WTN: 2004 St. Innocent Pinot Noir Temperance Hill

[David M. Bueker]

2004 St. Innocent Pinot Noir Temperance Hill - USA, Oregon, Willamette Valley (10/27/2007)
Dark ruby color. Expressive cherry, earth and anise aromatics, with good palate presence and fine balance. Drinking well now, especially with food (we had it with an Asian pork dish).

We had a bottle of the '04 Seven Springs last Friday. Very nice pinot and also drinking well now.

[David M. Bueker]

I think I am going to drink up my 2004s. The '02 & '05 wines seem to be the ageworthy types (who knows what will happen to the '03s).

This hasn't been getting much love in CT.

You think this is a near term drinker? I thought the reco was usually to let the SIs sit for a number of years before touching....

[David M. Bueker]

Jim,

I saw after I had it that people were a bit underwhelmed (though there's one guy posting notes on this wine who appears to be a very tough grader), but I really liked it. I did think it was well integrated and not perhaps dense enough to hold for long cellaring though. I prefer to do the aging on my other vintages.

[Jenise]

Quite a change from a year ago:

http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/vil ... temperance

Note Mark Willstatter's post in that same thread, wherein Mark Vlossak predicts the wine has a 6-10 year life.

[David M. Bueker]

Interesting. Well then I guess I killed a baby - but it was very good.

Gotta drink something.

[Jenise]

David, well, I'm glad this is drinking well. And if it makes you happy now, why wait? After my bad experience with the 2000 SS and Brickhouses going south--literally, two whole cases I'm having to just dump--I've lost the confidence to just routinely age these wines. So if I'm loving the way it drinks--it gets drunk. The 04 SI White Rose is going to be my first victim--I thnk I have two of six left. Love that wine. I'm more than happy to add the TH's to the queue if they're showing well now. Like you said--gotta drink something!

I wonder what Mark had in mind, though, bottling this under synthetic cork, if he really thought it was going to last that long. Normally, I'd take the rubber stopper as an indication this wine was intended for early drinking.

Oops, I see you already mentioned this in the old thread.

[David M. Bueker]

My bottle had a piece of tree bark in the neck.

[Jenise]

I wonder what Mark had in mind, though, bottling this under synthetic cork, if he really thought it was going to last that long. Normally, I'd take the rubber stopper as an indication this wine was intended for early drinking.

I would too. But David's had real cork? That's strange.

That is weird. It wouldn't be the first time one wine had different closures. I recently saw some variant of the Goats do Roam wine from South Africa under cork and under screwcap, in the same store display! But I assume that is made in large quantities; St. Innocent's volumes are small enough that I'm surprised two different closures would have been used during what must have been one bottling run. I see several other references online to this wine using synthetic cork, so I'd guess most of it was bottled that way - but apparently not all. I would have thought if it were just a matter of finding a way to use some synthetic corks, they would have found a white wine to use it on. Odd.

FWIW, my bottle of the Seven Springs also had a cork made of cork in it. Don't know if that's different from any other bottles of that, though.

We opened a bottle of this tonite to have with roast chicken and to try to resolve a number of issues raised in this thread.

1. This bottle had the fake stuff in the neck.. I so hate them...

2. Both David and Jenise are right about this bottling. It is ready for business and it is not. Let me explain.

Lorena liked it, but found it very backward and tight..even the nose. On opening, it was tight, but over about an hour, the nose became very pretty and the flavors of cranberry and dark cherry were subtle, no doubt, but very profound, at least to me. I really enjoyed this, and blame the fact that she eats so much spicy food on Lorena's inability to taste this wine properly.

Kidding aside....I can see where time might make this even better...but I enjoyed the subtleness this showed...somewhat like the Leroy we had the evening before....I will say this was very dark in the glass, so clearly color and flavors are not positively correlated...

[Jenise]

FWIW, my bottle of the Seven Springs also had a cork made of cork in it. Don't know if that's different from any other bottles of that, though.

Mark's top wines have always had cork closures, the move to synth on the lower end, drink-now wines is relatively recent. I think.