International Pinot Noir Celebration, part VI

After a brief pause, we attended the second of the large tastings. It was another hot afternoon and I’d made the strategic decision to only taste things that G recommended, but fortunately there were quite a few. I’m sorry that this list doesn’t go into any detail. I’d naively assumed that we’d be given some sort of list of wines/wineries which I’d be able to annotate, but no such thing was provided. Fortunately, G was better prepared than me and had brought along a notebook, so the best I could do was ask him to make a note whenever we encountered something I particularly enjoyed.

Ken Wright Tanager Vineyard 2019 - I'm currently looking after a case of the Guadalupe for G, as this was unavailable

Bryn Mawr Vineyards 2021

Belle Pente Kiona’s Block 2019

Fiddlehead Cellars Lollapaloosa Barrel Select 2015

Division Pinot Noir “Deux” 2021

Chosen Family Wine Co 2021

Sokol Blosser Orchard Block 2021

Greywing Farsing Vineyard 2019 - I'm currently looking after a six pack of this for G

Talley Vineyards 2021

Cobb – not sure which wine or vintage this was, but it was an unexpectedly pretty pinot from California. It turns out that California has a lot of micro climates with its mountains and sea.

Then it was off to the long-awaited Salmon Bake! This is a big dinner where they serve wild salmon which has been cooked over an open fire on wooden stakes. There was also roast pork, and a wide selection of salads, cheeses and sweet things. We sat at a table with a few other people and again someone came round pouring us nice things from time to time. The woman next to me also contributed a bottle of wine which she’d bought from a winery earlier in the day, which was very kind. A band played jazzy music in the distance and the atmosphere was very festive. At one point a man went round some tables with a salmanazar of red wine which was clearly quite difficult to pour from, but was one of our wines of the evening.

Finally, on the Sunday morning, there was an extra-special champagne brunch which included additional food such as sushi, and someone came round pouring glasses of fizz from time to time. We sat with some Americans and it turned out that they had spent some time living in England not far from where G and I went to school, which was a fun coincidence.

Then it was back to the apartment to pack up and get a car back to Portland. An honourable mention should be made to “Famous Dave’s BBQ” near the airport where we had a meal later in the day. Their ribs and burnt ends were very tasty and it was quite a relief to drink a pint of cold pineapple cider after all the fine wine over the past few days.

In conclusion: I’m very glad I went - I learned a lot about Oregon pinot noir, ate some fantastic food and met some nice people. It was a great way to celebrate our 50th birthdays!

International Pinot Noir Celebration, part V

In the afternoon, we’d all signed up for a session with the title “Sparking Wine: The Art of Blending” which turned out to be something of a misnomer, as nobody really talked about blending. Instead, five producers of fizz talked about their wines.

I appear to have had nothing to say about the first one from CHO Wines except that it was quite expensive – I've written down $95 but can’t find this wine on their website. I found the 2014 Fiddlehead Cellars “728 Bubbles” blanc de noirs more interesting and quite winey for a fizz, and it was only $65. They're based in the Santa Rita Hills area of California. 

Next was a wine from Nautilus Estate in Marlborough, NZ. This was only $40 and very bubbly. It reminded me strongly of the kinds of New World fizz that were around when I was an undergraduate – stuff like Yalumba Angas Brut. For me, it was clean but completely lacking any character. 

Then we moved on to two champagnes. The first was Laurent-Perrier which was perfectly nice but nothing out of the ordinary. The second, from Henri Giraud, was much more my cup of tea. This was the Hommage au Pinot Noir NV. It was a much more golden colour than the others and had a lot of mushrooms, yeastiness and richness. Someone mentioned salinity, which wasn’t a word I’d ever heard used to describe champagne but fitted the bill. This retails at around $100 which seems like a fair price for it.

Incidentally, the first three wines had been poured before everyone entered the seminar room, and the last two were poured halfway through the seminar, which meant that they were significantly colder. I've probably already said this but if there’s one thing I learned from the IPNC, it's that serving wine at the proper temperature makes a huge difference.

International Pinot Noir Celebration, part IV

On the Saturday morning, we had another fantastic breakfast and this time I located the proper coffee stand which was worth the wait. Then it was time for the “grand seminar” which was a series of panel discussions and tastings held in the theatre at Linfield University. This fell into three parts and I believe the presenters rotated between three different venues due to capacity constraints, so it must have been a bit strange for them to be giving the same talk three times in rapid succession. The format for each session was that the chairman spoke for a few minutes and then each representative from a winery spoke for a few minutes. It wasn’t at all clear when we were supposed to be tasting the wines, so I found myself surreptitiously doing it while they were talking.

The theme for this particular IPNC was sustainability, a tricky subject. Climate change is clearly a big issue for the wine industry, and there are steps that can be taken to reduce emissions such as using lighter glass bottles or even other forms of packaging, cutting back on capsules etc. I enjoyed hearing about permaculture, electric tractors, regenerative agriculture and phytotherapy, the building up of natural defences.

But some speakers took it a little too far, in my opinion. The representative of one winery in New Zealand informed us that they ask their visitors where they have come from and where they are going afterwards, and include this travel in their records of carbon emissions. Another speaker made a reference to Black Lives Matter and it all started getting a little political. Quite honestly, I didn’t attend the IPNC in order to receive a lecture on social justice from someone much, much richer than me… One was also aware of the vast number of bottles of San Pellegrino lying around all over the place which presumably were imported from Italy!  

Moving swiftly on… Of the wines that we tasted during these sessions, I particularly enjoyed:

- the Blanc de Noirs Extra Brut Reserve 2016 from Brundlmayer in Austria which was very champagne-like

- the Savigny 1er cru Aux Vergelesses from Domaine Simon Bize et Fils. Chisa Bize gave a very good talk. She’s from Japan and took over running the domaine after her husband died ten years ago. It was interesting hearing how she had questioned their approach to winemaking and gradually modernised it. Santenay has never been one of my favourite villages in Burgundy, but she is producing some very pure, delightful wines which thankfully lack the offputting gravy/meatiness that one sometimes encounters. I see they are represented by Jeroboams in the UK

- Sunday’s Child 2021, a pinot noir produced by Hope Well in the Eola-Amity Hills region of Oregon, which had some agreeable complexity to it.

We returned to one of the lawns where we found a table for another excellent lunch. The wine people at this table were from Coline Clemens and we’d actually chatted to them in the queue for dinner the previous evening. They were good company and they had chilled their wines, which made them very drinkable despite the relatively high alcohol level. A good time was had by all!

International Pinot Noir Celebration, part II

The coach tour felt a little like a school trip and there was a rather amusing video about how the “motor coach” was cleaned in three different ways. Our destination was kept secret until the last minute. Since I was unfamiliar with any of the wineries in the area, the suspense was somewhat wasted on me. Eventually it was disclosed that we were going to Lingua Franca.

The bus stopped in the vineyard next to some well-maintained chardonnay vines and everyone hopped out and donned sunhats as the sun was beaming down and it was very warm. We were given a quick talk by Thomas Savre, the Director of Winemaking at Lingua Franca, who is French and has trained at many of the big names in Burgundy. Apparently Comte Lafon is a consultant at Lingua Franca and had been visiting earlier in the week. 

There were also contributions from other wine makers including Ken Wright, who was very experienced and knowledgeable. He mentioned that the vines grow down an extraordinary distance – something like a foot a year until they max out at around 20 feet down. This is why old vines are such a big deal – they’re rummaging around down there for all the interesting trace elements, which younger vines can’t do. I’d never really understood this before, so that was interesting to hear.

Then it was off to the Lingua Franca winery itself for a tasting followed by lunch. There was plenty of opportunity to mingle with the winemakers and other attendees and the atmosphere was convivial. The four course lunch was very impressive, especially given that it was served in a winery and not a place set up for fine dining. 

We tasted six wines from different producers and I enjoyed three of them in particular: the 2019 Ken Wright Cellars Tanager Vineyard, the 2021 Lingua Franca The Plow, and the 2019 SUNU Wines Matteri Vineyard. These were light, pretty and enjoyable, and not too alcoholic. But a quick check of the prices revealed that the going rate was around $75 a bottle. So much for my hope that Oregon pinot noir might replace my Burgundy habit!

International Pinot Noir Celebration, part I

The blog has been on something of a hiatus lately due to major life events i.e. moving to the US at long last! I arrived on 16 June (or June 16, as they say over here) and have been acclimatising since then.

Now that I’ve moved, my wine drinking patterns have changed somewhat and the good stuff is likely to be in concentrated bursts of activity. Fortunately, there have been two such bursts in the last few weeks: the International Pinot Noir Celebration at the end of July, and a trip to the Finger Lakes in early August. It will probably take several posts to cover them all.

Starting with the IPNC, this has been going since 1986 and is held in Oregon, in the town of McMinnville which is about an hour away from Portland. This was the furthest west I’ve ever been! It turned out to be an excellent introduction to Oregon pinot noir. There were also a few producers from other places such as California, France, New Zealand and Austria.

I met up successfully with G and H at Portland airport on Thursday evening and we got a car to our student apartment in McMinnville where our wine friend D from upstate New York was waiting for us. This turned out to be the perfect accommodation as it was within walking distance of all the activities. The only weird thing was the height of the beds, which were about four feet off the ground with no ladder – presumably aimed at athletic young men. I ended up putting my mattress on the floor which solved the problem.

We had pizza delivered and I’d picked up a couple of wines at the airport to get things rolling. One of these had appeared to be a tempranillo when I saw it in the shop, but on closer inspection it was a tempranillo / riesling blend, which I think it’s fair to say was not entirely successful. Described on that website as “a fun combination of grapes one wouldn’t expect to find in Oregon” – hmmmm! I will learn to check the label more closely in future. Fortunately the other bottle, a pinot, was drinkable so all was not lost.

On the Friday morning, we had an amazing buffet breakfast on the lawn with some particularly wonderful raspberries and apricots. The opening ceremony consisted of an elderly celebrity couple giving a quick speech in praise of pinot noir, including a memorable quote along the lines of how the first time you taste it, it's like your head leaves your body and then reattaches in a slightly different way. This was followed by a long parade of people from the various wineries, which took some time to get through.

One noticeable thing for me, attending for the first time, was how everyone assumed that one already had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Oregon AVAs. I hadn’t even encountered the term AVA before but someone at our table explained to me that it stands for American Viticultural Area and is a bit like an appellation in Burgundy. It would probably have been helpful to have a map of how they all related to each other, but the info for the festival was all on a mobile phone app and I don't think this was included. Serves me right for not doing any homework, I guess. 

After breakfast, it was into the coach for a vineyard tour… More to follow!

Swiss Pinot Noir Society, 17th May 2023

Last Wednesday, it was off to the Savile for another instalment of the SPNS. Present and correct were G, T, P, D and myself. 

First up was a bottle of Ambriel Rose 2015, a sparkling wine made entirely from pinot noir, from West Sussex. This was brought along by T, who thought it might be (slightly) over the hill, but it actually went down pretty well! It was a beautiful dark colour with strawberries and good fruit. P described it as spring/summer in a glass which I think sums it up nicely.

We went upstairs to the dining room, where we had the bottle which I brought along. This was a 2020 white pinot noir from Willamette Valley Vineyards in Oregon which I was given by my friend J recently and thought would be appropriate to share with the SPNS. I think it's fair to say it didn't wow the assembled company. I found it interesting and J had told me it was quite smoky which was indeed the case. Others struggled to say much about it and one member damned it with faint praise - "Quite pleasant". Perhaps they should stick to making the red...

Moving swiftly on, the next wine was a Rose des Riceys "En Valingrain" 2017 from Olivier Horiot, provided by G. This was something of a rarity - a still pink champagne. It was light, fresh and pretty, with lots of raspberries going on, and we all enjoyed it.

After that, we moved on to a trio of reds which we compared side by side:

• Chateau Grand-Pontet 1961, provided by P
• Chateau Haut-Brion 1966, provided by D
• Chateau Berliquet 1988, provided by P

This was a fascinating opportunity to compare and contrast three mature clarets. At this stage of the evening, the comments in the Book became even more illegible than usual, but I'll do my best to summarise. The 1961 had some lovely cedary notes and was still standing up well. D considered that it was on its plateau and would last, and T particularly liked it. The Haut-Brion was as good as you'd expect, i.e. very. Textbook claret - a robust dark colour and wonderful cabernet nose of pencil shavings and mint. "Pleasing to drink" said D with appropriate modesty. Wonderful stuff. 

The Berliquet had been living in my wardrobe for a good 8-10 years, left by P on a previous occasion, and I was relieved that this didn't seem to have done it any harm. It was generally regarded as very good and with a lot of life still in it. 

Finally, with dessert, we had a Massandra White Muscat 1975 bottled in 1982, brought along by G. This was a murky brown colour and I found notes of rhubarb while others detected figs. It was very sweet - maybe even a bit too sweet for me - and went very well with the baklava. T described it as "habit forming" but I doubt he'll get the chance as this was another very rare bottle.

All in all, it was another great evening of diverse and interesting wines! Thanks for all for their contributions and company.

Some recent reds

I'm recently back from another trip to the US and had a lovely time as always. This particular visit included a spot of kayaking, painting the kitchen ahead of its upcoming renovation, and a near miss with a black bear! The bear in question was spotted ten minutes ahead of our arrival on that particular trail, but fortunately had disappeared by the time we got there, leaving just a claw mark in the mud and a load of scattered berries.  

I also enjoyed splitting some logs of wood on this intriguing piece of equipment provided by the state park! The mallet was very heavy and it was surprisingly satisfying to whack the logs with it. 

On to the wine. Today's post will be an attempt to clear up some accumulated notes on random reds. 

G and H invited me round to their house for lunch one day back in July. It was great to sit outside in the garden and the occasion included numerous fancy wines, none of which I made notes on. I did however take a pic of this particularly wonderful Volnay 1er cru Clos de la Cave des Ducs Monopole 2009 from Benjamin Leroux, which was a real treat. 

And it was lovely to see the photogenic Benjy enjoying the sun.

Moving on to other recent reds, I'll do these in reverse order of how much we liked them. 

I brought this Pinot Noir Willamette Valley 2015 from Ponzi Vineyards back on my previous trip to the US. Willamette Valley is in Oregon, and this was very new world and lacking any burgundian elements. No whiff of the farmyard could be detected. It had an exuberant, crowd-pleasing nose with a lot of jammy blackcurrant, but G said the acidity wasn't high enough, and I thought this was pinot that would appeal to people who don't like Burgundy. It was 13.7%, allegedly. Not so sure about that!

Next up, a Mercurey 1er cru Les Valeys 2018 from Francois Raquillet. Apparently 2018 was a big, rich year and this was a very dark colour. On the palate it was earthy with plummy tannins and a little chocolate. It wasn't croquant unlike many Mercureys I've had in the past. G described it as "rustic village in a very hot vintage" which summed it up well. We gave it a low 8. 

Then we have a Beaune 1er cru Clos de la Mousse Monopole 2016 from Bouchard Pere & Fils. I picked this up in the Pennsylvanian booze store for $36 earlier in the year. The PA booze store sometimes has remarkably good clearance deals and I don't think anyone in D's neck of the woods is particularly interested in premier cru burgundy, so it hadn't been snapped up!

This was a slightly purple colour, glossy, with an attractive perfumed nose featuring sous bois and blackcurrant, very Beaune. As it was young, we gave it a 3.5 hour decant which it needed. It had a nice weight, was well-balanced, and had a good structure with nice fruit acids. I got a hint of rhubarb on the finish. We gave it a low 9 and thought it would last, although this was my only bottle. 

And finally, back in July, as it was my birthday month and I was feeling self-indulgent, it was time to wheel out the bottle of red Auxey-Duresses 2011 from Coche Dury which I'd been saving for a while. I served this quite chilled. It had a lot going on - blackberry, sous bois and a hint of saddle. It was very precise, and had a nice light mouthfeel, and almost a hint of apple skin on the finish. We felt that possibly the nose outshone the palate, and that it was ready to drink and not one to keep any further. It reminded me how much I love red Auxey, and it;s always a joy to drink Coche!

In other exciting news, I've signed up to attend the International Pinot Noir Celebration in July next year (what the hell, it's a big year!) so am very much looking forward to that. 

Dinner at mine, 19th March

Last Sunday, D joined me and G for dinner at AduV Towers.

We kicked off with this 2010 Auxey-Duresses Les Clous from Bavard. It was my final bottle. Fortunately, it turned out to be all right!

It was medium-weight and quite citrussy, with good minerality, and went well with our smoked salmon. G talked about the influence of the grower's village on their wine-making style, and Bavard is based in Puligny. I must find a way to get more Auxey on my wine rack in future, especially since it offers comparatively good value next to the wines of Puligny and Meursault.

Then, with our chicken, apricot and pistachio terrine, we moved on to this 1994 Oregon pinot noir "Laurene" from Domaine Drouhin, brought across the pond by D. This was extraordinarily like old school Burgundy, right down to the hint of the sugar bag. If we'd been tasting it blind, I think we would have guessed a Volnay from the seventies. It was earthy and sweet on the nose with notes of tinned strawberries, had a lovely velvety texture and a great finish. It must have been made with very ripe fruit. D said this winery is still operating but the prices have soared since the early days. Meanwhile G got stuck into the dregs, which tells you how good it was.

Finally, with the cheese course, I produced my old favourite Pommard 1er cru L'Argilliere 2008 from La Maison Romane (as discussed last week). This was my last bottle of this wine too, and again I was relieved that it was how I'd remembered. I find this wine completely heavenly, again with delicious sweet red fruit and yet also elegant, not like your normal powerful Pommard. G described it as premier cru Vosne Romanee which just happens to be made in Pommard. We guzzled it, while hatching plans to visit upstate New York later in the year. I can't wait!