Today we share one of the most exciting new sparkling wine brands you will find on the west coast. Andrew Reichers was Matthias Pippig’s first employee at Sanguis, one of Santa Barbara’s storied producers. Reichers has since gone on to create beautiful wines for his own winery. Pippig was inspired by the Columbia Gorge and the wines from this windy region. He saw a great potential for making sparkling wines from this region with its potential for tension. “After studying the geology I think this has altitude and diverse soils that is a bit like Santa Ynez. I don’t want to duplicate Sanguis and the wines that IS really liked from this region were the sparkling wines that seemed to punch above their weight. We were in Portand and had a few bottles of champagne. We realized that we needed to do that in the Gorge.” After visiting ten vineyards, Matthias decided to choose two sites in the Gorge.
At the time Andrew was at Lingua Franca and they sought to make their wines there prior to the winery being sold. The vintage that I tasted was made at Argyle with winemaker Nate Klostermann. “We were not a good fit in terms of size and these were like 50 case production wines. We were done putting wines into bottle in two hours” he said.
All wines come from the 2020 vintage. He stated “That was intentional and in the future the follow up releases will be wines that are a combination of 2021 and some 2020.” All of the wines are extra brut as dosage trials “Was not based on dogma and it is chic to do zero dosage and neither Andrew nor I believe in that. We want to make wines that have personality.”
He stated “Dosage trials were interesting and we went back to a half gram of sugar addition for Hummingbird, a light polishing. Just taking the edge off. Still Waters is all the way up to 6 grams and settled on 3. For Kaleidoscope since we don’t have a rule book, we did a still wine edition, 2% from a perpetual Chardonnay barrel that we have in house. 1% was skin-fermented Roussanne. We tried some other things to see what happens and that combination was knockout. This does add some sweetness but lends a generosity and these were all bottled at lower than six atmospheres.” Roughly 50% of his crop was lost in 2020. He stated “We had no experience with smoke taint and we submitted samples but results weren’t ready in time.”
There will be more wines to come in the future, including a Blanc de Noirs. For now, don’t miss out on the incredible 2020 The Missoula Flood ‘Kaleidoscope’ Sparkling Wine (OB, 95) and as the name suggests, the flavor range is absolutely incredible from red fruits to tart green fruits, nutty undertones and everything in between. Learn more about this outstanding new wine project at https://themissoulaflood.com/ and here are my exclusive reviews of the new wines by The Missoula Flood.
2020 The Missoula Flood ‘Hummingbird’ Sparkling Wine- This wine was picked at only 17 brix and was given half a gram of dosage. Lees were stirred frequently for the texture as this wine is mostly coming from a vineyard formerly known as Acadia, the ‘Hummingbird’ shows brilliant nerve on the palate with loads of lemon rind, sourdough bread, peach sour patch kids candy and shades of peat moss. This is just an incredible sushi wine. Drink 2023-2035- 94
2020 The Missoula Flood ‘Kaleidoscope’ Sparkling Wine- The 2020 ‘Kaleidoscope’ comes from the Columbia Gorge AVA and is nearly all Chardonnay from three blocks in the Celilo Vineyard with 2% Chardonnay from Santa Barbara County and 1% Roussanne from the same region blended in. Mango, red raspberry, crushed wet gravel and Gravenstein apple flavors combine with salted nutty undertones on the palate. Showing excellent length, this beauty is absolutely humming now. Drink 2023-2035- 95
2020 The Missoula Flood ‘Still Waters’ Sparkling Wine- The 2020 ‘Still Waters’ comes from block 9 in the Celilo Vineyard and is 100% Chardonnay. This shows rich buttered French bread notes on the nose with Marcona almond and shades of green papaya. This shows bright kumquat zest and green apple flavors on the palate alongside stony and nutty undertones. Showing good length and a soft mousse this is seriously good, refined bubbles. Drink 2023-2035- 94