Tuesday, July 20, 2010

3 Pinot's Head to Head for #PinotNoir

The concept was simple, drink pinot, and tweet about it. Twitter is as easy as talking, and pinot is as smooth as silk so how hard could this be? Well, sometimes FedEx gets an inadvertent hand in things and makes things WAY more difficult than they need to be. I live in Pasadena but work in San Francisco and being a mid-week event I needed to get my pinots to San Francisco in order to participate in the #PinotNoir twitter tasting. I got them, but it did involve a 2 hour rental of a car, a grand and expensive tour of the city, and a few very confusing explanations to my co-workers about what in the hell a Twitter tasting is. This co-worker confusion quickly turned to acceptance when they were given the leftover wines the following morning.

Besides offering a large and aggressive consumer impression for Pinot Noir itself, this tasting was designed to have a bit of competition between the great Pinot Noir regions. Joe Herrig of Suburban Wino offers a comprehensive list of the Twitter hashtags that were used to submit votes for each individual's favorite region. I was lucky enough to taste a Willamette Valley, Edna Valley/San Luis Obispo, and Santa Maria Valley/Santa Barbara County pinot noir and record my impressions:

Tolosa 2005 Pinot Noir Estate Edna Ranch - A slightly translucent scarlet red, this wine had a tart strawberry rhubarb nose, with a bit of herb. The fruit seemed a bit retracted as the supple mouthfeel gave off flavors of dusty red fruit, a pronounced earthiness, and some nice spice. The finish was short and gave the impression that the wine may have been more enjoyable when it was initially released (it is no longer available for purchase). The 2007 vintage is currently available from the winery for only $28. At that price, and with the vintage information that is coming out about the 2007 Edna Valley pinots, I would recommend trying this wine. View the winemaker's live tasting video of the 2007 wine here. I score the vintage I tried at a 3/5 but my interest in Edna Valley is peaked enough that I will visit Tolosa next time I am in San Luis Obispo.

Consilience Bien Nacido Vineyards Pinot Noir 2006 - Located rather close to Edna Valley, the Santa Maria Valley frequently produces some of California's most praised Pinot Noir. Consilience is a rather small producer, producing just 654 cases of this wine. The pinot was much more opaque than the previous wine, with a nose full of ripe cherries, a bit of gamey leather, and some very intriguing musty mushroom (LOVE THIS). With a big 'ol swirl of the glass I also picked up a very present Big Red cinnamon whaff. The mouthfeel on this wine was very silky, with ripe red cherry and strawberry flavors and hints of vanilla. The wine is 16% abv and did have a bit of heat on the finish, but this settled down the longer the wine sat open. The Consilience sells for $36.00 which is actually a nice price point for what this wine offers: 3.5/5.

But the winner of the evening was the Willamette Valley Vineyard 2008 Founder's Reserve Pinot Noir. This translucent purple-red wine was a bit closed at first (it isn't even released yet) but ultimately offered up seductive aromas of cherry, blackberry, some toasted oak, coffee, and some good old fashioned earthy funk. It was medium bodied with some slightly tart cherry flavor, smoke, fresh earth, and just a bit of a piney mint. This wine almost makes you blush in its appeal, and epitomizes why pinot has the reputation of being irresistible to those who have given into its beauty. This wine will be released at around $30 and earns a 4/5 and a strong recommendation.

I hate the way that pinot noir makes me describe it, because it can sound so grandiose. However, the grape seems to have that power on me. In the end both the Consilience and the Willamette Valley Vineyards wines are bottles that you think about for several days afterwards. This was a great event, and while Willamette Valley won out in this particular setting, all 3 regions proved to me that we make some great pinot noir on the west coast of the US.
(The Consilience and Willamette Valley Vineyards wines were received as samples with the intent to participate in #pinotnoir)
Posted by at 6:00 AM
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3 comments:

  1. Sometimes, to avoid sounding grandiose, I avoid using the word "grandiose." Of course, I'm a narcissist, so I rarely want to avoid that.

    I recently had some Willamette Valley Pinot at a business luncheon, and I was really REALLY disappointed. I had remembered it being much better. Must not have been a Reserve.

    How are we doing on the icon/header sizes? Look better? I have a hard time gauging what will look good on a PC.
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  2. Ummm, if we weren't both a little narcissistic we probably would not have done many of the things that we did in high school.

    Yes, pinot can be very disappointing. I've had more than my share and several of them were from Oregon. When bad they tend to be thin and insipid, tasting only of underripe cherries and a bit of dirt. I've had bad California pinots that taste like cherry cola spiked with vodka also. But when good, they're really almost indescribable.

    I'm happy with the sizes, although they do look very different on my pc, my laptop, and the Mac which I'm not sure if anything can be done about. They do look HUGE on my work PC. (It perpetuates my grandiose tendencies)
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  3. Nice summation, and thanks for the mention.

    My only experience of the 3 is the Consilience. I can't believe it's 16%, but they seem to make all of their wines pretty high up there. Definitely good for drinking, though. I'd love to compare it with more areas in the Central Coast (Edna Valley in particular).

    Cheers!
    Joe @suburbanwino
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