Kiwi-ing It Real
This winemaker is mastering wine on both sides of the Equator
By Greg Norton
One challenge of winemaking is only having a single chance each year to practice the craft.
But opportunities double by traveling between the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Informally called “chasing harvest,” the tradition is a well-worn rite of passage for interns and trainees.
Less common is a seasoned winemaker making a career-long commitment to the routine. Ray Walsh, founder and winemaker of Capitello Wines, produces wines sourced from Southern Oregon and Willamette Valley vineyards near Eugene, as well as Marlborough wines from his native New Zealand.
While the veteran winemaker calls Oregon home, Walsh regularly travels back to his homeland for harvest, trials and to bottle wines he imports. By doing so, he leverages two harvests each year to test new techniques for his Capitello wines and the other Oregon brands that employ him as their winemaker.
INSPIRATION ABROAD
Wine was part of Walsh’s world growing up, but the idea of pursuing it as a career evolved slowly. Following a brief attempt at college, the young Walsh set out to see the world, beginning in nearby Australia and soon venturing farther abroad.
His adventure eventually landed him in a German village in the Riesling-focused Mosel, Germany’s oldest wine region. His host family invited him to pick fruit in their steep vineyards and help ferment the wine in the cellar beneath their home. Recalling the story in a 2022 interview with Rich Schmidt of Linfield University’s Oregon Wine History Archive, Walsh remembers thinking, “This is the coolest thing, and I want to do this. It really inspired me.”
He returned home for a second try at college, this time with a clear focus on his vocational goal. Studying viticulture led to a role with the Villa Maria Group and, later, the chance to work alongside winemaker Kim Crawford at Coopers Creek. With those jobs, Walsh experienced different approaches to New Zealand winemaking.
A road trip through North America’s West Coast wine regions in the 1980s convinced him the Willamette Valley– not California– was the highlight. In the early 1990s, he returned to Oregon to assist winemaker Will Bucklin for a couple of harvests at King Estate Winery, allowing him to work with fruit from 40 vineyards across the Valley. Enticed by a two-year contract, he settled into Oregon life. “Two years quickly became 10,” he told Schmidt. When Bucklin moved back to his family’s Sonoma vineyard, Walsh took over at King Estate.
A series of promotions increasingly sequestered Walsh behind a desk. It was not to his liking.
“The large wineries gave me wonderful opportunities to learn a lot of stuff and play with techniques that small wineries don’t have the financial means to do,” he affirms. “But you get to the stage where you start looking internally, at what you want to do yourself. For me, it was just getting back into hands-on winemaking.”
Capitello Wines was born.
DEFINING A BRAND
Despite working in two hemispheres, Walsh limits production so he can handle it himself. “It’s the part I really enjoy doing, and I’ve designed my business to continue that way,” he explains.
Unafraid to innovate, he continually ponders, “What little tweaks will help me make a better wine? I find that, for me personally, it stops me from being complacent, and that’s something I never want to be in my winemaking.”
COMPARE AND CONTRAST
Although more than 7,000 miles apart, the Willamette Valley and Marlborough are considered “New World” wine regions. Wine flourished concurrently during the last quarter of the 20th century, and each has built its identity around a single variety– Sauvignon Blanc in Marlborough and Pinot Noir in the Willamette Valley. Vineyard sustainability is also a shared value.
Marlborough, in the northern end of New Zealand’s South Island, is by far the largest wine producer, and Sauvignon Blanc is its major export. “We’re an island of a little over five million people and produce more wine than we could ever consume,” Walsh observes. In the Southern Willamette Valley, by contrast, small, family-owned brands abound, with limited reach beyond the domestic market.
Comparable climates also link Marlborough and the Willamette Valley. They occupy similar latitudes in their respective hemispheres and are categorized as Region I– the coolest– on the Winkler Index, a measure of an area’s heat accumulation. Both locations experience moderate temperatures influenced by maritime breezes that reach vineyards after passing through mountain ranges.
Contrasts are marked by soil types and annual rainfall. Riverbeds and alluvial deposits from ancient floods shaped the land in each place. Known as greywacke in New Zealand, the soil is free-draining but relatively low in nutrients. Its rocks force vines to root deeply, a dynamic many winemakers believe intensifies flavor.
But the silt deposited on the floor of the Willamette Valley by the Missoula Floods is too fertile for grapes so winegrowers plant the hillsides above the floodplain. Three major soil types found here are older basalt, windblown loess and ancient seabed sediments, including Jory, Laurelwood and Willakenzie soils.
Oregon’s Willamette Valley is wetter, with more than 40 inches of annual rainfall– significantly more than Marlborough’s 25.5 inches.
THE WINES
Sauvignon Blanc production in New Zealand is massive– nearly 250 million liters annually. By comparison, every drop of wine made last year in Oregon totaled about 44 million liters. New Zealand produces five times as much Sauvignon Blanc as Oregon produces of all its wines combined.
Walsh crafts Sauvignon Blanc in both places. “Thirty years ago when I first came here, a lot of people were very skeptical of the varietal and didn’t think it could ripen,” recalls Walsh. “I always believed the Willamette Valley was a great place for it.”
Walsh prefers stainless steel tanks for fermentation in Marlborough. But his Willamette Valley fruit leads him down a different path. “It’s more tropical than what I get in New Zealand,” he shares. “I decided to ferment in concrete eggs. It rounds out the wine to suit that more tropical personality.”
Side by side on Capitello’s tasting room bar, both versions exhibit the bright, bracing acidity associated with the variety along with distinct individual flavors. “It’s one varietal people are not on the fence about,” Walsh notes. “They either like it or don’t.”
Enter Sauvignon Gris.
Sauvignon Blanc’s rare, pinkish cousin was believed extinct following the devastating spread of phylloxera in France during the 19th century. That was until a surviving Loire block was identified in 1980. Walsh partnered with vineyard owners Andy and Kyna Laurie to grow it in both Marlborough and at their Elkhead Vineyard, an hour south of Eugene, in the Northern Umpqua Valley. It’s believed to be the first Sauvignon Gris planted in Oregon.
“While Sauvignon Gris shares a tropical ‘Sauvie’ aroma profile with its cousin, it has more of a ‘gris finish,” according to Walsh. “With lower acidity, it finishes much smoother, with a floral component. It really surprises people.”
Walsh compares the intensity of his Marlborough Pinot Noirs with the nuance possible in the Willamette Valley. The prevailing winemaking techniques for the variety in New Zealand “provide a little more structure, color, overall intensity,” he observes. “It’s one of those wines that, aromatically, jumps out of the glass. But they don’t have the complexity we can achieve here in the Willamette Valley.”
Two sets of barrels allow Walsh to age his Oregon Pinots as long as he feels they need– 14, 18 or 24 months. “The beauty and smoothness, the velvety tones, everything you get in Pinot Noir when it has extra time in barrel, is worth every penny,” he adds.
Oak barrels and concrete eggs both play a role in crafting Capitello’s Chardonnays. Seeking to retain a lighter, more refreshing approach to the variety, these wines skip malolactic fermentation, according to AnnaMae Roome, Capitello’s tasting room manager.
Walsh made a few sparkling wines early in his career and is happily embracing the renewed local interest. Capitello offers two multi-vintage bottlings. The Prestige Cuvée is a sparkling rosé of Pinot Noir and the Celebration Cuvée is crafted with a classic Champagne blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. Both are produced using the traditional method and spend five years en tirage.
EUGENE SUCCESS
A varied event calendar and the Beccofino food truck attract people to Capitello’s spacious indoor and outdoor tasting spaces in Eugene. “We’ve got six still whites available, and four reds, two sparklings and a dessert. So, there’s always something for everyone,” Roome declares. “One of our most popular flights compares three Oregon and New Zealand wines, and I think customers really enjoy the differences.”
Despite the doom-and-gloom in some industry quarters, business is good at Capitello. “We’re really in a wonderful niche,” Walsh reports. “I think people still enjoying wine are seeking quality without an ego-driven price. That’s where we’ve stood all along.”
Walsh’s passion is to keep learning, and two hemispheres double his classroom. The Willamette Valley and Marlborough supply different accents on the same restless curiosity ignited within Walsh while working in that Mosel vineyard four decades ago. Capitello’s wines bridge two far-flung wine regions while proving one winemaker can master both.
Capitello Wines
540 Charnelton St., Eugene
Open Tues.–Sat., noon to 8 p.m.
(541) 520-3092
Greg Norton writes about wine in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. A lifelong lover of food and drink, he has pursued his passion for wine culture by visiting wine regions around the world, earning the Certified Specialist of Wine from the Society of Wine Educators, and the level two award from the Wine and Spirits Educational Trust. Formerly a classical musician, he brings a broad background in nonprofit communications and the arts and studied journalism through UCLA Extension. When not writing about wine, he may be found filling in at a tasting room or behind the wheel of a wine country tour van. Read more by Greg at onthevine.blog.
