Congratulations to Nicolas-Jay on their 10th anniversary! Huge appreciation for an outstanding celebration format and taking it on the road! The wrap-up event in this series was celebrated yesterday evening at Lark in Seattle. Chef John Sundstrom (James Beard Best Chef Northwest 2007) and the Lark team created a delicious six-course menu to help show the wines at their best. Eleven wines were poured–one from each vintage in Nicolas-Jay’s history, from 2014 to 2025, except 2024. The wines were presented by co-founder and winemaker Jean-Nicolas Méo with insightful comments from co-founder Jay Boberg. This was a sold-out event with admirers from as far away as Nashville, TN convening at Lark on a beautiful spring evening. The dinner just flowed: the wines were excellent, the wonderful food was skillfully paired, service was impeccable, and the table was happy, friendly, and appreciative. A perfect evening!
Sounds great. No photos or TNs?
Here’s the wine line-up by course (I counted snacks—tray-passed appetizers—as course I).
I. (w/ snacks)
- 2025 Willamette Valley “Pink Vinyl Rosé”
II. (w/ hamachi)
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2022 Chardonnay Yamhill-Carlton Bishop Creek
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2023 Chardonnay Willamette Valley “Affinités”
III. (w/ black sea bass)
- 2020 Yamhill-Carlton Bishop Creek “Fleur Blanche”
IV. (w/ squab)
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2019 Pinot Noir Willamette Valley “L’Ensemble”
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2021 Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills Temperance Hill
V. (w/ venison)
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2016 Pinot Noir McMinnville Momtazi
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2017 Pinot Noir Yamhill-Carlton Bishop Creek
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2018 Pinot Noir Willamette Valley “Own-Rooted”
VI. (w/ cheeses)
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2014 Pinot Noir Dundee Hills Nysa
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2015 Pinot Noir Willamette Valley
This was my first exposure to Nicolas-Jay’s wines. All the wines showed well; nothing poured was weak or flawed. The binding principle I felt was one of harmony among aromas, flavors, and textures—a sense of integration and balance. I was perhaps a bit more impressed by the single-vineyard bottlings than the cuvées. 2020 Fleur Blanche impressed as a skillful save in a year in which Nicolas-Jay eschewed all red wine production due to grape damage from a lengthy blanket of wildland-fire smoke. 2016 Momtazi Vineyard stood out from its confrères with vivid aromatics of iris, incense, and boysenberry that (as they say) “leaped from the glass.” If I had to pick favorites, I would choose the 2022 Bishop Creek Chardonnay among the whites and the 2017 Bishop Creek Pinot Noir among the reds. But I would be splitting hairs: all of the wines were excellent.
I took a few photos, but none of them were good enough to post here. I feel fortunate to have experienced this 10-year retrospective as my introduction to Nicolas-Jay.