Perhaps because the good ones are far more like restrained Burgs than ripe Cali?..and William (the guy way back in the original few posts) seems to like Burgs? Just a wild guess, not being Rick.
RT
Gordon,
First let me say that I’m done buying 2007s (I bought heavily), and have moved on to looking at 2008s (I expect that I’ll buy heavily again). My reasons for buying 2007? 1) As I said in my previous post, there were some superb wines made in 2007. 2) After 30 years of tasting Oregon Pinot, I’ve found that producer trumps vintage in almost every case. I buy some producers regardless of the vintage - they’re just that good. 3) Because of the bad press and prejudices of some wine buyers, the 2007s are generally pretty damn cheap. I’ve been able to buy wines that please my palate for a song! Why wouldn’t I buy them?
Certainly there were a number of poor wines made, but that’s why you need to taste the wines. While it’s really too early to tell yet, if the 2008s get widespread acclaim in the press, I expect them to be more expensive and harder to find than 2007 wines of equal quality.
That’s a fair point and (outside of the economy) the stretch of good weather ultimately hasn’t helped good winemakers as the grape glut has driven down prices, but also driven up the expectations of the OPN bang that a consumer should expect to get for his buck.
I have my favorites and I’ll support them year-in and year-out, including 2007.
But do not winemakers contribute to the problem (I know, they blame the critics) when they over-sell vintage quality?
I do think that given the breadth of wines on the marketplace, a consumer who is interested in a variety of wines (and who can’t keep track of every review) is well served by paying attention to vintage. And in those off years, producers should cut prices, declassify, whatever. (Though I heard that some have not been able to give away fruit out there - which is especially scary.)
I have posted this before … and it is still a great quote.
From Russ Raney
“As for our previous harvest of 2007, we can make a much better assessment of its wines at this stage. I’ve been warning winery visitors that this may be a vintage that will “separate the wheat from the chaff” among the supposed true pinot drinkers, especially coming on the heels of the super ripe 2006 vintage. This is to say that many new wine consumers who have been learning to appreciate pinot noir via the readily available fruit bomb styled wines (mostly new world offerings) will be in for a bit of a surprise when they experience the delicate and leaner style of the typical ‘07 Oregon pinots. In a sense though, 2007 was a winemaker’s dream in that it naturally yielded very pretty and balanced wines. To be sure, they won’t have the rich brooding fruit and long finish of a riper vintage, but for afficianados of fruit purity and finesse, these wines should satisfy your yearning.”
That’s really funny! All this time I thought tough vintage conditions separated good winemakers from bad winemakers. Actually, they separate good wine_drinkers_ from bad wine_drinkers_.
Both are true. But it’s more a separation of the drinkers when you’re a great Pinot-maker. If you’re looking for new world, spoofed or high test PNs, it’d be best for everyone not to waste Mr. Raney’s time or wares.
RT
Wow, I am extremely overwhelmed by the response from everyone on the board. I want to thank everyone for their input and insight. I especially want to thank Chris and Bob. This is a lot of information to digest and I will do so carefully. I decided I will try some of the aforementioned OR pinot from 05, 07 and 08. I will keep everyone up-to-date on my progress.
I opened the 2007 PA yesterday evening and it did not blow me away. Once again, sorry for a horrible explanation but here is what I thought. Extremely fruit forward with strawberry and raspberry. The oak was pronounced, not overwhelming. Extremely forward bubblegum flavor which did not satisfy my palate. Overall, it was a smooth and very drinkable wine but I probably would not navigate toward the 07 again. Especially, at the price point.
Next week I will open the 2006 Faiveley Domaine Mercurey. Off to research. Thank you again
Haven’t noticed this for Oregon pinot. 06 to 07 seems pretty steady pricewise. Perhaps we will see pressure on the prices of 08 due to unsold 07 but haven’t seen any real “bargains” in Oregon Pinot lately. Good values, yes, but not lower than they used to be.
I haven’t seen any bargains either. I’m guessing that the 08’s won’t be going down relative to the 07’s. There’s too much hype on the 08’s - I’m guessing they’ll stay the same as 06 and 07 release prices and the 07’s that are still around will be discounted because everyone wants 08’s.
![[rofl.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7452fcd8e675af869f8da01174474a545b03944.gif "rofl"){kind=small}
Well if you know Russ and his humility, then you know that was meant as a slight or to be taken exactly that way. I still think it is a great comment.
Cheers!
I am a fan of Prive and PG. Kudos to Doug Tunnel for keeping his prices in check with the times…
But i thought the 2006s were the highly touted vintage of the wine critics. To bad they almost all SUCK.
Is that tongue-in-cheek or serious?
I find most of the 06s ripe to over-ripe with mostly the former fortunately. (Ripe fruit! Yuck!) Jason’s comment that you can find 100’s (or was it 1000s?) of 06 Oregons by simply going south and buying CA Pinots a bit of hyperbole!
But to each his own. We should drink what we like! I swing both ways – I like 06 and 07. ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
Paul,
I’ll give you a few examples. Brick House cut prices across the board. For example, Dijonnais from $49 to $39, Select from $33 to $25. R. Stuart cut the price of their Big Fire Pinot (which in 07 may be the best sub $20 Pinot) from $25 to $18 and all their other Pinots as well. Eyrie dropped the price of their Pinot by a couple of bucks. Westrey’s wines are a couple of bucks cheaper, but they were already incredible bargains. The $30-33 price point where most of the big boys sold their Willamette Valley cuvee basically doesn’t exist anymore, at least if you want to sell wine. I just noticed that Chehalem’s 2007 3 Vineyards cuvee, that in 2006 sold in the low 30s has been posted off to the point where it should retail in the low $20s.
Others took the route of declassifying fruit in 2007. Cameron’s Willamette Valley Pinot has a lot more Dundee Hills fruit in it but the price didn’t change. John Paul’s Dundee Hills cuvee by his own admission is the best he’s ever made at least partially because it has more of the high end juice in it. Michael Beckley’s Harmonia (another great, inexpensive 2007) includes all his fruit that usually went into a higher end cuvee and 2007 was his last vintage.
More later I’ve got to go run some errands.
I am pretty much the same. I can’t say I dislike the 06 wines and it will go down as a top vintage. For me personally I just didn’t find 06 to be much of an adventure. The wines generally seemed homogeneous to my palate. I bought my share but didn’t go deep because most were similar and they smelled, tasted and felt like Cali Pinot and I already have my fair share of that. But hey I like 04 burgs so don’t listen to me.
Sounds like 08 it going to make everyone happy.
Jason
At $25, the Brickhouse Select is worth purchasing by the palate. Already a great bang-for-the-buck wine.
Slight drift - I noticed that the Chehalem Riesling was a Cinderella wine. Washn’t sure what to think. Clearly trying to move the wine. I LOVE the winery, have been getting ALL of their wines for a decade+, and hope they aren’t struggling (any more than most), but I also wonder if they’d sell me the Riesling as cheap it sold to Gary. Grrr.
Valid question. However, I think that the more interesting question is who oversold what? '06 is what I would call a ‘restaurant’ vintage: lots of wine, with lesser makers able to produce a ripe wine that non wine drinkers would accept from the get-go. The better producers knew that their '06’s were not as good as their '05’s and – soon after harvest – not as good as their '07’s. For the most part, they kept their mouths shut and road the '06 wave. Who can blame them. Cash flow is king. Fast forward one year and you had the lesser producers attempting to reproduce the cash bonanza, but with more austere wine. Did they over sell? It would appear so. Did the better producers oversell their '07’s? It does not appear that they did. Many of them knew from the beginning that their '07’s were better than their '06’s. And, based on what I have tasted, I generally agree. The probelm is that they are getting tarred with the brush of the lesser wines.
The last time I saw the Oregon wine industry really shouting about a vintage was in 1987, and the wines turned out to be not nearly as good as advertised. There was a little bit of that in 1994 as well but not as much. Most of the old-timers learned their lesson after those two episodes. You don’t see very many Oregon winemakers proclaiming “Vintage of the Century” every three or four years like the Bordelaise.
To me both 06 and 07 were winemaker vintages. Much more so than either 04 or 05. In 06 some winemakers harvested earlier than usual and turned some very nice wines. Many choose to harvest late and try for the CA pinot style of ripe and high alcohol. That was a winemaker’s decision and the wines depicted those decisions. 06 was going to give riper flavors anyway, just part of what Mother Nature dealt. The decision to leave so much fruit hanging, for so long, was a winemaker’s choice.
07 was a difficult year. The rain and the cool weather. Some winemaker decided to wait out the rain, drop a lot of fruit afterwards, and then allow the remaining fruit to ripen. These winemakers turned out some very good pinot in 07. The number of these winemakers as a percentage is not large. Many picked early, from a ripeness issue, and even some during the rains. A lot of lesser wines(downward to phlonk) was made by these winemakers. The case production count for those making the good wine was almost across the board down since so much fruit had to be dropped. The jury is still out as to whether 07 will be profitable for those due to lower wine volumes to sell and current price pressures. Some still second labeled.
This has been a consistent note by me, btwiw, most of the well made 07s are not ready yet to be drank. I think the better of the 07s still need a couple years, at least, in the bottle to fully integrate and come around. For those liking, and demanding, young drinking wine this is blasphemy, but I think we need to give some of these wines a few years before we try writing off the vintage. 05 was not nearly as difficult as 07, and to me, many of the better 05s still need bottle time.
There were a couple post 94 vintages that deserved some positive hype IMHO. With the explosion in the number of OR producers, the old lessons may well be forgotten. If OR’s top 50 labels were asking the $$ that the Bordelais do, they’d need all the vintage buzz they could spin.
RT