Willamette Valley Vineyards, Elton Vineyard, Pinot Noir 2007
If you like French Burgundy, you'll love this bottle of wine. This is another bottle from Willamette Valley Vineyards, that ironically, has a style more akin to France than Oregon. Oregon is typically known for "bigger" Pinots: full, dark fruit, and rich. This, on the other hand, is lighter, with more red fruits, and is elegant and nuanced.
The nose opened with ... beach! Yeah, it smelled like the Oregon coast. That smell up on the dry sand of driftwood and other dried flotsam and jetsam. And dust (like a dusty road). A sweet smell comes and goes. Maybe a cherry vanilla smell. Maybe that's a dry creek bed smell. Sort of dust mixed with must. Hard to get my finger on it. A bit later on the aromas changed a bit. Red cherry candy emerged. The dust was still there, but the beach was gone. Denise smelled bark: dusty, dirty bark -- like a gangly old tree. She said it smell "Entish".
The taste and finish are wound up with each other; which is the say that the finish is very quick. It's earth, then sweet, then berry, and then gone. The earth is dirt, moss and wood. The sweet is vanilla, but it's there and gone in a flash. The fruit is red cherry and hints of salmon berry. Then it's gone: almost like a very dry (and not sour) cranberry at the end. There's no lingering finish.
Tasting later we got hints of white pepper and pomegranate. While the nose gained some anise and violet (yummy). Denise found hyacinth, orange and cola. And later still, the finish improved with cayenne and black liquorice.
Denise said that this would be great with a dark chocolate. I agreed. However, definitely open this one up and leave it open for awhile before drinking. It really opens up after a few hours.
Cost:
$45Rating:
9.0 