Thank you for the trip advice to Oregon. Below is my trip report (no pretense here, I am a novice and many comments below reflect this).
We visited the wineries in order of:
Beaux Frerre
Patricia Green
Winderlea
Walter Scott
Cristom
Bethel Heights
Domaine Drouhin
De Ponte Cellars
We stayed at:
Brookside Inn in Carlton. Highly recommend the place. Owners are great folks who are running the B&B as a non-profit to channel profits towards local and international (Ghana) charities focused on agriculture. Ground is on a ton of acreage with lakes, trees, trails etc. Opened a year ago. And 15 minutes away from Ribbon Ridge/Dundee Hill major wineries.
Major Takeaways:
We spent nearly the whole trip tasting wines that would not be ready for many years - and we were unprepared for this! And library wines were not readily available to taste. This surprised us the most, as only Beaux Frerre (on their “Comparative Tasting” tried '07 and '08) and De Ponte (who hold back cases proactively/have the slowest releases) were able/willing to pour older vintages. As a result, for the vast majority of the trip, we were tasting 2014 and some 2013. Being novices, we didn’t appreciate ahead of time that we would be tasting wines that wouldn’t be ready for show time for another 5+ years. Indeed, I was confused at first… so many of the wines were so tart (to me) and unbalanced… and people seemed to be buying them to drink now! Only after a few conversations did I appreciate that (i) many of the Oregon producers that I visited have small libraries, (ii) were sold out of more recent vintages, e.g. 2011s and 2012s, and (iii) don’t proactively tell their visitors that the 2014s they are tasting should be cellared for many years.
Must be prepared to cellar for years if buying. We don’t have a cellar, but I’m hoping my father won’t mind 30 bottles we picked up for his basement. I’ve never bought bottles for 5-10 years aging before…
Such a wide spectrum of wine styles! The PCG tasting really highlighted this to us… all 2014 vintage in the tasting… ?we tasted 8?, and the differences and range was so long.
Pricepoints for stuff we really liked was higher than expected. I naively assumed Oregon was going to be cheaper. Our first stop at Beaux Frerre and our favorite bottle at Patricia Greene cured that naivete real quick.
I have a better sense for what I like! I never realized the finish of a wine was so important to me. I also find well rounded wines a little boring.
Winery Takeaways:
Beaux Frerre - The most “napa like” of our wine tastings. I imagine this is price point driven (this was the highest average priced winery we visited), but also because the Comparative Tasting allowed us to taste prior vintages. I liked the 2007, but I wasn’t ready to pay $120 for it. We purchased two 2013s which had both fruit & structure/tannins we thought would marry well over time. There was another bottle I cannot recall that we almost bought, which was a more Burgundian style wine… but I was fearful it would mature too thin for my liking. At Beaux Frerre we had yet to appreciate (i) the cellaring our future purchases would all need, and (ii) the inability to taste the peak aged product.
Patricia Green - the most bipolar of our tastings. First off, really enjoyed the format of this tasting: 8 wines of the same vintage letting you focus on the different terroir and impact on the grapes, and ordered from cheapest to most expensive (providing some interesting structure to the tating). Negatively, we didn’t like a lot of the wines. Too fruit-forward/tart for my liking (not understanding at the time they probably need to be aged for many years?). We liked the Freedom Hill Pommard and considered buying that, and if we had a cellar etc. probably would have. The Notorious was good, but didn’t get us flowing. The 15 Year Cuvee was then going to be our go to. We then tried the 2014 Mysterious. This was our FAVORITE tasting of the trip. Knocked my socks off. It was only a little taste, but we picked up a couple of those for drinking in ?3-6? years. It had this lively fruit, but also this structure and long finish. It was lively, yet balanced. At $100/bottle, this was when we realized “we are going to spend more here than we realized”
Winderlea - this was a somewhat disappointing tasting given the fans out there. I was hoping to turn away from the unripened fruit and get some earth in my glass. But I think the earthiest wine I tasted had a bit of a shorter finish and was a bit thin for my liking. We bought a bottle of the Legacy for $85 because we were there. this is the purchase on the trip I am most unsure about. They had some real lively whites (the chardonnay was a glass of lemon zest to me), but I don’t drink much white.
Walter Scott - Love these people! Busy winemakers who graciously take the time to answer questions, no matter how dumb. More imporantly, I thought their $45 priced 2014s were at this point the best price point we tasted. We really liked their style of wine: lively, yet more structured/balance. They are very excited for their 2015, so we bought some futures for their Muertos (we barrel tasted it). We think we liked the PCG’s 2014 Mysterious more (already in bottle), but we were pretty excited for Muertos, and their upcoming releases. We picked up a few bottles of the 2014 Soujourner as well - drinks tight now, but felt like it had a lot of upside from here. We honestly liked the other 2014s as well, and could have picked up another different bottle or two – but we upgraded to the 2015 Muertos. We also bought 2 of their Chardonnay.
Cristom - Interesting guided tasting by a great host. Of their “Four Ladies”, Marjorie was the winner for us. We liked the earthiness of that bottle, over the others. What is the most interesting bottle for us, however, was their $50 2013 Estate blend. We picked up a few of these. This was BRIGHT fruit, and lots of tannins/structure/finish (vs. our prior tastings at this point). They say its from the whole cluster fermentation. Nevertheless, I am hoping this fruit dies down significantly with age, creating an integrated flavor/finish bomb of the future. If I’m wrong, I still think this wine will be very awesome, albeit more fruity than my liking. The 2013 estate hasn’t been released yet, but can be ordered at the tasting room in the guided tasting (not the regular way) and over the phone. I’m told its having a decent reception in the tasting room, but hasn’t had that big of an audience yet.
Bethel Heights - Overall was a little disappointed with most of the regular way line-up: well balanced 2014s that didn’t interest me so much (although good wines). What we DID like was their “Southeastern Block”. This was a real earthy wine which we are hoping gets more integrated with time. We thought this was great value (?45? I can’t recall) vs. other tastings we did. We ended up topping this purchase with some of their higher end purchases to age alongside (I got carried away). As I’m typing this, I’m now realized I bought more on this trip than I realized and don’t have obvious room to store. I think some of these Southeastern Blocks will be gifts. The staff at Bethel Heights were great and I loved our wine host.
Domaine Drouhin - Beautiful room, and I loved the service. We bought two bottles of the Lauren barrel selection (2011 and 2012). We were able to taste the 2012 and it was very good. More elegant of a style wine than say the PCG Mysterious/Walter Scott Muertos/Cristom estate bottles we purchased. We purchased the 2011 thinking Domaine Drouhin was the last stop on our trip, and not having tasted any 2011s that we kept hearing about at our stops. Sitting here today, I know that’s an awesome bottle of wine, but an example of the excess we now have to plan the next 5-10 years for! as an aside, the anecdote of sending 1000 barrel selections to the wine maker in France each month was quite the factoid!
De Ponte - This was the sleeper winner of the trip. We came upon this winery in interesting fashion: 1) Our B&B Inn Owner’s favorite producer, 2) a wine host at one of the more reputable producers above suggested this would match my taste [they also suggested Thomas, failing to mention the winery is a mirage], and 3) a wine host at one of the other more reputable producers above suggest I make this my last stop, over Domaine Serene. I am glad we were steered here. First off, we tasted 2009, 2011, and 2012 – this producer holds back wine until its more ready to taste! Major points for newbies like us. Second off, the value was GREAT. Their 2011 Halsey $35 entry wine was SOLID weekday drinking at one of the lowest price points we saw on the trip. Third off, we liked what we drank! Only at Walter Scott did we really like the entire range. I liked their 2011 Dundee Hills (earth and structure, and enough finish to justify the $44 price point to me), but wife liked the 2012 more (more fruit/rounded). Fourth, we got along GREAT with the wine host ?Evan? and talked about our trip, Greek wines, about De Ponte etc. and he casually suggested I may like the 2011 Reserve, which was re-released. I hope he is right, because I bought a lot of the 2011 Reserve, which added the 2012 Dundee Hills, 2012 Estate Pinot Noir, and a Pinot Rose and 2009 Pinot… took us up to a case… which brought the prices down to what felt like really really cheap levels for this region. I’m looking at opening a 2011 Reserve when I receive it to see what I got, and comparing the 2012 Dundee (which we tasted) to the 2012 Estate (which we didn’t). As I type this, it probably makes sense to change a 2011 Reserve to the 2011 Dundee so I can comparison taste in the future.
Wineries which we wished we could have visited:
Alexana: Lots of folks mentioned this one to us on our trip. From saying its “fun” to “great wines”.
White Rose: Seems like a crowd favorite that we missed, whether for the view or wine.
John Thomas: where art thou?
Domaine Serene or Bergstrom: I would have liked to do a tasting at a higher price point (hoping they wouldn’t be all 2014s!)
As I sit here today
Tabulating our haul… we have bought too much! Will need to sort out some immediate bottles for gifts and drinking. The sad part of this trip is so many bottles need to be aged so many years… sad not just because we can’t share them friends today, but also because I gaffed and I don’t have the space! If I did things differently today, I would have not bought at Beaux Frerre or Winderlea, trimmed some whites, and put in more weekday drinkables (although there weren’t many ready to be drunk on this trip).
If anyone is in NY and wants to buy a bottle of Cristom 2013 Estate, Bethel Heights '14 Southeastern Block, or De Ponte 2011 Reserve… I’d be happy to oblige when I receive them this Fall (they will all be shipped) at my cost. Serious offer! Also willing to part with some of the others if anything catches your fancy, let me know!
PPS
My wife now says, “can we still go to Napa? we can buy wines which we can drink now?”. ![[truce.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/d/d33e712b50d5efc2425bf219c404fbdb7ed0ba50.gif "truce")
