00 Wines
- Mannie Berk, President, The Rare Wine Co., says,
"I’ve been in the wine business for nearly 40 years.
And only a handful of times have I come across a producer new to me, with very little history, that I would bet will have a profound impact on how we think about where the greatest wines can come from.
Once again it's happened, and this time the game-changer is Chris and Kathryn Hermann’s 00 (Double-Zero) Wines in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
Willamette is of course synonymous with Pinot Noir. (The Willamette Valley Wineries Association proudly proclaims in 42-point type “We Are Pinot Noir” on its homepage.) But Chris and Kathryn believe (as I have for more than a decade) that Chardonnay has the greater potential to make history here.
And so, since their first vintage in 2015, they’ve gone against the grain, focusing almost entirely on Chardonnay. In 2016, they linked up with one of Burgundy’s most gifted winemakers, Pierre Millemann, who proposed a winemaking method of 60 to 80 years ago, intriguingly called “Black Chardonnay.” (Perhaps not coincidentally the likes of Coche, Roulot, Boisson-Vadot and Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey have all resurrected this arcane orthodoxy.)
Since 2016, the result at 00 has been Chardonnay of such breathtaking clarity, density of texture and surreal nuance that if served blind, you’d far more likely to think it was from Coche or Roulot than you would America's West Coast.
I only learned about the wines a month ago when a client emailed me about a $95 New World Chardonnay that gave him “as close to a grand cru white burgundy experience” as he'd ever had. A friend in the wine trade told me a similar story. At the end of a long day of tasting at the Prowein wine fair in Germany, he stopped for a quick taste of an unknown Oregon Chardonnay as he was rushing out the door for a dinner engagement. From that point on, dinner could wait. Undiscovered wines like this come along rarely in our careers.
Having tasted a half dozen different Chardonnays from 00 over the past two weeks, I am beyond excited. If you’re at all like me—and you’re frustrated by the growing inaccessibility of the likes of Coche, Roulot and Ente—you will want to jump in feet first. We’ve already heard that ravenous Coche-starved cults are emerging among collectors, particularly around New York and Los Angeles.
- Mannie Berk, President, The Rare Wine Co.
00 Wines
"I’ve been in the wine business for nearly 40 years.
And only a handful of times have I come across a producer new to me, with very little history, that I would bet will have a profound impact on how we think about where the greatest wines can come from.
Once again it's happened, and this time the game-changer is Chris and Kathryn Hermann’s 00 (Double-Zero) Wines in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
Willamette is of course synonymous with Pinot Noir. (The Willamette Valley Wineries Association proudly proclaims in 42-point type “We Are Pinot Noir” on its homepage.) But Chris and Kathryn believe (as I have for more than a decade) that Chardonnay has the greater potential to make history here.
And so, since their first vintage in 2015, they’ve gone against the grain, focusing almost entirely on Chardonnay. In 2016, they linked up with one of Burgundy’s most gifted winemakers, Pierre Millemann, who proposed a winemaking method of 60 to 80 years ago, intriguingly called “Black Chardonnay.” (Perhaps not coincidentally the likes of Coche, Roulot, Boisson-Vadot and Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey have all resurrected this arcane orthodoxy.)
Since 2016, the result at 00 has been Chardonnay of such breathtaking clarity, density of texture and surreal nuance that if served blind, you’d far more likely to think it was from Coche or Roulot than you would America's West Coast.
I only learned about the wines a month ago when a client emailed me about a $95 New World Chardonnay that gave him “as close to a grand cru white burgundy experience” as he'd ever had. A friend in the wine trade told me a similar story. At the end of a long day of tasting at the Prowein wine fair in Germany, he stopped for a quick taste of an unknown Oregon Chardonnay as he was rushing out the door for a dinner engagement. From that point on, dinner could wait. Undiscovered wines like this come along rarely in our careers.
Having tasted a half dozen different Chardonnays from 00 over the past two weeks, I am beyond excited. If you’re at all like me—and you’re frustrated by the growing inaccessibility of the likes of Coche, Roulot and Ente—you will want to jump in feet first. We’ve already heard that ravenous Coche-starved cults are emerging among collectors, particularly around New York and Los Angeles.
- Mannie Berk, President, The Rare Wine Co.
00 Wines
