That’s the thing with this wine. Clearly shows best at cool room temp, not cold.
So I snagged a 2017 Patricia Green at my local wine shop, great wine, nice complexity. I take it there is still some Pinot left?
Which bottling was it?
Just the reserve, which is bottling of many barrels that do not get bottled. For the QPR, it is a no brainer. Had this against Cloudline, served blind, tasted and drank over two hours. The PG was much better than the Cloudline.
The reserve is always a good performer. I’ve been buying PG since ‘06 and have always been satisfied. Customer service is the best, to boot.
Appreciate the comments! The Reserve and Muscat have been quite popular as of late. Nice and thanks given wholesalers are simply not purchasing (understandably) right now.
Thanks Jim. I’m excited to try the Muscat. My order arrived on Friday and we picked it up yesterday from storage. I’m planning to do a virtual happy hour with friends to share the wine. I’m dropping off bottles this week and we’ll do happy hour this coming Friday.
Very cool. Hope it’s a big hit!
Order in for a case of Muscat.
I’ve seen, obviously, other wineries offering up a new round of wines. No question as to why that’s relevant. We have not because I have not wanted to do some other random Pinot case/offer. We are bottling wines next week, mostly 2019 Sauvignon Blancs, and I thought I might do something with that. There is also a lone barrel of 2018 Hyland Coury Clone Pinot Noir that we didn’t include in the Hyland bottling. We could offer that up as well. How would folks feel about that? I hate feeling like this is a wheel and deal site. Just wanting to work with people, especially now. Feel free to just email me.
Ordered a case. First order since the Berserker Cuvee’s, which I thought were terrific. So much wine, so little time.
I would be interested in the 2018 Hyland Coury Clone Pinot Noir. Any additional details?
James
I would as well. I’m always interested in something unusual, especially from you.
Ok, here’s the thing. Even when you feel like you know what you’re doing and have a decent history sometimes you just run into things while making wine that are just weird or unexplainable. And sometimes you do things in response to the weirdness that really doesn’t make any sense either and it works. Every winemaker here has some stories about wines that were fine that went bad and then were fine again. Sometimes they did something, sometimes they didn’t. Example: a couple of years ago right before racking to bottle a barrel of Balcombe Vineyard, Block 1B snowed signs of some serious oxidation. Hadn’t before and there was no logical reason it should have at that point. However, a long thief that could get wine from the middle of the barrel showed that the stuff below the first several inches was fine. Racked until we started to pull into the oxidized part then racked the oxidized wine (about 25 gallons) into a small topping tank. I added some ridiculous amount of SO2 to it (literally like 100 ppm which is crazy) just to see what would happen. It sat in the corner of the winery through harvest. When we finally wound things up I went to go deal with it (dump it). Tasted it and it was not only fine it was as good as the regular bottling of Block 1B. We bottled it up and passed it out to employees. There was no reason the wine should have been oxidized and no reason a massive dose of SO2 would un-oxidize it.
The barrel of Hyland we left out all of a sudden last summer turned bitter. Like burnt walnut sort of bitter. You literally couldn’t drink it. No explanation. It was in a once filled barrel that hadn’t been empty for some long time. The wine had been just as good as the other 11 barrels up until it finished ML. I asked other winemakers to taste it and no one had any idea what it was. Ran an extensive lab test on it. Zip. Perfectly normal numbers. So, put it in a topping tank and nailed it with SO2. It’s been there for 7 months now. And, of course, it’s fine. At least last time I tasted it which, admittedly was 2 months ago. I’ll taste it when I get into the winery. We’re bottling next week. If it’s fine I’ll let folks know and we can put it up here as some special deal.
Yeah, it’s quite fine. No explanation at all. I would say that if we were just going through the original 12 barrels I might still pull this one because at $75/bottle you better be pretty f-ing picky but it wouldn’t necessarily be the most obvious call.
I think we can do something here although I will need to think about it. This really isn’t pop and pour sort of stuff. The Hyland bottling is pretty intense and definitely among the more tannic wines we produce (not unusual for McMinnville AVA). I remember a little push back on the initial Berserker Cuvée about it not being a completely put together wine and the point was people were treating a +$40 Pinot like the $19 price point it was selling at. This is even further afield. Much further actually. The initial offering we did were wines that I thought people could reasonably open in the here and now and be pleased with. I’m pretty sure this does not fit the bill for some folks and I want to be upfront about what folks would be getting.
I’d be happy to buy some, sit on it for 10 years, and give feedback then. I have more than enough PnP wine. I need stuff for the longer term. Sign me up too.
Jim,
When the Kelly Fox offer came out, some of us were immediately attracted to the Hyland Coury. We are not expecting a quaffer.
I think WV wine making has progressed to the point that experienced drinkers trust that the winemaker has set a wine on the correct trajectory. The trick is to intercept it at the right time.
We, the consumers, need to go through the learning experience. There needs to be a lot of trust in order to let brilliance thrive.
I don’t know why anyone would push back on the 2013 Berserker Cuvée. It was exactly as advertised. I thought it was drinkable early on, with some air/temp manipulation. But it has evolved into something quite excellent. I bought 1.5 cases and am down to my last two bottles.
It’s funny you mentioned that story of bitterness Jim, because I have the same problem, but still ongoing. I did a semi-obscure Portuguese variety in 2018 called Tinta Caõ. It was a pretty late pick, certainly more full-body than I tend to want to do. Decided to go with its rustic-ness, rather than fight it it and try to make it dainty. So, decided to let it sit on its skin for a month. As expected, it was a huge tannic monster with lots of bitter notes. OK, no problem, tends to settle down within 6-months or a year… It’s now almost 2 years old and still no sign of chilling down. Now, I actually think it drinks OK, but I like bitter notes to a certain degree. But to release this as is would not be a crowd pleaser.
So there she sits, hoping she will mellow out eventually.
Just ordered 2 more cases of the Muscat. My prior order has been disappearing at a frightening pace. It has become our go-to wine for midday on weekends and for those Tuesday nights when you just need something to take the edge off. Absolutely love it. Pity it’s not being made anymore. May have to go full on Covid-19 hoarding mode on this one and put in a 3rd order before its all gone!