Old Oregon Wines: The Herbfarm collection

A while back Mike Meyers posted that the Herbfarm restaurant in Woodinville was selling off wines from the restaurant’s very extensive collection. The Herbfarm has perhaps the largest listed selection of Pacific Northwest wines in the country and their storage is pristine, so I was extremely excited to see the offering. Because dining at the Herbfarm comes with a 6 wine pairing for the 9 course menu, many diners do not take advantage of the wine list and the restaurant has accrued wines since the early 1980s.

I purchased 2 and half cases of wines, ranging from a 1982 Amity that is Megan’s birth year to a selection of my favorite 1990s and early aughts wines from when I was curating the list at the Heathman restaurant and then first producing my own wines under the Matello label. I know a number of other Berserkers also purchased from that sale, and thought it would be good to begin a thread specific to wines from that sale. It’s rare to see Oregon wines with such singularly similar, and high quality, storage over such a long period of time.

We started with a bottle of 1994 Brickhouse Willamette Valley. This was the second vintage for Doug Tunnell with the vineyard and the winemaking was done by Steve Doerner(of Cristom). 1994 is often regarded as the vintage that put the Willamette valley on the map, a concept that David Lett would probably have taken issue with. However, it was the first vintage where critical review was extremely positive in a general way.

Weather was spotty at flowering and the resulting set was quite small, weather in the growing season was relatively optimal, and harvest weather was superlative. The wines in youth were concentrated without being opulent, really demonstrating how stunningly pretty Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs could be. I have vivid memories of the 1994 Cameron Abbey Ridge at a dinner in 1999, and thinking how absolutely perfect it represented the velvet glove at the time(it didn’t lack structure but the iron fist was subsumed completely within the wine.

Many vintners back in the 1990s were bottling with higher amounts of CO2 remaining in the wine than is common today and this wine showed some presence of CO2 upon opening, but the cork came out in one piece and with no sign of TCA. Within 10-15 minutes any sense of CO2 had dispersed and the wine was soft as silk.

Brickhouse is one of my favorite wineries, and the aromatics of this wine immediately reminded me why I love Ribbon Ridge as an AVA and the use of whole cluster in Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. Beautiful red fruit, very ripe strawberries and bright cherry, layered on top of tobacco leaf and dried herbs and spice. The nose just jumped out of the glass and showed no signs what-so-ever of being over the hill. With time, the aromatics added a layer of loamy earth, and the wine opened and evolved upwards in the first hour. The palate retains the silkiness that I associated with this vintage 20+ years ago, the fruit was perfectly balanced and phenomenally delicious. Probably the best wine that I have had this year, and at 27 years old, in a perfect place.

awesome, thanks for sharing Marcus

My first real harvest was at Amity in 1994. Tad Seestad (went on to create the infamous Ransom Wine and Spirits) was the de facto winemaker at the time as Myron Redford was basically on the road all the time (he would literally send Tad faxes each morning about what he thought should be done on terms of picking and fermentations and let’s just say Tad wasn’t awe struck by their insights). I didn’t know shit about wine much less the harvest process. One of the first things we pressed out was the Brickhouse Vineyard Pinot Noir. Tad said as it was being pumped out of the press pan, “this is going to be the Winemaker’s Reserve” (that was Amity’s highest designation then as they didn’t do “single vineyard designations” even if the wine was from one site). I had no idea how he knew that. A few years later he brought me a couple of bottles of the 1994 Amity Winemaker’s Reserve which was a) all Brickhouse Vineyard and b) really, really delicious.

For historical context I worked about 3 weeks of harvest that year and was paid 1 bottle of 1987 Special Select Pinot Noir ($25 retail). Tad was making $7/hour.

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Give a man a bottle of wine, and he works his butt off for three weeks.

I had a few bottles of 94 Brickhouse with Tad back in the day (that he cherry picked and bottled on the sly). To this day it is the best Brickhouse vineyard I have tried. No idea we were schleeming history.

I rented a house from Myron while working at Archery Summit for Gary Andrus, ended up drinking a lot of wines of various pedigree those days.

Great story, I talked to Tad for a while about what working for Myron was like, and a few others as well. I was paid $150 and a case of wine to work harvest at Evesham Wood for a month in 2002(I would do it again).

I still laugh about washing barrels all day for you, for a bottle of wine. Though seeing your pay scale at Amity, the bottle you gave me for one day was a huge jump in scale.

Perfect timing to start this thread! Just opened my first bottle this past weekend.

1982 Eyrie pinot gris. First bottle from some older things I picked up from the Herbfarm. Didn’t expect too much from this but thought it would be fun to try. Love the side label… “The Willamette Valley is a new viticultural region“. Great fill in this bottle. Evidence of a little leakage under the capsule but surprisingly the soft cork came out in one piece. This is definitely still alive but not terribly complex. Golden yellow in the glass. Just a hint if TCA that lingers and takes over the finish. Left it in the fridge overnight after two glasses and it was definitely better on day two. The TCA had blown off. A little bit of acid remained but mostly just some straightforward sweeter citrusy flavors (? What. Sweet-ish pineapple?) and some honey elements, but not a sweet tasting wine. I’m glad to have tried this. Look forward to trying a couple of ‘92 Eyrie Chardonnay purchased in the same batch.

Very nice! Are they still selling?

Yep. Just go here and browse to your hearts content https://store.theherbfarm.com/

Yes

That ‘87 Winemakers’ Reserve was one of the first “old” Oregon wines I ever tasted. I think we bought a bottle at Stroheckers circa 1998 and it put a strong antibody response into me for '87 as an Oregon vintage. Tomato leaf galore.

Cheers,
fred

There were a lot of bad wines made in Oregon in 1987, and winemakers lost credibility with me by touting the vintage as being great. At the time the dollar was very strong, so I pretty much stopped buying Oregon wine since I could get some very good village and premier cru Burgundy for about the same price. Oregon didn’t really woo me back until the 1993 vintage.

Did you see the 1975 and 1976 Eyrie South Block for $4,000 each? They are signed by David Lett.

Marcus, did you drive up for pickup? I’m a bit concerned about shipment for older bottles— is that being overly cautious?

Not Marcus, but FWIW my bottles arrived in NC in pristine condition. It was a couple months ago, but no concerns whatsoever.

the prices from this offer are really all over the place. there were some really great ones and some really out of proportion ones. id love to visit the restaurant though

This was my exact sentiment. Some are 3x what I think they should be (based on recent auction etc), some are about exactly right. No shade, I hope they’re able to sell enough to help through things and also maintain a solid list moving forward

I did drive up for pick up for the first round. I bought a few more things though and am having them shipped. The bottles have been very well cared for, ullage on what we bought is minimal, and we’ve opened 3 bottles so far and all have been in excellent shape.

Pricing is disparate, but there are some gems in there. The 1994 Brickhouse overperformed the $70 I paid for it by a considerable margin.

Oh crap, I’ll need a paycheck or two before I go nuts here

It starts adding up really fast, but hard to beat the provenance and variety of aged wines offered

That was my thought. I quickly left… but there do seem to be some interesting older wines in the 45 or so range.