Thomas Savre

Burgundy training, Oregon opportunity

Thomas Savre’s story provides the working-winemaker connection between Burgundy experience and Larry Stone’s Oregon vineyard vision. The Eola-Amity Hills winegrowers’ account traces his education at the Jules Guyot Institute, University of Burgundy, and experience at estates including Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Domaine Dujac and Maison Nicolas Potel. Before Lingua Franca, he worked with Dominique Lafon at Evening Land’s Seven Springs Vineyard.

The geographical names matter here. Vosne-Romanée and Morey-Saint-Denis belong to the Côte de Nuits story; Nuits-Saint-Georges is another place in that district. They are training and career connections, not appellations that can be transferred to an Oregon bottle.

A bottle opens a door

In Lingua Franca’s 2020 interview, Savre recalls tasting a 1995 Cristom Marjorie Vineyard Pinot Noir during Burgundy’s 2012 harvest. The experience sharpened his interest in Oregon wines. It is a small, memorable beginning to a larger story about following a grape beyond familiar ground.

The founding cellar team

Lingua Franca’s legacy account brings together Stone’s belief in the site, Lafon’s recognition of its potential and Savre’s winemaking work. Savre joined as the winery’s first employee in May 2015. The story is stronger when those contributions are kept visible: finding the land, bringing experience and turning a new vineyard’s fruit into wine are related tasks, each deserving its place.

This introduction follows that founding chapter and the documented 2020 interview. It does not turn a historical collaboration into an unchecked claim about everyone’s present role.

Blending can mean one grape

Savre describes fermenting and raising parcels separately, then tasting blind as the team decides how to assemble the wines. This is a practical answer to a recurring question on this site: a Pinot Noir can be single-varietal while still involving a demanding blending process.

Those three questions prevent “blend” from becoming shorthand for only one thing. Combining Pinot Noir lots and adding a second grape are different composition decisions.

Experience travels; the place remains

In the interview, Savre describes Lafon’s mentoring as allowing room to understand Oregon and experiment, rather than imposing a Burgundy formula. That is the essence of this connection: skills and ideas cross the Atlantic, while the wine continues to express its own growing place.

Follow Dominique Lafon, Larry Stone and Lingua Franca for the adjoining chapters. Then compare Pinot Noir wines or Chardonnay wines through the actual producer, site and vintage.