The Oregon Chardonnay Celebration was Saturday. On Friday night, Taylor Shellfish Moda Beverage, and 10 Oregon Wineries hosted 120 people to come and eat some incredibly fresh and delicious oysters and drink some really fabulous Willamette Valley Chardonnays.
I was lucky enough to participate as one of the wineries, and it was one of the best industry events I have been a part of. I am a huge fan of Taylor Shellfish, and we probably eat their mussels weekly(or every two weeks at most). TS Shigoku are among my favorite oysters and definitely the number one oyster at my house by volume consumed. Jason from Moda Beverage also posts here regularly, so hopefully he can fill in his thoughts at some point.
The line up of Chardonnays was outstanding. Just really outstanding. I held a burgundy tasting the previous Monday, and had some truly lovely wines, but the wines on Friday were every bit as enjoyable. And while different from Monday’s wines, Friday’s Willamette Valley chardonnays carried the same nuance, restraint, layering, and structure. This isn’t intended to be an Oregon/Burgundy rant, just noting the similar quality between the two tasting events for my palate.
I didn’t taste anything that wasn’t fantastic, but I also did not get to try all the wines(working some too). So below are some stand outs, of the wines I tasted(I am not going to post on my own wines):
Bethel Heights-Wente Clone 2015. Phenomenal wine, just dynamite.
Walter Scott-Ex Novo 2017. Young but such a great site in such good hands.
Evening Land-Summum 2016. this was just super juice. The new wood integrates, the wine is texturally very fine, fruit is more quiet power than flamboyant.
Evening Land-La Source 2016-delicious, finely made, perhaps a step more obvious than the Summum, but still a very, very good wine.
Brickhouse-Cascadia 2017-linear, tightly coiled, very restrained. This, the Walter Scott, and the Lingua Franca all showed what a very wonderful vintage 2017 is shaping up to be. All three wines had the balance, restraint, and acidity that defines my favorite old world wines.
I wish I had the chance to taste the wines fro Big Table Farm, Bergstrom, and Flanuer but from crowd response, I would guess everything was very good.