The 1994 Sokol Blosser - dark purple with a nose of black pepper and flint. Mid-bodied and fleshy for an old Oregon bottling. Spicy black raspberry fruit, slightly bitter. Soft (but noticeable) tannins. Pricky but distant acids. Longggggg finish. Given the age, this was a fantastic Oregon PN. Even better on the second night. Nothing would suggest this many years were in the bottle. I can see this lasting another five years. 90+.
2007 The Precious Late Harvest Gewurz from Sineann. I love this winery. They Old Vine Zin is unique (simply being from Oregon) but is (IMHO) one of the finest Zins made in America. I enjoy their (huge) PNs. I like their dry whites. I’ve bought Sineann wines for a long time, but this is the first of their sweet wines that I’ve had an opportunity to open. Well I have to say that this is one bad bottle of wine. Pees on the rug bad. Virtually no acids, so there is no brightness to the wine. And while I searched, I had a difficult time getting any sense of the 7.2% alcohol. Cloying. It was like drinking apricot nectar. I really do love the winery, but I give this a 71.
Isn’t the vineyard in Washington and the oldest in the Pacific NW? FWIW, the only time I’ve tried it I thought it was pretty good but not in a CA Zin taste profile and the alcohol level was north of 15% (that part could be CA).
Great notes! Thanks, even though I don’t usually think of SB being an ager, it says a lot for the Red Hills of Dundee fruit.
Sineann has never been one of my favorite wineries. Visited them about three times, and buy their wines on occasion. They do make a very good pinot, no problem there. It’s just all their other wines, which seem to be so inconsistent. A couple of years ago didn’t they make nearly thirty different wines( I know it was > 20). Some very good, some like the one you TNed here. If they were a young winery < 3 years old, I might think they still trying to find their niche but that isn’t the case with them, and they seem to have no problem releasing a really mediocre to bad wine. Just don’t understand their business plan I guess.
No, the vineyard is on the Oregon side of the Columbia. The tasting room is in Hood River, but I believe the vineyard itself is in The Dalles. I’m not a fan, mostly because of the alocohol levels in Peter Rosback’s wines. He tones it down a bit for the winery’s own label, but the Sineann version is really borderline for my palate.
I’m a big fan - nice value and terrific wine, IMHO. Drink a lot of this and a lot of Biale Black Chicken. 2007 is a little lighter style, because of the fruit.
Au contraire yourself! I could have sworn that the bottle I looked at in Portland at the Wine Bar said WA. Furthermore that Internet thingee and its related thingy called Cellartracker say the vineyard is in WA too, so there!
I’ll give Sineanne a call in a bit to tell them they’ve misplaced their vineyard. Either that or we get Eric to fix Cellartracker.
I can’t let you get away with being 100% correct so I will point out that you should have used “rare” not "unique’ as there are some Zin vyds in southern Oregon from which Solena for example makes a Zin that I wasn’t terribly impressed by.
I’ll be curious what you hear. I don’t doubt that everyone assumes the vines are in Washington. People think that Columbia River Valley means WA - when it is both WA and OR. Syrah out there, too.
Fair point about the Southern OR wines. The Temecula of Oregon.
Southern-most winemaking parts of their respective states, home to kinda average wines.
(Though, at the office, I am blanking on the name of the actual first PN released in Oregon, which was from down there - and I had one of those first bottles - … Hillcrest, I think. Saved the bottle. At home.)
Drinking too many wussy wines - now your palate’s out of shape. Like lifting 5 lb. weights at the gym. Gotta grab the serious iron!
Can’t believe you wouldn’t prefer Chehalem’s wines to Belle Pente.
Thanks for the notes on the Redland reserve. I have a bottle left that I was targeting this holiday season. Good to know it can further so I can bury it again.
I’ve had the Abacela wines which were okay - but did not blow me away. And the Rockblock Del Rio is nice. (Though aren’t they getting away from the vineyard designates? Of course, I will never buy a DS/RB wine again because of the lawsuit.) Anyway, just speaking largely, and not unfairly. There is one really good wine made in Connecticut - which doesn’t make Connecticut a source of good wine.
I have to say that I can’t imagine wines more different than those from Chehalem and those from Sineann. IMHO, Chehalem are mid-weight wines, with fruit that isn’t in any way over the top. Structure is good. But upon release, it doesn’t seem like there is a lot of there there. And though don’t seem like they’ll age, because the structure seems a little in the background. (I buy everything from these guys and still have most of it back to 98 - earlier is long gone.) So I sit on these things and at pains to find something to drink one night I’ll grab an older one and WOW - they have this perfect balance, alcohol that isn’t oppressive, structure that seems more noticeable, and fruit that has held in balance. There is a great balance to the Chehalem wines.
I like Sineann. I love the Zin. I like the PN’s a lot - though not my favorite PNs - but like them very much - for comparatively early drinking, as they are (arguably) Zinny. Really like their whites. Well made. You just have to know what you are opening.
I guess my point would be that, while it’s all a matter of taste, I don’t find Chehalem and Sineann wines to be REMOTELY similar. I appreciate that neither is your favorite… but similar?
I put Chehalem more in the category with Evesham-Wood, St. Innocent, Bethel Heights, Broadley. Mid-weight but ageable, with the emphasis (even in a subtle way) on structure over fruit. In the latter three cases (as I am hesitant to say much about E-W as I just haven’t had that many bottles of E-W).
To answer your question, even though you’re no longer buying DS/RB, they are no longer procuring fruit from the Del Rio vineyard. That includes both syrah and voigner. The 06 vintage, I believe, was the last vintage fruit was procured from that vineyard. They will still do vineyard designates, just other vineyards.
I didn’t say they were similar. I said they shared two reasons I don’t like them - extract and oak. What I also didn’t say is that there’s a matter of degree when it comes to the extract and oak, though 50% NFO in the Chehalem Ridgecrest and Stoller is past my comfort level, much less the 100% in their “special” wine.
The Old Vine Zinfandel block is part of a larger vineyard; I believe it’s The Pines. It is in Oregon, just a few miles outside the Dalles. The Zinfandel was planted just after the turn of the century; I want to say 1902 or 1903. It was abandoned when Lonnie Wright discovered it, and he spent several years rehabilitating it. Though the fruit has gone in smaller portions to others in the past, I believe Peter gets all of it now, making it both for himself and Lonnie Wright’s Pines 1852 label.
As Peter is a friend, I’m a bit reticent to offer any subjective assessment, but I do believe his Old Vine Zin to be his flagship wine, and one of the best examples of the varietal that I know.
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