Sunday, October 5, 2008

Oregon Pinot Noir

Professionals at work

A big thanks goes out to Robert Volz for providing his Wine Bar "Pour" for this
tasting.
The starter wines were served along with grapes (Chardonnay, Reisling,
Pinot Grey, and Pinot Noir) to sample from the vineyard to compare with
the wines.

The event was called to order by Chancelier Norm Schoen, at 3:30 p.m.
Norm welcomed us to the tasting as well as asking for the introduction of
our guests. There were 20 attendees, including guest Sam Stoddard,
Tom Harvey & Andria Shirk as well as
grower/vintner; Mike & Robin Murto , from Murto Vineyard and Cleo’s Hill Wines; and
Gavin Joll from White Rose Wines.


Norm announced that the next tasting would be hosted by John and Jaydene
Chandler on October 19, 2008. The featured wines will be Eastern
Washington and Walla Walla Valley.

Chancelier Schoen then turned the meeting over to host, Jan Cullivan to
present the tasting. Jan gave an excellent history of the wines and a
hand out about the Willamette Valley wind industry which included
articles about the wineries that produced the wines we were tasting.
Also, the people from two of wineries that were in attendance told us
about the wines they had produced.

This was a blind tasting presented in two flights of five (5) Pinot
Noir’s per flight.

The first flight consisted of:

1. 2004 Anthony Dell/ Bears
2. 2001 Medicci
3. 2005 Murto
4. 2004 Boedecker
5. 2006 Dundee Hills (Norm & Sam)


The second flight consisted of:

6. 2005 Freedom Hill
7. 2006 Patricia Green
8. 2001 Panther Creek
9. 2004 White Rose
10. 2005 Dundee Hills (Norm & Sam).

These wines were tasted blind, so it is kind of like the "Unknown Comic", except for wine
The great thing about these events is that you really get a chance to smell and taste and throw out random comments about how stuff tastes. The downside is when you have the winemakers in attendance (we had three) you just hope that none of the wines they brought is going to be an embarrassment (none were).
The only REALLY funky wine of the night was a 2001 Panther Creek-Bednarik Vineyard that tasted like a slightly older Bordeaux (not exactly what I am looking for in a Pinot Noir).
Tasting or drinking?

Below are my tasting notes of the day and if you click the photo you can actually read what I had to say.

Notes