For me flight 5 was the only one that I didn’t clearly prefer the Goodfellow
The whites:
2017 Goodfellow Richard’s Cuvee Chardonnay
This was beautiful, with struck match and white peach on the nose. Crystalline dense fruit with lovely acidity on the palate with a long finish.
My call: 2017 Durant
2017 Bouchard Père et Fils Meursault 1er Cru Charmes
This was a bit more muted for me at first, with little reduction on the nose. Texture was smooth with a little rounder midpalate feel. Finish was also long but not quite as long as the first wine.
My call: 2017 Chassagne Montrachet, high quality producer
My vote: Goodfellow. I liked both wines but as you can tell I thought the Bouchard underperformed. I’ve always thought of Charmes as the lesser vineyard and would have liked to see Bouchard MP as comparison here. That all being said; I think you can tell how good the Goodfellow whites are with these comparisons. I have transitioned a lot of my white purchases to Oregon chards (mostly Goodfellow and Walter Scott) in this price point with only a few splurge WBs (mostly PYCM).
Flight 2:
2019 Goodfellow Lewman Heritage No. 16
A bit tight and muted, with quite a bit of acidity. Some beautiful red fruit, especially cranberries, was peeking out. Palate was elegant but had a bit of grip. Nice finish.
My call: 17 Gevrey Village, high quality producer oops
2019 Hudelot Noellat Bourgogne
This was much more open and accessible; I didn’t think it was as ripe or hot as some did; I’ve had a few bottles of this and they had a bit more heat; this was delicious, with generous supple fruit and good density. The midpalate dropped off a bit and it had a short finish but this wine is meant to drink now.
My call: 17 Goodfellow Heritage, oops
My vote: Burgundy. This was a tough one because the Hudelot definitely felt more ripe and ready to go than the 19 Lewman. They were both good, but at this moment I preferred the Hudelot, although in 5-10 it would likely be surpassed.
Flight 3:
2018 Goodfellow Old Vine Pommard
This had beautiful cranberry notes on the nose with lots of structure and depth. It had a certain roundness of the fruit and feel that made me think I was in Oregon, but this was a superb wine with crazy long finish.
My call: 17 Goodfellow
2018 Duroché Gevrey-Chambertin
I didn’t get as much heat as others did on this. I did get a few riper fruits and a bit more palate density than the Hudelot, but it didn’t feel like it was drinking all that well. Finish was desultory.
My call: 17 Gevrey, moderate quality producer.
Vote: Goodfellow. I didn’t think the 18 Burgundy was showing well at all here. I like Duroche a lot but haven’t had many of the 18s and this certainly won’t encourage me to seek them out. Sad I didn’t get more of these Goodfellow though.
Flight 4:
2017 Fourrier Gevrey-Chambertin Vieille Vignes
I’ve had this wine a lot, which underscores how hard blind tasting can be (especially after a lot of other wines). I didn’t get the crunchy red fruits and generosity that I would have expected from Fourrier although I did think there was some nice aromatics. I didn’t get the cherry fruit that I often do. I thought this felt a bit more muted than I would have expected, more so on the palate than on the nose. The finish was quite nice.
My call: 2016 Gevrey
2017 Goodfellow Heritage No. 10
This was firing on all cylinders. It had lovely aromatics, to me, with again some rounder cranberry fruit and superb palate depth and texture. Finish was more complex and persistent.
My call: 2016 Goodfellow Heritage
My vote: Goodfellow. I agree with the consensus that the Goodfellow was clearly better. I think the 17 Fourrier didn’t show well here, perhaps it is shutting down like other 17 although I haven’t run into too many shut down Fourrier.
Flight 5:
2012 Marquis d’Angerville Volnay 1er Cru Les Fremiets
This was drinking superbly. I could tell it was premier cru level with a bit more depth, density, and texture on the palate. I got a bit of spice notes and it tasted older, making me think 08. I heard a lot of 16 calls here. I think it being from the CdB threw people off. This was great.
My call: 08 Burgundy Premier Cru
2012 Goodfellow Heritage No. 1
This was great, the first Goodfellow heritage wine. Again I got the round cranberry notes which made me think Oregon, but with a bit more age this added more complexity and texture. I got more forest floor on this one.
My call: 08 Oregon
My vote: Burgundy. I thought this was closer than some did, but I still really liked the Angerville here.
As I’ve said in my prior posts; I think the Goodfellow wines are outstanding and showed excellently. I thought it was pretty easy to tell which wine was from Oregon (except for 19 for me, oops) but as I said earlier, I thought in many cases the Goodfellow wines were better, even when compared to excellent producers.
It seemed like it anecdotally with the discussions around our table, but I don’t know that we really took a vote. I also don’t know about the other table. But you are correct, there was a lot of excitement to see some of these younger Goodfellows in a few more years.
I didn’t notice a clear winner. I felt the Goodfellows and the burgs both held up on their own. Each flight was spectacular and paired well with the food. I thought the food was very well thought out by Rodrigo as it offered a wide selection of options and paired perfectly with the wines.
This was my first time having Goodfellows and I was happily surprised. I normally avoid American made pinot as I find it rarely measures up to the French. But this experience will definitely make me take another look the next time I am shopping for pinot.
The most memorable wines for me were the 2000 Domaine Trapet Chambertin and the 1971 Fontanafredda Barolo. Both of which were part of the after party.
Like I said, I don’t claim to know what caused that note but it was there. I mentioned it at the table and at least one person (I believe Marcus) agreed, though he may not have found it as prominent. He’ll chime in with what he recalls I suppose.
Michael, thanks for posting that. Your notes align with mine pretty closely.
The 2019 HN and Heritage 16 were opposite ends of the field. The HN showed more ripeness thatn I expected even knowing 2019 was a warm vintage. It wasn’t flabby at all, though for me it was a bit disjointed in a way that would probably have settled down with some time. The Heritage 16 was quite tight(as it should be) but seemed to begin unfolding just as we moved to the next flight. I would have liked to have seen both wines unwind over another hour.
Also, no question that the HN would have been the wine to drink now, and the Heritage probably wants 8-13 in the cellar.
For anyone who thinks winemakers should know their own wines, the best I can say is sometimes. As Michael noted blind in a bigger group even the most familiar wines can be a challenge. The 2018 flight took me a while to sort out the Goodfellow wine. Weight and fruit depth were quite similar to me. Of recent warm years in Burgundy, it seems like the 2018s were the most challenging wines and the Duroche was among the better wines I have sampled from the vintage(a limited number of wines for sure). The fineness of the stem tannins and the more distinct red fruits finally got me to the right choice but it took longer than I feel it should have.
I enjoyed both of the 2017s, the smokey note in the Fourrier is a pretty simple reduction that should evolve out over time(or settle down and become more complex). The 2017 Heritage No. 10 is one of my favorite wines we have made, and it was great to see it match up so well with a producer I really enjoy. We had a 2010 Fourrier G-C Vieille Vigne not long ago and it was just ethereally beautiful.
I’m in agreement on the 2012s with the group. The d’Angerville Volnay was stellar and my preference for sure. But I also thought the Heritage No. 1 was in the ballpark quality wise, and still a bit wound up, and seems like a few more years in the cellar is the right call. We opened a 2012 Whistling Ridge on Saturday at 63 Clinton, and it was right in the pocket and would have made a great partner for the d’Angerville. This flight and the 2012 flight were my favorite comparisons.
Tastings in flights like this is really helpful and informative but the one thing that I always wonder is how the wines wpuld continue to open up. Almost all of these flights would ave been very interesting comparisons(IMO) to follow over a few hours. But we had a plethora of great wines during the after party as well. What a great night.
I noted it in the longer post above, but the smokey note was just a bit of reduction in the Fourrier. It’s a mostly harmless, sometimes enjoyable note but can be dominant before it evolves out.
Not from added sulfur, but a combination of sulfite compounds formed during elevage.
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I did not taste the particular bottle, so cannot comment as to the note’s presence. I drink a lot of Fourrier and I can say that it is not a common note in Gevrey, it is not caused by sulfur since Fourrier doesn’t use any and I have not gotten smoke as a note on Fourrier’s wines before or that bottling specifically, which I’ve had many times (including a few weeks back).
This slightly reminds me of bringing a 2014 Fourrier Griotte to a Zachy’s auction and having a gentleman next to me insist it was very stemmy.
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Yeah, I mean there was a lot of wine that night…
I think it was hard to keep track of everything that was going on. I definitely had more wine than I posted notes on, but there were a ton of bottles and a bunch of stems.
Ah - it appears no one gave it the Fourrier shake! A bit of reduction upon opening it makes complete sense. 
Ha! That is quite true and it would have probably done the trick.
I didn’t find it to be a negative, and the Fourrier was also a very, very good wine. Much like the following flight, while there was more of a consensus on the preferred wine, to me, there was not a large difference between the two.
These were the two flights I most wanted to be able to spend more time with. Partly to see how each would continue to evolve, and partly just because they were my four favorite wines in the flights.
It was a target rich environment in terms of wines to follow.
Seriously.
I remember seeing Jean-Marie doing it once and being baffled as to what he was doing to the wine, lol. I didn’t drink either wine obviously, and can’t comment on their merits, but was surprised by the “smoke” comment on the Fourrier, which isn’t a note I get. I suspect many of the wines would have improved with air (well, maybe not the Bouchards), but that’s the nature of a large tasting.
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It was a very fun event.
A note on the handling of the wines: Marcus and Megan popped the corks on the Goodfellow wines around noon and the wines sat at noreetuh until they were poured. I believe Jin opened most of the Burgundies ahead as well, though I don’t remember exactly how he handled each wine.
I didn’t take any formal notes on any of the wines, but here are a few take-aways from the main tasting that stuck with me:
It was interesting to compare the wines from the same vintage to see how the vintages are different across regions. Especially with the 2018 and 2019 flights. It really highlighted the difference between ripeness of vintage and terroir based fruit structure. You could feel the riper vintages in the Burgs, but the fruit structure of each region was still evident and clear in the wines.
While I’m a big fan of whole cluster Pinots, Fourrier and d’Angerville make very compelling, and lovely de-stemmed wines. That was already known to me, but definitely fun to taste the wines from both of these producers, especially d’Angerville as that’s always a personal favourite.
Unsurprisingly, at least to me, it was fairly straightforward to guess which wines came from which region in each flight. The Burgs tasted like Burgundy, the Goodfellow wines tasted like Oregon Pinot Noir. I say that not as a disparagement to any of the wines or their quality, but rather as a comment on how clearly all the wines spoke to the regions they were from. Far from a bad thing in my book.
Was surprised by how quickly the magnum of 2017 Walter Scott Seven Springs Chardonnay seemed to evaporate when we opened it. It was in a great early drinking spot. Would have loved to see more whites represented, but it seems like that’s a tasting to be done at another time.
Thanks Shan for getting the ball rolling on this event and for coordinating the wines.
Infinitely appreciate Marcus and Megan for taking the time to fly in to join everyone and share their insights, and all of those that came out, both from near and far to drink these wines and share bottles from their cellars.
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Rodrigo, thank you for setting up with Jin and sheperding everyone at Noreetuh.
I also generally consider myself primarily a whole cluster producer, but d’Angerville has long been a favorite and Fourrier has become another in the last decade or so. Both have the more supple fruit of destemmed producers, but both also coax a lot of complex layers out of their fruit. The floral aromatics that come with Fourrier often reminds me of wines that are 30-40 percent stems, while the palate is often still silky soft.
I understand your meaning regarding the Oregon wines tasting like Oregon but would quibble with the syntax. They do obviously taste like because that is what they are. But a reader shouldn’t think that they taste like many other Oregon Pinot Noirs.
I used to fall into a trap of thinking that the Oregon wines I drank were what Oregon Pinot Noir was like. But I drank a very specific group of wineries, and they only represented a small slice of what the Willamette Valley was producing.
By and large, there are very few producers issuing wines with as much tannin as we are, and not many with the percentages of whole cluster that we do. To a some degree the same can be said for acidity and lower alcohols.
We recently went to a horizontal tasting of Temperance Hill vineyard, and I can most assuredly say that the Goodfellow was the least densely fruited, and the most tannic wine at the tasting. Listening to the other winemakers, almost all worked to downplay the natural tannins of the vineyard. And tannins tie up the fruit, so our wines typically perceive as more restrained than average by a good margin.
I don’t mean to state this as a brag, but more as a warning to readers that our wines taste like they’re from Oregon, and the tasting showed that. But they are not necessarily like other Oregon Pinot Noirs. John noted above that he doesn’t normally drink American made Pinot Noirs because they don’t measure up to French and there are a peer group in Oregon that I think do measure up but many more that do not, as that is not their goal. And even within our peer group we’re an outlier for structure and acids.
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Marcus,
I generally really agree with what you wrote because for the most part I’ve found your wines to need more time than most other Oregon wines I’ve tried; I think this tasting showed that the wines in many cases needed more time than the burgundies they were paired with.
I’ve said on a few occasions that your wines were fantastic but didn’t taste like burgundy which I don’t think is a critique but more of a truism because they shouldn’t taste like burgundy because they’re from Oregon. To me the fruit just tasted different but it’s hard for me to really explain how. I think it mostly has to do with aromatics, but to a lesser degree I notice it on the palate as well. There are just different flavors and the character of the fruit is different. Again, if it wasn’t, it would be surprising.
I think it would be interesting to see what a wine that someone like Louis Michel Liger Belair who has a distinct style of winemaking would taste like if made with Oregon grapes.
I think it’s interesting that people are obsessed with wines having a sense of place and at the same time criticizing wines from Oregon because they don’t taste like Burgundy. I think this tasting showed that wines from Oregon can drink as well or better than some Burgundy, but at the same time be representative of where they are made.
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Michael,
I definitely appreciate and agree. I think your sentiment has been the take home knowledge that I gained each time we’ve done this.
I also didn’t post the above note for Rodrigo, but for anyone reading to clarify. There really is a distinction in how the wines taste between the regions, but structurally our wines differentiate themselves from other Oregon producers. I am very proud of our wines but if someone really likes Ken Wright(and he does a very good job) our wines may not be a fit.
It’s been cool to see that we can make wines with more of an old world structure, and they still maintain their Oregon-ness. It is also really cool to see that as Burgundy has warmed a bit, the wines still maintain their Burgundian sense of place, even when carrying considerable fruit weight and ripeness. The solar years of 2017-2019 didn’t suddenly taste like we were drinking new world wines at all.
I think that was the best part of this tasting, it’s the most clear example, to me at least, of the fact that despite global warming, terroir still shows quite strongly in the wines.
I agree with you completely Marcus. My comment was not intended as a generalisation of what Oregon wines taste like. Perhaps a more apt way to put would have been that the Goodfellow wines tasted like Oregon Pinot made by you and Megan. The Goodfellow wines is also a style I have come to get familiar with recently.
My comments we not to say that all Oregon Pinot taste like Goodfellow Pinot. That is very much not the case. Just like all Burgundy Pinot does not taste like Fourrier. Both regions have producers making wines in a range styles, but (hopefully) ultimately all still maintaining the same sense of place across those varying styles.
It is also worth noting that there is a big difference between identifying the region of wines; accessing their quality level; and deciding which wine one prefers. To that end, I think something in the style of Micheal’s notes, in which he separated what he thought the wine is and which one he preferred is very useful. And for what it’s worth, I preferred the Goodfellow wines in all flights with the exception of the 2012 flight, which went to d’Angerville.
I spent a lot of time these last few days pondering over what I would do differently if I were to redo the event. I ran through quite a few scenarios of different wine selections for each flight. There are so many directions one can do in when picking the wines. Either making the difference between Goodfellow Pinot and Burgundy Pinot stand out more or be closer together. I do not think there is ultimately a right answer as to that end.
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I think that the tasting was great. I think the 17-19 vintages is an interesting comparison. Probably the 13-15 or 12-14 vertical would have also been an interesting comparison.
I think Colin morey would have been a really interesting comparison for the whites.
I think that including some wines with whole cluster could help in some ways as well. I think 17 heitz lochardet pommard poutures vs 17 goodfellow old vine pommard would’ve been interesting.
That being said I think it was instructive and a lot of fun!
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