Last night I made elk steak with a cherry and taragon sauce, so thought a red-fruited PN would be the way to go. Since the subject of ageability and Oregon has been frequently popping up and since I have a ton of 99 in the cellar (which I am slowly working my way through), I thought I’d open the Soter.
Got the red fruit I wanted, but while it was medium-bodied, the fruit was starting to get overwhelmed by the remaining structure and I would tersely describe the wine as “cherry flavord, thinning, and mildly astringent.”
So while I am not going to turn into Chicken Little and say “I’m wrong, the 99’s are over-the-hill,” this was one of the first quality wines from that vintage that has made me say, “you know, these things aren’t going to last forever.”
I expected a lot more freshness in this particular bottle. Curious as to whether anyone else has popped one lately?
These are my notes from last yearish. My impression was that they needed a decent amount of air to get going. I really loved the wine every time that I had it and thought that they had time to go yet.
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1999 Soter Pinot Noir Beacon Hill - USA, Oregon, Willamette Valley, Yamhill-Carlton (6/28/2009)
Same as last note-This really comes across as being pretty youthful yet.
Sitting on my last two for another 5+. (93 pts.)
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1999 Soter Pinot Noir Beacon Hill - USA, Oregon, Willamette Valley, Yamhill-Carlton (3/24/2009)
my kind of pinot. we gave this a good hour of air to get it going.
the nose was very expressive,deep,and evolving~ early on it showed lots of funk,stinky socks and as the night went on it showed some baking spice,plums,cherries,raw leather,and some meat tones-i.e. beef jerky.
wine carries tart raspberries,cherries, and spices through a very lively acidic core into a nice lingering finish.
overall this wine still has plenty of life but is drinking great right now. Take your time with it as we did and it will bring hours of enjoyment. (92 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker
While I will be curious as to other opinions, I really appreciate the notes. FWIW, this was one of the rare bottles that I decanted, so it definitely got some air. I’ll assume it was an off-bottle.
hopefully it was an off bottle. I had one of the bottles with Shane last year and it was extremely good