We had fun with the blind show last week, so when Chas arrived with 3 bottles of Pinot Noir in a bag, we decided to blind these too. This show was double blind for Dan, and single blind for Chas. We taste the 2010 vintage of Matello Lazarus, Luminous Hills Estate, and Evesham Wood La Grive Bleue.
What is your favorite Oregon Pinot Noir in the $20 to $30 price range?
It’s been far too long since we’ve done a blind show. We realized that we had three similarly priced bottles Oregon Pinot Noir on hand for shows, and thought that they’d be fun to do blind. All three AVA’s are represented, and the wines are all from respected producers and vineyards. I’m sure plenty of viewers have tasted these wines, so we’d like to hear your thoughts on them in the comments. We taste the 2009 Arterberry Maresh Dundee Hills Pinot Noir, the 2009 Shea Wine Cellars Shea Vineyard Pinot Noir, and the 2009 Evening Land Seven Springs Vineyard Pinot Noir.
How do you find out about our new videos?
Episode 128: The Search For The Great American Riesling 12
April 29, 2012
As I was writing this up, I realized that it’s been over a year since we’ve done an American Riesling show. Wow! That’s way too long! We’ve got two Rieslings from Oregon today that we wanted to share on the show. They do a good job of highlighting a couple of different styles. We taste the 2009 Methven Willamette Valley Riesling and the 2011 Teutonic Wine Company Crow Valley Vineyard Riesling.
What’s your favorite mobile app?
Our Instagram handles are danj0hns0n and gripnsip. What’s yours?
Brooks and Evesham Wood are two of our favorite Oregon wine producers. Chas and I independently picked up bottles they had done with fruit from the Temperance Hill vineyard, and wanted to do a show with them. At 100 acres, this vineyard is one of the bigger vineyards in the Eola-Amity AVA. Portions of the vineyard rise above 800 ft in elevation, making this site on the higher side of the vineyards in the valley. The farming is done organically, so both of these wines come from organic fruit.
What winery in Oregon is worth going out of your way to visit?
Episode 126: Budget Bordeaux From 2009 and More Cat Trouble
April 16, 2012
Chas picked up some reasonably priced Bordeaux at a tasting, and wanted to bring them around to see if he could find one that Dan liked. Both wines are from Fronsac. Since this is a less famous AOC, it helps to keep the prices down. There’s a lot of cat drama in this episode as well. We taste the 2009 Chateau Villars, and the 2009 Chateau La Vieille Cure.
What is your favorite cheap Bordeaux?
We always look forward to visiting with Isabelle and checking in on the excellent wines she makes for De Ponte Cellars in the Dundee Hills. Every year, she makes a few different bottlings of Pinot Noir designed to hit a stylistic sweet spot. She always delivers wonderful complexity and balance, and it’s great to see her wines evolve in the bottle. This year, she discusses her selection process a bit, and her appreciation for balance.
What Oregon wines besides Pinot Noir are interesting to you?
John Grochau was nice enough to invite us back to his tasting room to taste some barrel samples and some of his 2009 releases. He does great work with fruit from a lot of vineyards through the Willamette Valley, and continues to make blends focused on expressing the character of individual American Viticultural Areas (AVA’s) within the Willamette Valley. His wines also continue to be very reasonably priced, providing cool opportunities to try some of the different Oregon Pinot Noir regions as well as solid entry level Oregon Pinot Noir. We taste the Grochau Cellars 2009 Willamette Valley , Eola-Amity, and Dundee Hills bottlings, as well as the 2004 Cuvee Des Amis which John opened as a special treat.
What is your favorite AVA in Oregon?
Renaissance Wines in Orenco Station has been one of our favorite shops for years. Mike has always had great wines, tastings, and atmosphere, and he’s always fun to chat with. We tried to do a show with him back in 2009, but we were unreasonably optimistic about the capability of our cheap little flip cam, and the audio turned out to be garbage. We finally got another interview scheduled, and we hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed recording it. We taste through 4 wines from Italy, and Mike has us guess the prices on the three reds we try. We like them all, and it turns out that not a single bottle has a SRP over $20! We taste the Loredan Gasparini Prosecco Superiore, the 2008 Cantele Telero Negroamaro, the 2009 Moroder Aion Montepulciano, and the 2008 Firriato Chiramonte Nero D’Avola.
How has your wine tasting experience changed over the past couple of years?
Episode 122: 2010 Chardonnay from the Dundee Hills in Oregon
March 20, 2012
We picked up two local Chardonnays recently to share our thoughts on some new releases. Dan had tasted the 2010 Arthur Chardonnay from Domaine Drouhin Oregon recently, and enjoyed it. We both enjoyed the 2009 vintage of the Dundee Hills Chardonnay from Cameron a lot, so we were eager to check out the 2010 release.
Do you have any opinions on Oregon AVA characteristics that express themselves in Chardonnay?
Some Quick Notes From Weingut Willi Schaefer
March 14, 2012
I just finished writing up some notes from my visit to Weingut Willi Schaefer over the past summer. He makes some amazing wines!