Yesterday afternoon, a friend invited me to drop by and pick up a silver salmon he'd pulled out of the Skagit River in the morning. We decided it was close enoiugh to happy hour to have a glass of wine, and he opened a 1996 Chehalem Ridgecrest Vineyard pinot noir. Indian sunset burnished red in color, the wine showed faded cherry, caramel and orange rind notes. It has seen better days, but it was still lovely, and perhaps especially impressive for that vintage. I don't have that much experience with Chehalems, but I've run into a few older ones and I have to say I really like the way these wines age. Does anyone have any recent experience with the 2001 of this wine? I've got one in the cellar, and if someone will give me an excuse to not observe the eight year rule for aging pinots here, I'd be willing to give that orphan bottle a go.
Well, that bottle convinced the three of us that since they we were all planning to have fresh salmon for dinner we should pool our resources and make one meal. This seemed especially provident considering that 1) fisherman Jim loves pinot above all other wines, 2) pinot goes with salmon, and 3) I'm all about pinot this month. So we all moved over to my house where I rolled and stuffed a whole filet with a panko-black pepper-fresh rosemary filling. We pulled the cork on a recently discovered 1997 St. Innocent O'Connor pinot that I suspected would be a goner, and it was. Black as soy sauce, no fruit. Blech. So in its place we opened a 1999 St. Innocent Shea Vineyard instead. And you know what, this wine was perfectly drinkable, but I didn't enjoy it. It was kind of hard, and one thing I love about pinot noir is the way it softens with time. This one, at eight years old, was very dark with no red fruit, no exotica, no ethereal qualities, it was like being lost in a forest just after dark. It tasted, slightly desperately, of loss.
So then we opened the 2001 Domaine Serene Yamhill Cuvee, a wine this producer makes for near-term consumption so I was unworried about the eight year rule, and more worried that I'd let it go too long. Clearing out bottles like this is part of this month's pinot imersion exercise. Well, it was neither too soon nor too late but gloriously just right. The wine had a core of primary fruit quality but was lavishly into secondary development. There were cherries, mushrooms and a hint of something vegetal that we decided was baked celery, and there was leather and a bit of sandalwood incense. The finish went on and on. This is the stage I love pinots at best. Beautiful.
Pretty hard act to follow, so I went for contrast and dug out one of the 2005's we brought back from Oregon, a tiny producer called Atticus (there's a tiny drawing of a finch on the label) that I found at the Horseradish Cafe and tasting room in Carlton (a must stop for anyone travelling in Oregon wine country, has only been open for about five months). This was a cool choice because it was a lot like the Serene Yamhill, only younger: we found cherries and mushrooms, and a fresher celery note. It was quite good, and a relative bargain for Oregon pinot at $27.
(I'll take TV Sets Of Our Childhood for $200, Alex.)