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Tag: Willamette Valley

Chardonnay – Both Maligned & Loved

As one of the world’s most popular wine grapes, I feel bad for Chardonnay. Opinions of the wine are intense and quite polarizing thanks to California winemakers’ style choice back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Wines, back then, were flamboyantly big, bawdy, and voluptuous. They were heavily oaked, and in the case of Chardonnay, they were also heavily “buttered.”  Some wine critics praised the choice, so the crowds dutifully followed. But these wines were the antithesis of the more restrained Burgundian style, and that’s when the maligning began. As the California trend continued, sadly, the market was flooded…

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White Pinot Noir (huh?) – Absolutely!

(This is a long-form post. The average reader should be able to read and digest this post in less than 8 minutes. Should you choose, it could be read in two installments – the overview in less than 3 minutes and the specific wine profiles in less than 5 minutes. Please enjoy reading about white pinot noir.) Red, rosé, and orange wines get their colors when the pressed grape juice soaks with the grape skins. The color pigments release into the juice. The longer this occurs, the darker the color. But what happens if you press the juice ever so…

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Helioterra Wines Virtually

I first met Anne Hubatch, proprietor and winemaker of Helioterra Wines, at a wine tasting during the WWET Willamette Conference in 2019. She was presenting at the “Other Varieties from Willamette” Seminar and Tasting. She presented her Melon de Bourgogne and an Arneis. I loved them both and subsequently ordered wine from her to enjoy and write about. (There are two posts -The first, her wines were included in my Boutique Winery Must Buys, and you can Oregon Wine in My Glass.) I felt an immediate kinship with Anne, and I knew I needed to promote her wines as best…

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2020 Favorite & Most Memorable: Part 1

As I look back on 2020 and the wine we consumed, we sampled some amazing juice. To be clear, if a specific wine was featured on our blog, it is one of the best we drank as many don’t make the cut. But the wine on this list is our favorite and most memorable for 2020.  These wines are ones about which I can not stop thinking. These are wines that tick every box for what I love in a wine. These are also wines that shocked me. Shocked, insofar as I am usually not a big fan of that…

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Sip, Taste, Chug – Let’s do this!

Sip: Those special wines that fall into your lap or forgot that you even had. Taste: New wines to share with others. Chug: Doing what I did to get through the election and COVID-19. You may not have heard much from me lately, but I have been busy sipping, drinking, and tasting a lot of wine. Ok, not really chugging, but you know what I mean… I so wanted to chug sometimes. So let’s get to it. Sip This:  2016 “1886” Cabernet Sauvignon, Ehler Estate, St. Helena, Napa Valley Suffice it to say, when friends presented this wine to share…

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Oregon Wine – It’s In My Glass

I used to drink a lot of Oregon Pinot Noir back in the day. And then I lost interest. Either my palate changed, the wines that I was drinking changed, or perhaps both. But I completely stopped drinking Oregon until my WWET Willamette Valley experience.  And now, I thank my lucky stars that I had this opportunity. That trip re-introduced me to the region with a fresh set of eyes and ears- not to mention a more educated palate. After the trip, I have continued my wine tasting journey of Oregon wine. As such, you will hear a lot more…

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“Other Wine” from Willamette Valley

If you are heading to Willamette Valley for a wine tasting experience, it means that you must love Pinot Noir. After all, 68% of all grapevines planted in the valley are Pinot Noir. Similarly, if you head to Napa, you must love Cabernet Sauvignon. But what really gets my Pavlovian responses into overdrive is when I discover the “other wine” of the region. These wines typically are not publicized, are listed last on their website, and not included in the basic tasting. And that is what makes finding them so much fun. The wines are typically pet projects of the…

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Le Cadeau Vineyard * Exceptional Pinot Noir

It was a beautiful and warm day on Parrett Mountain in the Chehalem AVA of Willamette Valley, Oregon. I, along with about ten others, was walking the Le Cadeau Vineyards property before we sat down to sample four of the Pinot Noir wines made from the fruit from the various blocks on the property. In total the property is twenty-eight acres of which sixteen are planted. From where we started the walk at the top of the slope you could see the entire property. It is amazing how large and how small sixteen acres are. One the one hand, we…

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