The New Wine Review Weekly: June 14, 2024 (copy 04)

🍷 One father's wine legacy

June 14, 2024

During a time when we toast our dads, whether they’re still with us or not, NWR’s Sarah Parker Jang shares a deeply moving story about a family, its beloved patriarch, and what they went through when dealing with a key part of what he left behind: his beloved collection of wine.

William Stephen Osburn—Steve, to one and all—was bit by the wine bug when he ran a small but well-trafficked grocery store near the shore in Cannon Beach, Oregon, where he was a pillar of the community. (“It was a seasonal business, so there wasn't a big market for the wine. I think he was the real market,” his wife Emily chuckles today.)

Over time, his collection grew. And grew.

  • “Steve started selling and collecting bottles from the nascent wine scene in Oregon. Emily remembers exploring vineyards in Willamette Valley with her husband in the early years of their marriage—young newlyweds, not much cash, driving their truck around and going to tastings. They were there at a special time, when benchmark producers like Eyrie Vineyards (a favorite of Steve’s) were just getting established.”

  • “Over the course of 30 years, he quietly amassed an enviable cellar that was a mix of landmark producers from critically-acclaimed vintages and bottles that marked his time in Oregon.”

  • “‘He started buying more, the way you do when you're a collector. You just always think you have to have some more. So he acquired much more than he—or me, or the family—could ever drink in his lifetime,’ says Emily. ‘But that was his passion. It was his treasure.’”

Steve left it all behind when he passed away the day before Father’s Day in 2016. His grieving family were left to deal with his loss—and soon came to find that complex emotions were bound up in his prized collection.

We don’t want to give too much more of the story away—it is far better for you to read the piece than to read an exhaustive summary of it—but don’t miss the closing cameo from Eyrie Vineyards’s winemaker Jason Lett, the son of Willamette Valley pioneer David Lett.

NWR’s Jon Fine, a major Northern Rhône nerd, went to the region last week. Dude just will not stop talking about it.

While he’s working on a longer report on what he tasted from the winemakers he met with, he offered up a bunch of quick observations:

  • “I’ll have lots more to say about this in said forthcoming article, but the major upside surprises of the trip were two producers whose wines I hadn’t yet spent much time with: Jean-François Malsert of Domaine de l’Iserand in Saint-Joseph, and Emmanuelle Verset of Domaine A. and E. Verset in Cornas.”

  • “The 2014 Northern RhĂ´ne vintage did not get much love from major wine critics. But I was struck by how many winemakers really liked the vintage. A Matthieu Barret 2014 “Ogre” Cornas sampled in Paris proves their point—a marriage of Cornas typicity of brambly and savory notes, with pinpoint purity and incredible finesse. It was a wine both joyful and profound.“

As his coworkers know all too well by now, he has much more to say about his time there—including dining tips for a region not noted for outstanding restaurants, and a fuller list of who he visited and what he gleaned.

AND SPEAKING OF OUR EDITOR IN CHIEF . . . ’

This week, Jon went on Sam Benrubi’s podcast The Grape Nation, for a long, candid interview in which he talked about his (not so) secret punk rock past, the bottles that got him hooked on wine, his favorite wines for $20 or less, and—of course—more about his time in the Northern Rhône. Check it out here, and on all the usual podcast platforms.

WHAT’S HOT IN OUR SUBSCRIBER-ONLY SLACK

Want the full The New Wine Review experience?

On the heels of her piece about the dynamics of the Left Bank En Primeurs, Christy Canterbury MW talked to a bunch of insiders about this year’s Right Bank En Primeurs, and their responses are just 🔥:

  • “This is not an opportunity to stock up if you are conscientious about capital. The wines are still grossly overpriced.”

  • “I think the châteaux are once again trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. How do they overcome the fatigue of the market?”

  • “There are moments in history when certain financial systems are strained. That’s business, and it happens in the ag business, too.”

  • “Why do collectors look for perfection in wine?”

Why indeed? Read Christy’s piece to get the rest of her insiders’s tips and gossip.

AROUND THE WINE (AND WHISKEY) WORLD

⛵ <@chefreactions deadpan> “Super-premium canned wine. Sure.”

⚖️ “The facts of this crime would favor a much higher sentence.”

🇺🇦 Ukrainian winemakers head to California to learn how to heal war-torn vineyards.

💔 Rest well, Warren. Thanks for everything.

As always, thanks for reading! See you next week for much more.

SantĂŠ!

The NWR Editors

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