpet, to bottle wine in your own name. It is an honorable pursuit. But it takes soul to make wines that nail that “needle-on-the-record” dopamine rush. Tone and texture, sound and sonics is all that matters after all our rhapsodizing is done. – CM