Links for 2008-10-16 [del.icio.us]
Date: Fri, Oct 17, 2008 Wine Tasting
- Oregon Vintage 2008 Kicks Into High Gear
Winemaker Tony Rynders starts off the harvest - Oregon Harvest 2008
Oregon Winemakers Optimistic
Date: Thu, Oct 16, 2008 Wine Tasting
Experienced Oregon winemakers are quietly enthused about the potential of the 2008 vintage. Winemakers are rightfully conservative in their assessment of a vintage at this point in time because you never really can be sure about the quality of a wine until it’s actually wine. However, with experience winemakers obviously develop a pretty good idea of what to expect. Those expectations are starting to sound quite high for 2008.
Laurent Montelieu is one of the Willamette Valley’s most experienced winemakers. A veteran of Willakenzie Estate, today Montelieu owns Solena Cellars, the Northwest Wine Company and his newest venture, the ultra-premium custom crush winery Grand Cru Estates. Montelieu, pictured here (left) sampling a vineyard with winemaking consultant Tony Rynders, who is also winemaker at the new Grand Cru estates, has one of the widest experiences with the full range of Willamette Valley vineyards as his Northwest Wine Company deals with vineyards located throughout the Valley. Montelieu comments about this vintage, “The beautiful Indian summer has saved us one more time… essentially right now I am looking at hanging the balance of our fruit as late as possible….. if the fruit is not getting worse it has to be getting better…. So far the ferments have shown great purity of the aromatics and the extraction level will be quite structured .We are in for a treat of a vintage, remember 1999?”
Winemaker Scott Wright, owner of Scott Paul Cellars, also has a great depth of experience with Oregon vintages. Before founding his own winery, Scott was general manager of Domaine Drouhin Oregon. Wright says of the 2008 vintage so far, “We’ve been very happy with the quality of the fruit we’ve brought in so far – very clean and healthy, excellent flavors, really nice pH & acids – potential alcohols in the low 13s – exactly what we’re looking for. Yields have been on the low side – averaging about 1.5 tons per acre so far. We’ve got about 2/3 of our fruit in now, and will likely finish up today and tomorrow. The potential is there for a really nice vintage!”
Superstar winemaking consultant Tony Rynders (pictured above, right) had a decade knocking out one 90+ rated wine after another as winemaker at Domaine Serene before launching his own consulting company and taking on winemaking duties at Grand Cru Estates. On the 2008 vintage Rynders notes, “Harvest 2008 is well underway in the Willamette Valley. We have remained about 10 days behind in ripening based on the last ten years. But is actual fact, we are right at our long term average for harvest timing. After a little rain at the beginning of the month, we have had a nice stretch of weather for the last 12 days. Flavors have come on strong and the sugars are very reasonable. This latest weather development has been critical for flavor development and phenolic maturity. The cold soaks are showing beautiful color. The wines are going to be very pretty with excellent balance. We are about 60% complete with another 20% due in the next three days.”
You are hearing similar comments from winemakers throughout the Willamette Valley. The potential is there for a very special vintage in the classic Oregon style, which emphasizes balance, structure, aromatics and elegance with moderate alcohol levels. I’m looking forward to drinking these wines.
Pictured below, a picker in Tony Soter’s Mineral Springs Vineyard.
More Oregon Harvest Blogs
Date: Thu, Oct 16, 2008 Wine Tasting
Winery blogs are helping bring the excitement of harvest to readers far from wine country. Here are two more from Oregon:
Brandborg Winery Blog http://brandborgwine.wordpress.com/
Terra Vina Winery Blog http://terravinawines.wordpress.com/
Another Reason To Vote Democratic
Date: Thu, Oct 16, 2008 Wine Tasting
Obama and McCain drinking habits revealed in wine quiz - decanter.com - the route to all good wine
While the quiz reveals the Democrats to be more liberal in their drinking habits, the same cannot be said of the Republicans, McCain and Palin drink very rarely.
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Oregon Harvest 2008
Date: Thu, Oct 16, 2008 Wine Tasting
Oregon's grape harvest continued today in perfect, cool weather. In Tony Soter's outstanding Mineral Springs Vineyard (pictured here) in the Yamhill Carlton AVA they decided to put in the extra time needed to harvest the entire vineyard today as the fruit was in perfect condition and rain is forecasted over the next several days. Most of this vineyard is planted in a unique clone of pinot noir discovered and then propagated by Soter from an old vineyard in California. It has no name at this time and Mineral Springs is the only vineyard anywhere planted with this clone. As it is yet formally named, I'll call it the Soter Clone. This combination of distinctive terroir with a unique massal clone makes this one of the most exciting vineyards in Oregon.
Oregon Vintage 2008 Kicks Into High Gear
Date: Tue, Oct 14, 2008 Wine Tasting
Oregon’s 2008 grape harvest is now in full swing as growers try to beat the sure to come rains and the already arrived birds. The week started with about 30% of the fruit in the valley picked and by the end of this week a majority of the vineyards will be harvested. At this point, the birds may be the biggest threat as massive flocks can devastate a vineyard in a day. In my opinion, this will be a very good vintage for those that did not harvest too early as the grapes have been gaining flavor, if not much sugar, over the last week of lovely, dry and cool, but sunny weather. With showers due later in the week and the migratory birds already arrived, most growers are harvesting as fast as they can at this point. Pinot noir from good sites is coming in fully ripe with good flavors and lab statistics that promise some exciting wines. For the second year in a row, Mother Nature is forcing Oregon’s winemakers to back away from the excessive extract and alcohols too many had started to strive for as they sought high scores from wine writers. The 2008’s should show good balance in an elegant style with moderate alcohols, which, after all, is why people came to Oregon to grow pinot noir in the first place.
Pictured above, winemaking and vineyard consultant Tony Rynders, formerly of Domaine Serene, takes pinot noir samples for analysis from Elvenglade Vineyards near Gaston.
A Real Harvest Blog
Date: Tue, Oct 14, 2008 Wine Tasting
Lots of (most) wineries pretend to have harvest blogs, but just put up PR platitudes without really telling the personal, compelling story of the harvest. One of my favorite Oregon wineries Scott Paul has an excellent harvest blog going authored by owner Scott Wright. Check it out at the link below to get a feeling of what it’s like to go through a harvest in Oregon at the link below:
http://blog.scottpaul.com/category/scott/
Links for 2008-10-10 [del.icio.us]
Date: Sat, Oct 11, 2008 Wine Tasting
- McCain camp defends the behavior? - First Read - msnbc.com
McCain defends radical attacks on Obama
David Lett, Father of Oregon Pinot, Passes Away
Date: Fri, Oct 10, 2008 Wine Tasting
David Lett, pioneer and father of the Oregon wine industry passed away yesterday. He will be mourned by the entire winemaking community here. Below is the announcement from Jason Lett, his son and winemaker at Eyrie Vineyards, which David founded in 1966:
The Lett family regrets to announce that David Lett passed away yesterday evening. He died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family. We are deeply appreciative of the support of our colleagues and friends at this time. We welcome your notes of condolence - David loved to reach out to people and to connect, and we hope you'll feel free to do the same.
David cared deeply for the land and for his family. In lieu of flowers or gifts, David's legacy can be memorialized through gifts to 1000 Friends of Oregon or to Families United, a non-profit that supports assisted living for adults with special needs.
A celebration of David's life will be held, as he would have wished, AFTER harvest.
Condolences may be sent to:
Diana Lett and Jason Lett
Post Office Box 697
Dundee, Oregon 97115
Memoria
1000 Friends of Oregon
534 SW Third Avenue, Suite 300
Portland, Oregon 97204
(503) 497-1000
Families United For Independent Living
PO Box 473
McMinnville, Oregon 97128 0473
Warning: Chardonnay Review Below
Date: Fri, Oct 10, 2008 Wine Tasting
I know, I don't believe it either. Yet here I am writing positive notes about an American chardonnay. It's hard to think of a more boring category than American chardonnay, which tends to fall into two groups. One is cheap and sweet and the other is expensive and, well, sweet and oaky. In my opinion the only areas really producing interesting chardonnay year in and out are Chablis for top quality wines and Macon for value. There are wonderful wines produced from this variety in the Cote de Beaune and many New World wine regions, but they tend to be the exception to the rule.
I tasted one of those exceptions with a ridiculously rich home-made chicken pot pie last weekend. The 2004 Chardonnay Dijon Clones, Willamette Valley, Côte Sud Vineyard from Domaine Serene is an excellent chardonnay. I never tasted this wine in its youth, but it has matured into a beautiful chardonnay that integrates richness with a firm backbone that is perfectly overlaid with smoky vanillin from the oak. What pulls this wine together is the hard minerality and firm acidity that keep this this wine from falling into this variety's tendency towards flabby sweetness. Former Domaine Serene winemaker Tony Rynders definitely had the right touch with this chardonnay.
I am not intentionally, anymore anyway, part of the ABC (anything but chardonnay) crowd. However, as I think about it I realize I never even look at the chardonnay sections as I run my finger through a wine list. This has happened over the years as chardonnay began to bore me more-and-more and other white wines, particularly riesling, excited me more-and-more. Oddly enough, many rieslings I love and chardonnays I don't have similar residual sugar levels. However, what divides them are the very dissimilar pH levels. Sugar without acid just doesn't work unless it's for the wine-by-the-glass program at Fridays.
Worth Reading: Asimov on Too Much Sugar in Alsace
Date: Fri, Oct 10, 2008 Wine Tasting
How Sweet - The Pour Blog - NYTimes.comFor years Alsatian wines were my go-to wines on wine lists. They were dry, complex and great values. Over the last decade or so I drank Alsatian wines less-and-less as they got sweeter and sweeter. Many (if not most) Alsatian wines today are strange sweet, flabby alcoholic curiosities that just don’t go well with food. In the article linked to above, Eric Asimov discusses this sad situation in The New York Times.
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Roberto's Rants
Date: Fri, Oct 10, 2008 Wine Tasting
I am a big fan of Roberto Rogness’ selections at The Wine Expo in Santa Monica. Thank god I don’t live near his store because I would be spending far more on wine than I do now. Roberto is never afraid to give his opinion and he shares his thoughts on the “Rants” page of The Wine Expo website, which you can find at this link.
If you’re not on The Wine Expo’s mailing list do so as soon as possible as they offer the most exciting selection of Italian and grower Champagnes that you never heard of - and that’s a very good thing. It’s a good thing because Roberto is ferreting out some of the most interesting, authentic wines you’ll ever taste, and to make things even better, they’re often exceptional values as well.
Vino Wire Reports on the Brunello Debate
Date: Thu, Oct 9, 2008 Wine Tasting
From Vino Wire » Tempers flare at Brunello debate today in Siena
Here is the follow up to the debate on changing Brunello di Montalcino DOCG regulations reported here.
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