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?
Our friend David Speer from Red Slate sent out an enthusiastic email about the release of Evening Land’s 08 Seven Springs Vineyard Pinot Noir. So, we invited him to join us on a show to taste it alongside 2 other solid Oregon Pinots. Red Slate puts on some great tasting events, and David’s been one of our favorite retailers for a few years. We taste the 2008 Evesham Wood La Grive Bleue Pinot Noir, the 2008 Evening Land Seven Springs Vineyard Pinot Noir, and the 2004 Elk Cove Five Mountain Pinot Noir.
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Contact David to get on his mailing list, or to pick up some Oregon wines: http://redslatewine.com/
What’s the last wine that made your toes curl?
Episode 2: 3 Rieslings
August 4, 2009
In this episode we taste three rieslings, one from Oregon, and 2 from the Mosel in Germany. We taste the Penner Ash 2007 Willamette Valley Riesling, the Selbach Oster 2006 Graacher Himmelreich Spatlese, and the JJ Prum 2004 Graacher Himmelreich Auslese.
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We’d love to see some comments about your favorite German wines, especially if you discovered them IN Germany.
Episode 1: Two of Our Favorites
August 1, 2009
Welcome, and thanks for watching! For our first episode, we wanted to taste two wines that we’re familiar with and fond of. Chas picked the 2006 De Ponte Cellars Dundee Hills Pinot Noir ($30-$36)and Dan picked the 2004 Saint Urbans-Hof Piesporter Goldtropfchen Spatlese. (~$25. I say sub-20 in the video, but I was thinking of the Kabinett level wine, which is a bit cheaper.)
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We’d love to hear what you think! Please leave comments with your thoughts, input, and the sort of wines you’d like to see us review in the future.