2014 Patricia Green Cellars Pinot Noir Berserker Cuvée

WINE TALK
41

Along the same lines as Corey - my remark was just confirming that I too have noted a bitter finish.
I honestly don’t recall getting the same in the 2013…or in any wine that I have had in recent memory.

My main concerns/hope - will this go away? Will it become more pronounced?
What is the cause?
Other than, I make no other declarations, of ageability or otherwise.

42

bitter finishes in young red Burgs often disappear over time. Don’t know about domestic Pinot.

43

I wouldn’t spend much time worrying about it, it will disappear. Folks can go ahead and drink it up now, but the wine will be fine in 5 years, and fine in 10 years. I wouldn’t worry about tucking it away and forgetting about it for a while. If fact that might be smart.

44

I’ve opened three bottles so far and the wine is in need of at least six months of additional aging or let it decant for several (4 to 6) hours, it is not a pop and pour type wine even though the price point is great. I enjoy the wine now but it will be much much better in the future when it has had time to soften. I’ve noticed each time I’ve opened one the wine is softening so I feel good about its future- it definitely has the fruit structure there in abundance and just needs to round out the rough edges.

45

Jim and Patty are great at making pinot noir and have experience doing it a long time from a ton of different sources. They’ve also managed to adapt and keep their house style even in a run of several pretty warm years. If there was a producer that I wouldn’t worry about in terms of the evolution and end place of a wine, it’s them.

I don’t fault anyone for talking about how they perceive the wine now, good or bad. I’m always curious what others are experiencing from a wine, especially since so many of us bought this together.

46

Completely agree Ron.

47

Well, I’m not the experienced taster of many here but I adored the first round of this wine and opened my first bottle of the new vintage last night while out for dinner with a friend who loves Pinot. We happily demolished the bottle and found it a good companion to our food. I did not notice a bitter note - and I really like the sheer drinkable pleasure of these bottles. I will try to leave a few to age but I’m not sure I will manage!

48

I just received the Patricia Green email with Wine Advocate scores in it and was shocked that WA didn’t get to taste and rate Berserker Cuvee! [berserker.gif] [pwn.gif]

49

Not wasting the good stuff on them.

50

Jim–

I’ve been totally out of commission this spring. Is this offer still available?

51

I have been trying to get my act together to send out a letter to folks on the remaining cases of this. We will not be making one of these in 2015 so this bottling will be it (for the foreseeable future although maybe someone else can take up the mantle).

52

Any of this still available? Bought the 13, kind of asleep at the wheel on this one.

53

Yeah, I didn’t get the email, but thankfully a friend forwarded. We’ll probably be in for a case or more…the 2013 is getting better and better!

54

Any way to get access to this?

55

I believe you can make a purchase here -

http://patriciagreencellars.orderport.net/wines/2014-Berserkers-Cuvee

56

Jim; I figured the WB Cuvee was too good to last, but can you share with us what kinds of considerations went into repeating the adventure in '14 and deciding not to in '15 or again for the foreseeable future? Vintages don’t give an easy answer as I understand '15 was high yield and high quality just like '14 (or maybe not).

57

You can also call Margaret at (503)554-0821 to order.

58

Here’s the email I received, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t unique to me. Nice (anonymous) shout out to Mike Pobega in point 2!

Dear Berserker Fans,

In the spring of 2015 an innocent (albeit slightly intoxicated) post on the wineberserker.com board led to a grassroots uprising that culminated in the creation of a Berserker Cuvee Pinot Noir. The cool thing about this bottling was that it was a true bypassing of the three tier system. This was a bottling that was originally destined to go 100% out into our network of wholesalers around the country. However, there were enough people that were interested in taking it on faith that we were able to sell the wine directly to the Berserker community at the price at which we would have sold it to our distributors which was $19.

You were one of those people last year that made the entire venture possible. Hopefully no less than three things happened with your purchase of the 2013 Berserker Cuvee:

  1.  Your transaction was smooth and that the wine got to you as you were told it would (we realize some of you had to wait until the fall due to the last minute nature of this project).

  2.  You fired open a bottle within days (hey, hours, you are after all a Berserker) of receiving the shipment and enjoyed the hell out of it.

  3.  All or most of the other bottles in the shipment have gone the way of the above.

Not that the third point is entirely relevant to the point of this letter (getting there) as, clearly, point number two is far more salient however we are selling wine to a community of people who mostly, by their own admission, own too much wine already.

Okay, so here we are at the point. We are following up with all the people who bought either the 2013 or 2014 or BOTH, because this is the last vintage we are making. Once the 2014 is gone that’s it. In trying to keep this as true to the spirit of the board as possible there wasn’t any mention by us on there that this wine was up for sale again. There have been tasting notes (by and large, very positive) posted but that doesn’t mean you read them or even saw the threads in which notes were posted.

In any event we still have some of the 2014 Berserker Cuvee Pinot Noir left and we obviously want to sell it (not running a museum) and we want those that made this all possible the first time around to have a shot at the remaining inventory. We did not make Berserker Cuvee in 2015.

In as many ways as possible this is the same deal as the first time around. The wine is constructed from the same vineyards so the baseline flavor profile will be similar. There is, in my opinion, higher quality sections from the vineyards we used in a couple of instances that buffer this wine making it from better pedigree. While 2014 is a quite different vintage than 2013 I find this wine to be reserved and restrained enough within the context of a warm vintage that even the harder core AFWE-ers won’t have a problem with this at all. The wine still totally kills for $19. Again, this is the distributor price not retail or some percentage off retail. It’s a killer deal. Especially killer when you factor in the split cost on the shipping still applies.

Basically all you have to do is click here to order online: > Patricia Green Cellars - Site down > or reply to this email and, unless things have changed in your world, we can pretty much handle it from there. The reply email will go to Margaret Barry our Sales Manager who will assist you. Please give us a call at 503-554-0821 with any questions

Hope we hear from you. Hope you enjoyed/are enjoying the 2013 and at the very least will see you on the board at some point.

Sincerely,

Jim Anderson

59

The answer is pretty simple. This started as sort of a lark based on a sub $20 Pinot thread that I clicked into while admittedly somewhat inebriated in an Ashevile hotel room in March of 2015. I had bottles a 2013 Pinot in label-less bottles and figured I would find something to do with it at some point. It was much higher quality source material than our Reserve and I wanted to find a place for it beyond that. It ended up turning into this phenomenon that took on a life of its own. People seemed to be happy about the whole thing so it was a win-win. I was able to use basically the same source material with somewhat of an upgrade for a 2014 version. We still have some of that left (obviously) but I’m confident it will also sell through fairly shortly. All in all this has been a good project. I think people got and feel like they got a high quality wine at a really good price and we in turn benefitted from people’s enthusiasm, interest and generosity.

In an episode of Seinfeld George figures out leaving on a high note. Leave them wanting more. I think that perhaps is where this is. I don’t want people to have some feeling of obligation on this or, most certainly, that this has turned into some purely business oriented and even opportunistic ploy on Patricia Green Cellars’ part. I certainly had plenty of wine and plenty of very high quality wine with which to do this in 2015 but I felt like two vintages was good. Maybe we could re-visit it at some point. Maybe another winery would like to take this on.

I feel very good about what happened with these two wines and I want to thank everyone for organically creating this situation. If you are interested in getting in on it or stocking up for the last time the contact info has been left a couple of times in recent posts.

60

Jim, sincerest thanks for making the offers. I’ve enjoyed sharing the wines from both vintages.