I should’ve not looked at that site. Haven’t pressed checkout…yet…
Yeah…I did that too. Then again when I went back for a few more…
Ah, there’s a fair point. 98s were delicious early. They dumbed down for longer than the 94s.
Agree with you completely on 93, 10, and 2017.
It’s great to hear a lot of positive feedback about the 93 OR vintage. I bought a few mags for my sister’s birth year. Looking forward to cracking those for her 30th
I still have a bottle of 1993 Domaine Serene Evenstad standing. Had my first bottle last year and boy was it good.
Glad to hear it. I grabbed a mag of 93 Drouhin Laurene that I’m really excited about opening. Hope it shows well
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I guess I’m just happy to have some 17’s 
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Opened my last 1996 Evesham Wood Cuvée J, Temperance Hill Vineyard.
Cork seal slightly suspect after removing cap - it came out easily, in one piece. Ruby color and great clarity. Nose of beetroot (or what my wife called root vegetables). Living on acid. Fruit has retreated. Best with food. Not at same level as previous two bottles I opened in summer of 2019.
As Todd noted, those are good to have!
IIRC, that is the inaugural year for that bottling.
93 Laurene, BH Southeast Block, Cristom Reserve, and Cameron Abbey Ridge were all superlative wines back in the day.
I recall 1992 DDO Laurene as the first, was priced similar to the regular wine, both low $20s retail at cheap spots in SF. Some of my first real Oregon wines, I remember enjoying both and who knew what was to come.
I believe the inaugural vintage for Laurene is 1992, but from what I’ve been hearing from you, Todd and others, 1993 sounds like one of the more iconic vintage from the 90s. Works well for someone like me on the hunt for interesting bottles from 93
Folks had mixed feelings on the 93’s as they were sandwiched between two warm years. I had just started working at Grand Vin in Denver (a distributor with Adelsheim, Archery Summit, Bethel Heights, Domaine Serene, Foris and Rex Hill in their book), so I drank the shit out of those wines. The 94’s were stupid easy to like and were fast money. 93 had class, so they sold slow.
94 got a lot of hype, but I found the wine to be mixed. Folks that knew what they were doing seemed to do great, while those with less experience struggled.
So, the more things change…
You are correct. And 1993 was a vintage that definitely winnowed the wheat from the chaff.
92 was an early harvest and produced, IMO, wines with plenty of fruit and no acid. Worst vintage of the decade for my palate.
20 year old half bottle. With the Herbfarm sale I wanted to check in on 2001, and remembered that I had a 2001 Cristom 375 of Mt. Jefferson Cuvée a few months back and two more in the cellar.
This wine is showing magnificently. The 2001 vintage was a head scratcher for many producers. I remember Steve Doerner, winemaker at Cristom, telling me that he was caught off guard by the volume of juice from the fruit. He had to buy an extra 30 barrels on the fly to cover yields. That’s 1800 gallons. And the wines were not concentrated like the 1998 and 1999 wines. Or even 2000. But around 2007 and continuing for several years, I had one bottle after another of really excellent and very “Burgundian” Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.
The cork on this held little promise from the moment I could see it. It had a seep through the top, and the wine had seeped almost completely up the side. I would post a photo but when I put the corkscrew to cork it just pushed the cork straight down into the wine…and yet, this wine is just beautiful. Black cherry and strawberry, perfectly expressive, and redolent(no effort necessary) with fruit, soil, pipe tobacco, autumn, the slightest hint of firecrackers, and more earth. Absolutely in the window, more years in the cellar may be possible but it’s hard for me to imagine this being better.
This is the Cristom version of an entry level wine, but they have always purchased fruit from some great vineyards around the valley, while only designating estate fruit as vineyard designates. And the class and breed of this wines is outstanding.
Well, Steve is the best winemaker in Oregon, possibly the New World.
But you gotta like stems…and you gotta be patient!
RT
It is important to open the bottle at the right time.
The world is awash in swill for the impatient.
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For the record, I think it’s a jump ball between Steve and John Paul. If experience is the tiebreaker, Steve may well get the nod. Both have wonderful idiosyncratic styles IMHO.
RT