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2015 Domaine Serene Grand Cheval - USA, Oregon (10/8/2022)
Day 1: Holding off on a review.
Day 2: A bit more open for business but for the money this is a poorly made. Earth, dirt, mild spice, underbrush and muted red currants. Not much on the finish. Thank goodness bought this at auction for under $40. Will be using a few of these to show how a $20 wine is way better than whatever the original price on this was in a blind tasting. 85 points
Day 3: Just a harsh tasting wine. Pepper, earth, underbrush, spice and muted fruit. 83 points
Recommendation: Avoid the price and the wine. They should stick to Pinot and Chardonnay.
Canāt believe when I read the tech sheet that this is made for the steakhouse. That is que one to avoid! Why would anyone blend Pinot and Syrah is beyond me? (85 points)
Thank goodness only paid $40 a bottle but if they would have just made a Pinot out of this or a Syrah it probably would be much better.
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Apparently a historic (but still rare) blend in Australia. IIRC the āMountain Xā wine revived the idea.
thank goodness it is rare. Should be ultra-rare. I love Pinot and Syrah but makes zero sense to me as the Syrah will overpower any Pinot character.
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Waxwing did a really good one. It was a declassified barrel of each that werenāt good enough for the respective SVDs. The vineyards were good - a Bennett Valley Syrah and SCM Pinot. So, it was happenstance. A test blend showed they played well together, filled in whatever was lacking. Both sites showed well. He priced it at $20, which was a steal.
I would not expect the same results aiming to do that on purpose, as the stars arenāt likely to line up with a random Pinot and random Syrah due to all sorts of minutia.
If this was made for a steak house, Iād guess it was made to drink on release with steak. It would make sense using declassified Pinot as a blending grape to make it more approachable, and the steak helping out with the remaining rough edges. Was it intended for aging? Does the price reflect restaurant markup? They always rubbed me as an ambitiously priced, prestige marking, Napa-esque poor qpr type place.
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This was not $20 that is for sure. Scary the average price is $85 a bottle.
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Many decades ago, I put on a tasting of Pedroncelli wines with one of the brothers and Robert Parker. A vertical of Cabernets was very good. Then they opened a Pinot Noir. It was a barely adequate wine and tasted like dilute Zinfandel. Bingo! That was back when legal labeling requirements were 51% and the wine was 51% Pinot Noir and 49% Zinfandel.
I am sure that hard core geeks can bring up examples of Pinot Noir blended with other grapes that are good or better, but IMO Pinot Noir should never be blended. My only exception is white wines made from Pinot Noir blended with Chardonnay and/or Pinot Blanc.
If I could find the images on this new, unimproved (for me) site, I would insert the bricks piling on.
Signed,
Dan Kravitz
Grumpy Coot
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Domaine Serene - reminds me of this classic:
I need a low alcohol Oregon Pinot Noir
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I think if itās fifty-fifty it might be interesting, with the Pinot lightening out the Syrah. As to bottlings labeled Pinot Noir, it is not unheard of for California Pinot to contain a soupƧon of Syrah to add fruit and texture. Heck, it was a regular practice in Burgundy not that long agoā¦
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Iāve had Domaine Sereneās Rock Block Syrah from Rocks District W2. It tasted to me like someone attempting to make a Pinot with Syrah grapes (not only time Iāve experienced this w OR producer). There is nothing āwrongā imo w blending Pinot and Syrah, but Iād think you should understand each variety alone before you try to create synergy.
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In my earlier days of exploring wine, I did like the Rubaiyat by Cakebread, which was a mid priced blend of mostly pinot with something like 10-20% Syrah.
I think the blend varied from year to year and sometimes bits of other varieties are thrown in.
I recall liking it as an easy drinking, spicy red that was good pairing for the grill. But I havenāt had it in a very long time.
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A decade plus ago, when the talk was about the weight of California Pinot Noir, etc., I was accused often enough of blending Syrah in with Pinot Noir that I played with some blends in the lab. One thing I figured out was that it took really uninteresting Syrah for it to even have a chance of working. Interesting Syrah simply overwhelmed the wine at much of anything beyond 3 percent. ā On the other hand, historically Grenache was often blended into Pinot Noir in France. I think it was Remington Normanās book that mentions his time in the cellars of CdP and that he discovered that over half the Grenache made there was sold to domaines in Burgundy in the 1950s, 60s and even into the 1970s.
Adam Lee
Clarice Wine Company
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I have had that wine also and not good in my opinion. They need to stick to Pinot and Chardonnay and the prices are right on auction but full boat they are overpriced.
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Iāve found this wine to be an acceptable if overpriced wine.
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2009 Domaine Serene Grand Cheval - USA, Oregon (3/31/2020)
Pop and pour, and frankly it was fine that way. This wine manages to be a big steak wine without being cloying or annoying. There is a lot of fruit, a bit of tannin. The berry components are quite delicious. This is simply a satisfying wine that won't make you think much, it is soft and tasty and goes great with a steak. (91 points)
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Interesting what Adam said. Accusations of Syrah being snuck into Pinot as some supposed regular practice have always seemed ridiculous, as it would usually stick out, and in a bad way. In doing blind brown bag tastings itās always seemed obvious Grenache would be a good choice, since itās similar in weight and low in tannin, and not bold. Interesting that it had a historic role. Iād never heard that.
I have to point out that while doctoring up Pinot tends to ruin the Pinosity of a wine, it is a great blending grape. It can play pretty much the same role as Grenache, but better. It doesnāt make a lot of sense financially as a goal, except with rare opportunities. We did it a little.
Are any real wine producers doing this sneaky practice? I would think bulk, over extracted name brands would do it but the real producers?
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Sounds like āBrewers Burgundyā from thankfully bygone era of the British wine trade. That was t so much a blend as a āstiffeningā of feeble Burgundy
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It seems like a terrible risk at the high end. With the skill involved to make quality wines it wouldnāt be necessary nor an improvement. With grapes that donāt have the concentration a winemaker wants, they just bleed off some juice at crush to get their desired skin-to-juice ratio.
At the low end a lot of producers donāt seem to have a particular interest in it tasting like Pinot.
I donāt think so. Thereās never been any real evidence of it.
I think this is just another example of how people need to demonize the āothersā in discourse these days, as a way of amplifying their strong feelings.
You see it in politics from both sides. Itās not enough to say you disagree and think a different way would be better; you have to say that the people who think differently are terrible people with nefarious intentions who have a secret agenda to destroy the nation or something like that.
In this case, itās just not enough to say āI personally prefer pinots that are less ripe and oaked.ā You have to accuse them of being score whores, of adding syrah to the pinot in secret, using Mega Purple, adding oak chips, etc.
I think the simple answer is the correct one ā you can make pinot into a dark, lush, concentrated wine in many regions of California if you choose to harvest late, maybe water back, and use new oak barrels. There is zero need to sneak syrah and Mega Purple in there and whatever else, and the wine wouldnāt be as good if you did it that way.
I may have just done what Iām decrying others doing? Itās possible.
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@Emilio_Castelli (a BDay participant) offered a 50/50 PN/Nebbiolo blend this year: Rosso Valverde. I enjoyed it.
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