Viognier In The Spring

Viognier is the perfect in between of Chardonnay, where it has a similar full and lush body, and Riesling, where it contains similar aromatics, like peach, pear, and violet. The Willamette Valley had many plantings of these two grape varieties already, and at Rizzo, we like to be a little different.

Viognier, a white grape originating from France’s warm Rhône Valley, is best known for being the only grape permitted in Condrieu. If you know the Willamette Valley, you’d know that it’s not nearly as warm as the Rhône Valley, but you would also know that this beautiful valley of ours has hundreds of different microclimates. One of which can be found in the tip top of our vineyard, where the sun shines the most, allowing for our 1 acre of Viognier to be bathed in warmth most days in the growing season. Similar to the strong Mistral winds that blow through the Rhône Valley, Rizzo is in the Eola-Amity Hills which is known for the Van Duzer winds that breeze through the Cascade and Coastal Mountain Ranges.

Rizzo’s 2015 Viognier Tasting Notes

Our Viognier is pale-lemon in hue, with aromatic notes of citrus rind, orange blossom and soft hay, which fill the glass. Served best lightly chilled, the fresh acidity and notes of bright green-apple, apricot kernel, and young stone-fruit balance invitingly with warm notes of vanilla and honeyed hazelnut. 

Pair our Viognier

Pair our Viognier with picnics in the park: add a mild cheddar or a honey goat cheese, an herb forward salad, add a sliced granny smith apple to the mix and try to find the flavor notes in the wine!

Pair our Viognier with dinner: complimenting crab cakes as an appetizer followed by a creamy pasta dish.

Pair our Viognier with sunshine: It’s delicious on the porch with friends on a warm summer day. No snacks necessary.

This delicious Viognier retails for $20

If you’re a club member it’s $16 / $15 / $14 depending on your wine club level.

The Holiday Gift Guide Is Here!

Tis the season for shopping for all the people you love! Lucky for you, we’ve got the gift guide you need to give the perfect gift set for all the wine lovers in your life.

For The Trendy One

The New Vintage Bundle

This gift set is perfect for the trend-setter in your life. We just released our 2018 Chardonnay, 2018 Pinot Noir and the fan favorite 2019 Rosé. The 2018 Chardonnay is tropical and bright, while the 2018 Pinot Noir is a classic example of how beautiful Willamette Valley Pinot Noir can truly be. Our 2019 Rosé is what we lovingly call our Winter Rosé, filled with a delicious holiday spice flavor profile that pairs perfectly with a warm fire.

For The White Wine Lover

The White Wine Bundle

Move aside everything you thought you knew about white wine. Each of these wines brings a unique flavor to the party. The 2018 Chardonnay isn’t like your classic oaky, butter bomb of chardonnay. This wine is fleshy, bright, and punchy with tropical fruits that settle into a flavor like a fruity cheesecake. Our 2015 Viognier is made from Viognier grown on our Estate. This wine is dry, but comforting with flavors of apricot, nectarine and some honeyed hazelnut. Even the 2015 Muscat Canelli isn’t what you expect. It’s off-dry, so it does have some subtle sweetness that lends itself to a honey flavor, lychee with white blossoms.

For The Extravagant One

The Luxury Bundle

This is an impressive gift for anyone who enjoys the finer things in life. Two of the most extravagant wines Rizzo Winery has ever made, both of these wines are rich with flavor, and texture. Though the name Cuvee means blend, this wine is made entirely from Cabernet Sauvignon, from two different vineyards. Flavors of coconut soufflé, light vanilla and a depth of blackberry. Our 2012 Petit Verdot is silky and sultry. Both of these wines are made from grapes grown out of ancient ash that settled in Oregon’s Columbia Valley from when Mt. Mazuma exploded and created Crater Lake.

For The Bold & Beautiful

The Bold Red Wine Bundle

All three of these wines are bold, spicy, sultry, and demand attention. Do you have someone in your life like that? If you do, these are the perfect wines for them! Our 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon has a beautiful combination of black cherry, black pepper, and mint that will make your mouth water in delight. It recently won a gold medal at Sip’s Best of Northwest awards. Another gold medal winner is our 2013 Tempranillo, a perfect wine for the Thanksgiving table, a wine with flavors similar to cranberry sauce in the most delicious way. To round off this perfect trio is our 2013 Syrah, a wine with subtle vanilla, spiced walnut and subtle sage.

We have so much more to offer in our Tasting Room! Come visit us every weekend 11-5 PM.

Our 2015 Pinot Noir Is A Winner Baby!

We entered our 2015 Pinot Noir to the 2021 Sommeliers Choice Awards and we won gold!

2015 Pinot Noir Tasting Notes

2015 was a warm vintage in Eola-Amity Hills, this gave our Pinot Noir a darker color. As the dark ruby wine swirls in the glass, it releases aromas of sour gummy candy, strawberry juice, orange rind, and rhubarb pie. As the wine opens, it lends us earthy aromas of sweet and subtle rosemary. On the tongue, there’s a buzz from the alcohol, followed by an acidity that creates tart cherry flavors as it mingles in your mouth. A silky tannin, with flavors of ripe strawberries and a fruitiness that reminds us of summertime watermelon.

Sommeliers Choice Awards

The goal for the Sommeliers Choice Awards is to provide a valuable benchmark for which wines would make the best addition to a wine list. The judges for the Sommeliers Choice Awards are top sommeliers at restaurants, bars, pubs, and clubs in the United States. They taste the submitted wines and judge them based on how well they will pair with food items, their versatility, typicity, value, quality, and package.

Carménère: Once Lost, Now Found

Carménère is a luscious, silky red wine with flavors of ripe raspberries, red cherries, green peppercorn and green bell pepper. A grape originally from Bordeaux, now mostly grown in Chile, and has been found in the beautiful Oregon Columbia Valley.

Our Carménère is exclusive to the Tasting Room, come visit us, taste it and take some home!

Carménère has a very interesting history, starting during the 16th century. Under Spanish rule, Chile was importing that red liquid gold all the way from Europe. Since the wine was traveling such far distances, it was becoming oxidized in the barrels on the ships and wasn’t at the quality they wanted, so they started making their own. As the Chilean wine industry started booming, wealthy landowners began importing vines from France, mostly from Burgundy.

As the wine industry in Chile kept growing, Carménère wasn’t being bottled, it was mostly Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Malbec. Now with science advancing, there were some differences amongst the Merlot vines in vineyards. There were some vineyards of Merlot that were ripening consistently later than their neighbor Merlot vines. In 1994 scientists decided to test the DNA of these vines, only to discover that instead of Merlot it was Carménère!

Now, this was a very exciting discovery because during WW2 the majority of France’s vineyards were destroyed both by war, but also by Phylloxera, a vine-eating disease brought over by Americans. During this time, Carménère was lost. Its vineyards in France completely wiped out, and when France went looking for vines to restart their own vineyards, Carménère was thought to be nowhere else in the entire world. When they discovered it was in Chile, the world rejoiced that this unique cousin of Cabernet Sauvignon was found once again.

Our 2014 Carménère has a beautiful body, coating your mouth with ease while still easy to sip enough to drink without food. This wine has flavors of ripe raspberries, jalepeño pepper, black peppercorns, and ripe black cherry. Only available in our Tasting Room, this wine is featured on our Bold & Beautiful flight but also is our May special.

For May our 2014 Carménère is only $25 a bottle,

originally $36!

Rizzo's Spotlight: Viognier

It is somewhat unusual to find Viognier vines planted on the slopes of Oregon’s famed Willamette Valley. This is exactly why we planted them, we wanted to challenge our climate and make wines that no one else was. We may be biased, but if you tasted this wine, we’re fairly certain you’d agree that this wine is a drop everything, purchase right now, must-have.

Viognier in the sky

Viognier has its origins, like most other ancient grapes. Originating in present day Croatia and then taken to the Rhône Valley in what is now France during the Roman Empire. The Rhône is where Viognier found it’s light alongside Syrah. Viognier can have trouble ripening which is why we have it planted at the top of our slope, to ensure it gets the maximum amount of sunlight possible.

What is debatably most delicious about Viognier is that in the glass you’ll receive intense floral aromas and flavors like Riesling or Muscat, yet we ferment our Viognier wines completely dry. This grape can also develop really beautiful texture, which gives those Chardonnay drinkers something they’ve been looking for minus the intense flavors of oak and butter. This wine exudes sunshine, and is a perfect pairing for those early days in spring when the sun is out but the weather has a fresh crispness to it.

Viognier on the beach

Rizzo's Spotlight: 2011 Estate Pinot Noir

If you read our last blog post, you’d understand a little better why we love cellaring and aging our wine for you, releasing the wines for sale when we feel they’re truly ready. We cellar our wines with patience and love, so you can skip straight to the fun part, drinking it! There is a unique flavor experience we are able to achieve with this extra time that goes a long way, this is especially the case with our 2011 Estate Pinot Noir.

A candid photo of our 2011 Estate Pinot Noir in the wild

A Cold Vintage Gave Way To Uncertainty

The harvest of 2011 was exceptionally cool in comparison to the years surrounding it. This gave the fruit much more acid development than our palates were used to for Oregon Pinot Noir, resulting in what many classified as a “lean” year. You could find 2011’s dumped, put on sale, and forgotten about. Written off as something unnoteworthy. Something that makes wine age-worthy is a harmony between the acid, fruit, and tannin. Without that harmony, it weighs the scale too far in one direction and won’t create something profound over time. Though many felt like the 2011 vintage was exactly that, the acid outweighing all and tipping the scale in a wholly wrong direction for the typical high-quality wines we were seeing come out of the Willamette Valley, something only a few producers gave in to was trust.

We trusted the fruit that wanted to shine underneath all of the powerful acidity. Those brilliant flavors were there but were currently being overshadowed. Knowing that we made a high-quality wine from the get-go, we wanted to give the 2011 Estate Pinot Noir a fighting chance to show us what it was all about. This meant laying it down to rest for almost a decade.

All of Oregon’s beauty in one photograph, nature in the scenery and Oregon’s bounty in the bottle.

A Decade Of Time Gave Us Decadence

They say patience is a virtue, and when it comes to our 2011 Estate Pinot Noir, they are definitely right. All that time spent in the bottle did not go to waste. Throughout the years the acidity began to settle down and take backstage, while new flavors were being thrust into the spotlight. With an initial aroma of caramelized sugar, like the top of a freshly roasted crème brûlée the warmth that’s developed envelops you. The acid still shows in aromas of ripe cherry. Flavors of raspberries, clove, and rose petals delight the palate. With silky tannins and a delicate acidity on the finish. The depth of flavor in this wine feel like a tale as old as time.

Print this image out and impress your friends with your vintage knowledge as you sip our beautiful wine.

We Reflect On 2020

This year has been incredibly difficult for many, with many lives lost due to the coronavirus pandemic, wonderful restaurants and bars permanently shutting their doors after feeding hungry mouths for decades, and the wine industry shifting to new heights in an attempt to survive. At Rizzo Winery, we try to be thankful whenever we can and remember that there is always a rainbow at the end of a storm.

The Rainbow of 2021 here to save our sanity.

This year was a year of big changes for our little winery. We revamped our website and got with the times, getting an easier to navigate online shop just in time for that to be the only way to purchase our wines when the world shut its doors. We decided that you all needed to see the beauty that we are fortunately graced with every day at our estate, even when you couldn’t visit, and made an Instagram account to post these photos to. We started sending you all emails, some educational, some showcasing specific wines, and some all about the deals & discounts. Overall, this year we decided to take flight and connect with you all as best we could.

A very literal representation of us about to take flight.

We wanted to be there for you this year because the world turned upside down and we realized we all needed more from each other. Restructuring our wine club allowed us to give back to those who are there for us as our biggest fans. We gave our members more benefits, more complimentary wine tastings, and access to fun events when the fun can be had again. We reflected on where we had been lacking and decided to fully dedicate ourselves to improve. We invested in our tasting room and made it into a beautiful space where you’d want to spend the cold afternoon inside, or the warm afternoon outside, either way admiring our beautiful views when the world sees a bit of normality again. We believe in hospitality, and soon we will be able to host you all with open arms, glasses of wine, and charcuterie galore.

Our Wine Club Shipments ready for pick-up with their cute new sticker name tags and logo’d sides.

Overall, we’d like to say thank you. Thank you for making it through this year with us, we toast to you, as you are what allows us to keep making our delicious wines that are meant to be shared.

Until we can share again, cheers!

Team Rizzo

Rizzo's Spotlight: Cabernet Sauvignon!

Cabernet Sauvignon is the wine that sparked joy in David Rizzo’s heart, and gave him the “wine bug". That spark is one that many wine lovers know and understand well, as it happens to all of us. David was visiting California in the early 90’s and wine tasting with some friends. Back then, the wine industry was a bit smaller on the West Coast, the fire burning passion and love of wine that exists strong at Rizzo Winery, was alive and well in every single tasting room. As David tasted a beautiful, lush, Cabernet, the one pouring for him was telling him all about what went into the liquid that filled the glass in his hand. As David asked questions about the winemaking practices that went into the wine, a lightbulb went off in his head saying “I can do that” and so it began.

Cabernet Sauvignon, a tale as old as time.

Tasting wine with a spread of the tasting characteristics typical of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Cabernet Sauvignon typically has characteristics (that you’ll see on the board above) of red or black cherries, blackberries, fig, red plums, ripe strawberries, bell pepper, mint, and cedar. Holding the wine above a white tablecloth will help you see the color of the wine, at it’s best.