100-pointer for Bill Easton

Some nice acclaim and publicity for a guy who deserves it mightily. Not just one if the best producers in the Foothills, he’s one of the best around, with a stellar track record going back decades.

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Congrats to Bill! [cheers.gif]

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Anywhere to buy it? I can’t find it on their website.

They have such a massive inventory of wines from various vintages, they never have everything on their website. I would just call them directly.

This made me think…does anyone recall a wine from this region ever getting the triple-digit from a prominent publication/reviewer? I imagine some of the Keplinger wines have gotten high scores, for example (as have Easton/DTR and others), but I can’t recall a 100 from the Foothills.

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Bill mentioned in a Facebook post today that the 100-point score was the first for a Sierra Foothills wine, at least from Wine Enthusiast. Don’t know about other notable wine publications.

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The 1999 of this was my woty in 2002! I probably rated it a 100 pts…so…not the first!:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Great news for a region that deserves the attention. I do have a question for those of you more familiar with Bill’s wines though. I was out at the tasting room near Plymouth over the weekend. Tasted through about 8 Easton/Terre Rouge wines and they were mostly pouring 2011/12 reds, three of which were extremely oxidised. Did I just have a bad roll of the dice? They said those were current releases intentionally aged before release, but even the ones that weren’t completely shot tasted kind of tired (with the exception of a very nice Barbera). I have heard great things about his wines so was surprised.

Glad to see the Sierra Foothills getting the attention it deserves! Luckily, I picked up a two-pack of 2006 and 2016 Ascent, can’t wait to try. Btw, if you stop in Plymouth, you must try Taste, we had a wonderful dinner there last Dec.

Yup…Taste is a gem…one of the best restaurants in the SierraFoothills. And quite a good wine list. I’ve friends who drive all the way up from Sac to eat there.
Tom

Did you ask when the bottles were opened?

My thoughts exactly.
Or, were they your ninth stop?:laughing:

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One of the icons of California winemaking and vineyard operators for decades. I’m so proud to see the foothills get their due. I kind of couple the foothills to my home county of Mendocino as an area that is viewed as second tier. I’m so happy for Bill.

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Ok so it sounds like my experience was unusual? They were our first stop around 12.30pm on a weekend day and the bottles were near-full so I figured they had been opened that morning. Anyway, they didn’t taste like bottles of wine that had been open too long, they tasted like oxidatively flawed wine. I’m not trying to rag on the winery, just trying to understand a disappointing experience.

Another strong dining recommendation for Taste in Plymouth, as well as for Allez! in Diamond Springs near Placerville.

Ben, I’ve tasted at Terre Rouge & Easton a number of times over the past 20+ years, and I’ve had a couple of occasions when I thought that one or two of the older wines poured there seemed a bit tired but never oxidative / flawed that I can recall. So your experience sounds like it may have been just a bad day at the tasting room - it can happen anywhere.

FWIW, a couple of friends and I arranged an appointment to taste with Bill on a Monday back in early December. He’d selected three particular bottles for us to taste, which he opened for us that morning, but we ended up having a bit more time there than we’d expected so he grabbed five bottles from the tasting room that had been opened over the weekend. All of those - which included three 2012s and a 2011 - were in fine shape and all very good. Notes on that visit here:
Terre Rouge & Easton Wines, December 2019

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Received confirmation the 2016 Ascent offering is going out next week. Three more cheers for gold country Syrah!

A nice read on the scoring of this wine.

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Couldn’t be awarded to a better guy. Congrats to Bill, his team and Sierra Foothills as a whole! champagne.gif

With all the madness this week, I’m very excited to have made this investment! Order in on 2016 Ascent. Two bottle max, highly recommend procuring a bottle of the first perfect wine to come out of the Sierra Foothills [welldone.gif]

Well, he did it again! Another perfect score for Bill Easton and Terre Rouge on their 2018 Ascent. Cheers to the Sierra Foothills AVA and the CA Rhone Rangers!! [cheers.gif]