Tasting #146 – 26 August 2013 – Vines from Oregon  – Capri Restaurant

Contents of this Post

• 1. Participants,  Presenters and  Birthdays of August
• 2. Wines
• 3. Menu
• 4. Wines Information Details and Member Assesment (by Hugo Benito)
• 5. Oregon’s Wine Country

• 6. Video clip by Expertvillage (2 minutes)

• 7. Next meeting
• 8. Cartoon of the month

1. Participants, Presenters and Birthdays of August

Presenters of Wines from Oregon:  Italo Mirkov and Jorge Garcia-Garcia

Italo Mirkov

Jorge Garcia-Garcia

Participants:     Cecílio-Augusto Berndsen, Italo Mirkov, Jorge Garcia-Garcia, Marcello Averbug, Jairo Sanchez, Hugo Benito, Ginger Smart, Clarita Estrada, Orlando Mason, Rolando Castaneda, Alfonso Caycedo,  Jairo Sanchez, Mario Aguilar, Alvaro Lopez, Ricardo Zavaleta, Emilio Labrada, Leonor Barreto, German Zincke(as of August 23).

Birthdays of August: Alfonso Caycedo (3rd.),  Ginger Smart (6th.) and Juan Luis Colaiacovo (9th.).

2. Wines 

• 2.1.        2011 Oregon Pinot Gris. Erath Winery. Dundee, Oregon.   APV: 13%   $ 14
• 2.2.        2011  Deomaine Loubejac Pinot Noir. Williamette Valey, Oregon. APV: 13%  $ 18
• 2.3.        2011 Kudos Pinot Noir.  Kudos, Williamette Valley, Oregon. APV 13% $ 25
• 2.4.        2011 Corvallis Cellars Pinot Noir. Williamette Valley, Oregon.  $16  Total Wine

Participants Assessment of the Wines

Hugo Benito presenta la encuesta:   Se repartieron 15 formularios de evaluación y se recibieron 15. Como es norma en  el cálculo de los valores medios se eliminan los valores muy extremos.

Vino 1  –   Pinot Gris 2011-Ertah Winery Dundee.  Evaluaron este vino  13 personas con un promedio de 88.2 puntos.  Siete personas le dieron  89 puntos.

Vino 2  –  Kudos Pinot Noir Villiamette Valley 2011. Evaluaron este vino 14 personas con un promedio de 87.7 puntos.  Cinco personas le dieron 88 puntos.

Vino 3  –  Corvallis Pinot Noir 2011.  Villiamette Valley.   Evaluaron este vino   13 personas con un promedio de 87.5 puntos.   En ese caso hubo una dispersión muy marcada entre 80 y 92 puntos.

Vino  4 – Villiamette Valley Domaine Loubejac – Pinot Noir 2011.  Evaluaron este vino 14 personas con un promedio de 88.9 puntos  Hubo una concentración entre 88 y 90 puntos  (10 personas) con un promedio similar 88.8.

3. Menu

3.1. Antipasto: Cold cuts y porciones de queso sharp
3.2. Ravioles Rellenos de Hongos y Salsa de Tomate
3.3. Sallisbury Steak con Salsa de Rosmary
3.4. Postre a elegir

4. Wines Information Details

4.1.  2011 Oregon Pinot Gris. Erath Winery. Dundee, Oregon.   APV: 13%   $ 14

Enticingly fragranced with honeydew melon, rose petals and bread dough, this wine could not be a lovelier example of one of Oregon’s favorite varietals. Flavors of green apple, Meyer lemon and a hint of banana offer a mouth-watering juicy palate. The clean, brisk finish begs another luscious fruit-filled sip.
Cooking Suggestions: Beautiful with all kinds of seafood (especially shell fish, mollusks and trout), turkey, pork, Asian cuisine, and light to medium spicy foods.

Points: 91, Wine & Spirits, 2011 vintage.   Best Buy 89, Wine Spectator,  2011 vintage Smart Buy

4.2.   2011 Domaine Loubejac Pinot Noir.   Williamette Valey, Oregon. APV: 13%  $ 18 Total Wine.

Tart cherries, little bit of earthy minerals. Short finish

“Rich carmine color. Bold dark cherry nose with a peppery overlay. A slight cola aroma riding underneath. Easy entry on the front opening into a full bodied silky wine mid palate with a nice flinty pepper. Smooth long finish.”

Elegant, Black Cherry, Herb, Medium-bodied

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4.3. 2011 Kudos Pinot Noir.  Kudos, Williamette Valley, Oregon. APV 13% $ 25

Wine Enthusiast: 91 points.

Elegant, Cherry, Red Plum, Medium-Bodied

Made from select vineyard sites, this is a hand crafted blend that celebrates the bounty of Oregon. This wine starts with the taste of bright cherry preserves followed by red plums and ends with a complex and round finish. Enjoy with all kinds of food!

Reviews:

• I have been drinking this for the past six months, and find it absolutely wonderful. It is a very nice pinot noir that goes with just about anything, including certain salmon dishes. It is also great for just an after-dinner drink. Great table wine.

• Special!  Very special bottle of wine. Wine does not have to be $50.00 , $100.00 or more to be of good quality and taste.

• Drinkable. I was slightly disappointed because I enjoyed the Kudos Pinot Gris so much. Nothing really special about this wine, but is still enjoyable as a everyday wine.

4.4.  2011 Corvallis Cellars Pinot Noir. Williamette Valley, Oregon.  $16  Total Wine

Fresh, Raspberry, Pepper, Medium-bodied

This wine is star bright with its garnet color and fresh fruit aromas. One the palate cherries and raspberries swirl around a core tobacco, clove and crushed leaves, round out by dusty tannins and a mouthwatering, lingering finish.

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5. Oregon’s Wine Country

All wines come from someplace, but the best wines can only come from an extraordinary place. Oregon is a world-class wine region with 17 approved winegrowing regions and more than 450 wineries producing 72 varieties of grapes. 

When Oregon’s wine pioneers looked out across the state’s varied landscape they saw what others didn’t; a perfect place for wine.

They understood that Oregon’s northerly latitude meant grapes would get extra growing season sunlight for long, even ripening, and that our crisp, cool nights would help grapes retain their freshening acidity. Such a combination meant Oregon grapes would naturally achieve mature, balanced flavors and full varietal character. The resulting wines, they surmised, could be sustainably grown and made without dramatic manipulation to be naturally fresh, lively, and have true-to-the-fruit flavors.

In the marine-influenced Willamette Valley, cool-adapted grapes such as Pinot noir, Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Chardonnay ripen to perfection, producing elegant wines with a global reputation. In the warm, high-elevation vineyards of Southern Oregon and the Walla Walla Valley, heat-loving varieties including Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo, Syrah, and Viognier are crafted into head-turning wines earning top scores from national critics. And in the Columbia Gorge and Eastern Oregon, varied microclimates allow winemakers and growers the luxury of working with the widest range of grape varieties of anywhere in the state. If you were a wine grape, you’d want to be planted in Oregon.

Great wine made by artisan producers

Oregon’s vineyards grow 72 grape varieties for 450 wineries located in 16 approved appellations within four wine country regions. You can travel from the rolling green hills of the Willamette Valley to the granite-crusted ridges of Southern Oregon; from the basalt bluffs of the Columbia Gorge to the sandy soils of Walla Walla Valley, and you’ll experience a common linking thread throughout the state: great wine made by artisan producers.
For nearly 50 years Oregon wine has been hand-made by individual craftspeople (many second-generation) who pursue two things above all else: quality and sustainability. It is testament to their commitment that Oregon is today the third largest producer of fine wine in North America.

Oregon’s vineyards grow 72 grape varieties for 450 wineries located in 16 approved appellations within four wine country regions. You can travel from the rolling green hills of the Willamette Valley to the granite-crusted ridges of Southern Oregon; from the basalt bluffs of the Columbia Gorge to the sandy soils of Walla Walla Valley, and you’ll experience a common linking thread throughout the state: great wine made by artisan producers.
For nearly 50 years Oregon wine has been hand-made by individual craftspeople (many second-generation) who pursue two things above all else: quality and sustainability. It is testament to their commitment that Oregon is today the third largest producer of fine wine in North America.

Oregon vintners pioneered innovative land-use laws

Oregon got there by having the strictest wine-labeling laws in the U.S. (even more rigid than the Federal law) in order to assure wine quality and integrity for consumers. Oregon’s vintners helped pioneer innovative land-use laws that preserved the countryside for agricultural use, not view-lot condominium development. And Oregon’s winemakers and farmers have been committed to keeping the land natural and productive for generations to come. Nearly 40% of the state’s vineyard acreage is certified sustainable, whether by LIVE (Low Input Viticulture and Enology), Oregon Tilth, Demeter Biodynamic®, or OCSW (Oregon Certified Sustainable Wine).

Willamette Valley

Location: The Willamette Valley is 150 miles long and up to 60 miles wide making it Oregon’s largest AVA. It runs from the Columbia River in Portland south through Salem to the Calapooya Mountains outside Eugene. Named for the river that flows through it, the Willamette Valley has the largest concentration of wineries and vineyards in Oregon and includes six sub-appellations: Dundee Hills, Eola-Amity Hills, McMinnville, Ribbon Ridge, Yamhill-Carlton and the recently approved Chehalem Mountains.

Wine history: Modern winemaking in the Willamette Valley dates back 50 years with the genius of three University of California Davis refugees who believed that Oregon was an ideal place to grow cool-climate varieties. Between 1965 and 1968, David Lett, Charles Coury, and Dick Erath separately forged their way to the north Willamette Valley despite negative rumblings from their UC Davis cohorts who told them it was impossible to grow wine grapes in Oregon. They were the first to plant Pinot Noir in the Willamette Valley. They also planted small amounts of related varieties, including Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, and Riesling. These wine pioneers whole-heartedly believed that Oregon would one day become an important wine-growing region. Other believers were not far behind. Within the next decade, David and Ginny Adelsheim, Ronald and Marjorie Vuylsteke, Richard and Nancy Ponzi, Joe and Pat Campbell, Susan and Bill Sokol Blosser and Myron Redford all planted vineyards in the Willamette Valley. These families worked in a collaborative spirit, sharing advice, humor and encouragement, as they began writing history by producing superior wines in Oregon. Though, it wasn’t until David Lett entered his Oregon Pinot noir in the 1979 Gault-Millau French Wine Olympiades and won top Pinot noir honors against France’s best labels that the world started to take notice of Oregon as a serious winemaking region. The Willamette Valley became an official AVA in 1984. Today, it is recognized as one of the premier wine producing areas in the world. It is most widely known for its award winning Pinot Noir, but consistently earns top honors for other such cool-climate varieties as Pinot Gris, Dijon clone Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc.

Climate: The Willamette Valley is relatively mild throughout the year, with cool, wet winters and warm, dry summers. While moisture is abundant, most of the rainfall occurs in the winter, not during growing season. This temperate climate, combined with coastal marine influences, make the gentle growing conditions within the Valley ideal for cool climate grapes, including Pinot noir. The Valley enjoys more daylight hours during the growing season than in any other area of the state. During this longer growing season, the Willamette Valley enjoys warm days and cool nights, a diurnal temperature swing that allows the wine grapes to develop their flavor and complexity while retaining their natural acidity.

Soils: The Willamette Valley is an old volcanic and sedimentary seabed that has been overlaid with gravel, silt, rock and boulders brought by the Missoula Floods from Montana and Washington between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago. The most common of the volcanic type is red Jory soil, which is found above 300 feet elevation (as it had escaped the Missoula Floods deposits) and is between four and six feet deep and provides excellent drainage for superior quality wine grapes. Anything below 300 feet elevation is primarily sedimentary-based soil.

Pinot Noir Facts

• Recommended Growing Regions:      Burgundy (France); Carneros, Santa Barbara, Sonoma (California), Oregon, New Zealand.

• Flavor Profile: Bright red fruit flavors with substantial minerality and earthiness.

• Food Pairings: Roast chicken, salmon, game birds.

• Other Notes: Since Pinot Noir is an especially finicky grape, pay careful attention to the specific vintage.

6. Video clip by Expertvillage (2 minutes)

Expertvillage presents a short video on Pinot Noir. If you have a couple of minutes check it out!

7. Next Wine Tasting: September 2013

Top 100 Vines.     Presenters: Juan Luis Colaiacovo and Alfonso Sanchez.

8. Cartoon of the Month

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