Staying with a friend in Denver, got to try a couple of terrific wines that aren’t available where I live:
2024 Perry Colin Chardonnay Tsai Vineyard. Day 1 PnP: lots of reductive, generous fruit with some tropical notes and a rich finish. Day 2: more integrated and harmonious.
2022 Morgen Long Chardonnay Eola-Amity Hills. In a great place straight out of the bottle. Linear, driving acidity, v harmonious and classy.
2022 White Walnut Estate Worden Hill Rd. Chardonnay
Excellent though still young and coiled up, if you’ve just got one or two I’d hang onto them for 3-5 years.
This is a mix of purchased grapes from vineyards along the titular road up the main Dundee slope. At our visit they would not disclose the vineyard mix but did comment that proprietor Chris Mazepink had planted at least a couple of them with earlier iterations of the multiclonal mix that the estate vineyard is planted to.
On the nose the wine shows a moderately intense array of unripe tropical fruit (pineapple, guava) and lemon/tangerine inflected citrus, plus the almost eau de cologne florals that I have consistently found in this house’s chardonnays. There is a strong reductive streak with a cold steel tone.
On the palate the wine shows [edit: moderate] intensity and concentration. The body is medium, acidity is high, and the finish is of moderate length. The flavors largely follow the nose with the addition of some light toasted hazelnut tones (though nowhere near the intensity that the Apple Field Vineyard bottling from this same producer shows). All very wound up and compact at this point.
An excellent OR chardonnay though I would say a step behind the Estate vineyard bottling from the same producer. Drink now if you like young, ultra-structured, energetic chard, or hold to let it unwind a bit and show more of the deep reserves that I think this has.
Edit to add: service temp crucial on this, just pull it straight out of your 55f wine fridge and serve and you will have a much better time than if you start it at 34-35f kitchen fridge temps. At that colder temp it is muted and a bit wispy, but fills out very well at warmer cellar+ temps.
The old eight cut produces some really good wines.
Mo makes a pretty good Chardonnay. Fairly neutral oak treatment.
Seth makes good wines though he, himself is a bit weird, His wines are also quite a bit expensive.
Thanks! How would you situate the style - closer to old school Willamette like Eyrie or Arterberry Maresh with more golden toned fruit or is he doing the more early pick taut style?
Thoughts on the 19 Maresh? Had a taste out of a freshly opened bottle recently that was quite good but wonder how it unfolded after being open a few hours/day.
@Marcus_Goodfellow Any thoughts on how that bottle performed the next day?
I wouldn’t have minded his 2022 Eola-Amity Hills to be cheaper, and there are such great competitors at its price point that there’s a QPR discussion to be had. He’s significantly dropped the price for his 2024 Eola-Amity Hills though. Does anyone know the story behind that and whether it is similar to its predecessors?
On the same trip, I enjoyed his 2023 Willamette Valley even more, mirroring a similarly great experience with his 2021 WV, and I thought those were both c. $50 very well spent. If anyone thinks other Oregon chardonnays are comparable or preferred at that price point, then I’d love to get the recommendations.
Walter Scott Cuvée Anne and White Walnut Estate estate vyd chard are both wines you’d probably like in a similar price range and style. But love Seth’s wines.
Also the Goodfellow svd chards are mostly in that $40-55 range and are really good. A bit more lithe and crystalline than the Walter Scott + Morgen Long model. In my mind new wave Oregon chard is sort of a midpoint between Chablis and the Côte d’Or, and Marcus’s wines are one peg closer to Chablis than W-S and M-L.
Nothing major has changed in Seth’s Eola for 24 aside from the price drop. My sense is Seth is just dialing in his pricing more after the fairly significant jump in 22. At the current price it’s a very good value. Pricing wine is very challenging…
I’m tasting my way through the 2024s. So far I’ve had the XO, Witness Tree, Koosah, and Eola. Eola showed the best, and the XO was the least exciting. Eola is a very complete wine at $65.
I love seth’s wines, vincent royer is a really nice wine, violin bracken was great, goodfellow single vineyards are really nice, all in the $50 range. Will’s ava wines and the berserker stuff that Marcus and Vincent make. Honestly, great time to be an oregon chard fan, really execellent top end atuff in the 50 to 120 range, and lots of interesting wines sub 50.
All the wines in the line up tasted very well the next day. The Atererberry-Maresh was among the most textural of the wines, a little softer than the Grochau and Violin, maybe a touch less intensity but very good.
We had a range of Goodfellow open recently.
Most of the wines from 2017-2021 are in a great point to explore them as long as you take your time.
The current vintages (2023-2024) for us definitely lean a bit more to Chablis, and honestly more like 1980s wines (I bought a Styx t-shirt on a whim and maybe that is affecting my mental state in the vineyard…).
But the 2021 “Psycho Killer” bottling as well as the 2021 Richard’s really seem to be showing a density that I associate more with Meursault, and alongside a 2021 Mikulski Meursault-Charmes VV the connection was easy to see.
We had a an MW candidate helping us out and it was fun to watch their head explode on that flight.
Thanks. That result is not surprising to me. As much as I generally prefer the leaner, more chiseled Chardonnays from Oregon, I have a soft spot for A-M Maresh and Cameron CE which are a bit rounder and more fruit forward than yours, WS, ML, Violin, etc.
Seth’s 2023 Temperance Hill Chardonnay is a fabulous wine (IMO).
But as others have noted, it’s a great time to explore. There are a bunch of excellent Chardonnays being made.
Value: Excellent wines modest pricing
Twill
Violin
Walter Scott La Combe Vert
Hundred Suns entry level IIRC is “Old Eight Cut”
Haden Fig
Vincent
Championship Bottle
Cameron
And the current 2023 Goodfellow Willamette Valley is a bit ridiculous right now. Sub-$30 and just drinking incredibly well, if you like the style.
Quality but a bit more costly:
Bethel Heights
Walter Scott
Brickhouse
White Walnut
Abbot Claim
Cameron
Martin Woods
Granville
Arterberry-Maresh
Kelley Fox
If you’re visiting again, ping me and I’ll pull one of the older Richard’s Cuvees or Temperance Hill. It’s worth the time.
I like a range of styles as well, even if I prefer the leaner more energy driven style. Cameron has the fruit and the Chardonnays are delicious. The A-M was in the middle, not really fruit forward but definitely texturally more plush than most of the wines.
It was really cool to see the line up, but my take away was that not enough people really know enough about Oregon chardonnay producers yet. The Grochau and Violin being new to Jay Scheiring surprised me. He’s was co-owner of one of the best wine shops in Seattle and turned me onto a really fantastic Sylvaner from Franconia. We still have a lot of work to do raising awareness for Chardonnay in Oregon.
this needs to be a formal announcement bc I will move heaven and earth to be there
Agree wholeheartedly
