So many excellent sparkling wines are being made in Oregon these days that it is easy to become jaded.
Then you stumble across the Sivilli Wine Co. sparklers and have to catch your breath. Thomas Sivilli makes sparkling wines of such quality that Jay-Z would welcome them to his VIP lounge any night of the week.
Sivilli Wine Co. is best known for: making sparkling wines with the traditional method used in France’s Champagne region.
The mission statement on the Sivilli Wine Co. website states, “We keep things simple. We press very gently with minimal rolling of the grapes. We settle without Sulfur dioxide. We ferment in neutral french barrels. After a year in barrel, we age the wines for three years in tirage. We then disgorge by hand, and add no or minimal dosage. Nothing fancy.”
“Must try” current release: 2019 Sivilli Wine Co. Abbey Ridge Vineyard Blanc de Blanc ($45 – 12.5% ABV).
This sparkling wine does justice to the excellent chardonnay fruit Sivilli gets from Abbey Ridge Vineyard in the Dundee Hills. It is packed with aromas and flavors of Golden Delicious apples, lemon verbena tea and saline, with brisk acidity and a delightfully chalky texture.
Prepare to channel your inner George Takei as you sigh, “Oh, my,” after taking the first sip.
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Epiphany moment: Sivilli caught the wine bug while still a high school student in Arizona. His girlfriend’s parents at the time worked at the American Embassy in Paris, so one summer, Sivilli visited them.
While traipsing across Sancerre with his girlfriend, Sivilli purchased a mixed case of white, pink and red wines. Somehow, the 18-year-old cleared them through customs on his return flight to Arizona.
“When I opened those bottles back home, I was amazed at how they smelled like the air of the vineyards and cellars we had visited in Sancerre,” Sivilli said.
Sivilli decided to learn as much as he could about wine and its ability to transport you to another place and time.
History: Sivilli’s wine immersion program included working in restaurants while in college at the University of Arizona, classes with The Court of Master Sommeliers, and, finally, a job as a “wine specialist” with a distributor.
“I had an unlimited expense account and no sales goals. It was the greatest distribution job ever,” Sivilli said.
The job also allowed Sivilli to meet numerous visiting winemakers, including the late Aron Hess. Hess, the co-founder of Daedalus Cellars, convinced Sivilli to come to Dundee, Oregon, to work a harvest with him in 2008.
After his Oregon experience, Sivilli worked wine jobs in Australia and the United States. 2010 found him back in Oregon working a harvest with Jay Somers at J. Christopher Wines in Newberg, followed by post-harvest work with vineyard manager Stirling Fox.
Thanks to a recommendation from Somers, Sivilli was hired by owner/winemaker John Paul to begin work at Cameron Winery in 2011. Sivilli now holds the title of winemaker at Cameron, where he makes some of the very best pinot noir and chardonnay in the Willamette Valley.
Sivilli began making sparkling wines for his eponymous label at Cameron Winery in 2018. He has progressed from an annual production of 100 cases to 700 cases in 2023.
What we don’t know: Sivilli Wine Co. started out as a pétillant naturel project.
The pétillant naturel method, aka pét-nat, involves bottling wine while still fermenting to trap carbon dioxide gas in the bottle. This method gives the wine a gentle carbonation.
The traditional method, or méthode Champenoise, triggers a secondary fermentation in the bottle by adding sugar and yeast to a finished still wine. The yeast reacts with the sugar to create carbon dioxide.
“I realized later than I should have that I don’t actually like pét-nat, so I started tweaking the wines. What I ended up doing is reverse engineering Champagne, so here we are,” Sivilli said.
What we don’t know, part two: In 2000, Sivilli, the fleet-footed pride of Catalina Foothills High School in Tucson, made the Arizona Daily Star newspaper’s annual list of all-star cross country runners.
Last book read: “We, the Drowned,” by Carsten Jensen.
Biggest inspiration: the wines of Bérêche et Fils, a Champagne house located near the village of Ludes. Sivilli said he was inspired by the texture and balance of their wines, adding that “they are damn near flawless.”
Where to buy: Great Wine Buys and Liner & Elsen in Portland. To sip a Sivilli wine with food that someone else prepares for you, head straight to Noble Rot.
-- Michael Alberty writes about wine for The Oregonian/OregonLive and Wine Enthusiast Magazine. He can be reached at malberty0@gmail.com. To read more of his coverage, go to oregonlive.com/wine