Dan of Wine is Serious Business put together a tasting with Myron Redford, founder in 1976 and former owner/winemaker at Amity. Only 2 of the wines were commercial releases, the rest were experiments in oaks, vineyards or clones that usually wound up in the final blend in some proportion but he held back some and bottled them individually. I can’t stress enough how unique this tasting was, led by Myron, a pioneer in Oregon winemaking, vintage notebook in hand, wines that maybe 2 or 3 people had ever tasted before. All wines poured single blind (some double).
Flight 1 was all 1983 Estate Chardonnay, 108 clone, harvested Oct. 21 at 21.5 brix and 3.3 ph. Each of the 5 bottlings were in different oaks.
Bottle 1: Allier Oak. Baby powder and fine dirt dust. Slight note of sauerkraut, granite, then some rubber. Soft and lovely in the mouth. Classic aged notes.
Bottle 2: Trançais Oak. Vanilla, yellow Duncan Hines cupcake. More aged in color and aroma than the first bottle with with a bit more acid on the finish. Really beautiful and all there.
Bottle 3: Limousin Oak. Bottle variation here so nice to get a taste from Beau at the other table. Ours had kimchi and sherry on the nose with hazelnuts, orange peel, charcoal on the finish. The other bottle was beautiful with more acid, very similar to #2 but better.
Bottle 4. Vosges Oak. Matchstick but also apple and peach. The most acid of the bunch, crisp. Baked bread on the finish.
Bottle 5. Oregon Oak. Grapefruit pith, tangerine, dill, noticeable alcohol. This one was pretty easy to guess was American oak. Double blind you might have guessed Rioja.
Flight 2. The Blends All chaptalized.
Bottle 1. A blend of all the oaks in the first flight. Pine nuts, cool herbs, grippy acidity. I struggled to pick out any fruit notes. Unfiltered with extended lees contact.
Bottle 2. Rotting tangerines, dill, room temp cantaloupe. Draper clone instead of 108 with a higher brix by 1%. Lett & Young vineyard.
Bottle 3. The filtered commercial release of bottle 1 (the blend of flight 1). More pronounced age. Nice acidity but also seemingly salinity, like a Sanlucar sherry.
Bottle 4. 1979 Chardonnay. 70% Washington (38% Ciel du Cheval, 32% Salishan Vineyards, near la Center) and 30% Oregon (23% Champoeg Vineyard and 7% Estate). Myron couldn’t get malolactic fermentation to kick off and oh boy does this benefit. Sweet vanilla, Cardamom. Bright and lively with notes of chrysanthemum. If I had to guess vintage I would have been off by decades, so young and fresh. Top 3 Washington Chardonnay I’ve ever had.
Flight 3. 1980 Oregon Pinot from 5 different vineyards.
Bottle 1. Leather opening up later to cherry. Soft and lush, integrated. Tart on the short finish. Wahl Vineyard now part of Chardonnay Oaks. Harvested Oct 15 at 21.4 brix, 3.05 ph, .66 acidity.
Bottle 2. Funk, dill, and mud on the nose. Tart and short with sawdust. With air, beautiful violets, almost intense. Jack Myers Vineyard of Champoeg. Harvested Oct 20th. 22.9 brix. 3.52 ph, .69 acidity.
Bottle 3. Tons of ripe cherry, tastes half its age. I guessed Eola-Amity given the overt red fruit. Fred Howe Red Hills which is now called Rice Hill, Oakland Oregon, Umpqua, Southern Oregon. Harvested Oct. 27 at 20.3 brix, 3.3 ph, .81 acidity.
Bottle 4. Bright clementine, some strawberry, oak sawdust. Montgomery Vineyard near Shea. Harvested Oct. 25.
Bottle 5. Initially sewage then port-a-potty, sawdust, cat poop then faded to show just oak. Sunnyside Vineyard, 700ft. Harvested Oct. 31st(!!) at 20.2 brix, 3.3 ph, .83 acidity.
Flight 4. All 1980 Pinot Noir. All Amity Estate vineyard Yamhill brown-gray volcanic soil. All different clones.
Bottle 1. Sawdust, spicy and hot with some lingering lead. At the time Myron was told these were Gamay-Beaujolais by the Californians, but later he found out it was actually Pinot Droit.
Bottle 2. Dark cherry fruit, cigar box, tart. Beau’s table’s bottle had much more acid with pretty strawberries. Ponzi clone.
Bottle 3. Funk. Soft cherry fruit. Sweet, almost kool-aid. Sawdust on the finish. On the second bottle Cheetos. Wadenswil clone.
Bottle 4. The commercial release comprised of 58% estate fruit, 29% Red Hills vineyard (Bottle 3 of flight 3), 5% Feltz Vineyard of Salem, 4% Wahl Vineyard (Bottle 1 of Flight 3), 4% Chardonnay Oaks. Leather, lead, beautiful nose with just a touch of funk that made it all the more interesting. Really pretty high toned fruit. Huckleberries. Aged 13 months in 60 gallon French Oak. 3.6 ph .51 acidity. Bottled June 1982.
Summary: Some bottle variation, which was a bit surprising given the impeccable storage of the wines at the winery since bottling but I guess not as surprising given most were unfiltered and not commercial releases.
Generally it was a once in a lifetime experience, not because we drank expensive bottles of wine or even 100 point wines, but a rare, unique experience to taste wine and talk shop with one of the founding members of our wine community. There’s talk of doing Riesling next…
