It’s happens to all of us: perusing the wine market for a bottle that is both enjoyable and easy on the wallet.
After creating wine for the conventional wine market for several years as the founder of Oregon’s Evening Land Vineyards and now-proprietor of Chapter 24 Vineyards and multi-regional winery Maison l’Envoyè, Mark Tarlov decided to take an unconventional approach: to make “Oregon wine without compromise to a wider audience.”
His newest venture, Alit Wine in Dundee, Oregon, carries a vision of wine that highlights the abundance of the Willamette Valley and calls for radical transparency between wine production and its consumers — in both winemaking practice and in price.
“I want to expose people to the uniqueness of the Willamette Valley,” Tarlov explains. “The uniqueness isn’t penetrating the market the way it should.”
Tarlov teamed with MIT scientists to explore the potential of using wild yeasts indigenous to the vineyard, where the grapes grew in the rich, volcanic soil of the Willamette Valley AVA. “There is an enormous cornucopia of wild yeasts in organic material,” says Tarlov. “Forty percent of flavor comes from yeast by-products.”
Alit’s 140-acre estate vineyard is organic and dry-farmed, which allows nature do the watering. Thanks to the climate of the Willamette Valley, Tarlov says irrigation isn’t needed. “When you irrigate, you change the microbiome considerably,” he says, urging that wine should reflect the place where it is sourced. “You change the fundamental character of the wine you’re growing; it should have relationship with the vineyard it comes from.”
To help the consumer understand his product, Tarlov took brand transparency to the next level when he shed the layers of all third-parties, including distributors and retailers, to bring a more accessible price to the consumer of $27.45. This price is still more than double of the average price of wine purchased in the U.S., though an approachable investment of a true, organic Oregon wine aged in French oak barrels.
The costs of creating Alit’s Pinot Noir are detailed for the consumer to see on the winery’s website, leaving nothing to the imagination and fully grasping every cost of the operation.
Tarlov’s main motivation for this candid approach is to create a dialogue and welcome wine lovers — beginning and seasoned drinkers alike — and educate them about the winemaking process. “It’s setting up expectations for consumers on what should go into a wine,” Tarlov says. “Showing them the intimacy of where its grown, the individual personality of wine, the story of why this wine is unique and it can’t be replicated. It’s actual wine made by actual humans.”
Alit aims to create straight-forward, approachable wine that, in turn, creates smarter consumers; by laying out the winemaking process and costs out for all wine enthusiasts to see.
And the winery team of five isn’t seeking exclusive clientele, but any consumer who wants to understand. Since Alit spends most of its time telling the stories of its Willamette wines in an outspoken way, “it’s hard to criticize on a ‘luxurious’ basis,” Tarlov says. “We have changed the luxury conversation… How you say something is both luxury and rare if its $28 and available? I’m only interested in people that share my values about what goes into a great wine.”
Alit’s two varieties — Pinot Noir and an imported Champagne produced by a like-minded Grand Cru French partner winery — are available online, selling direct-to-doorstep in three packs. But in this case, you’ll know exactly what you’re paying for.
