Results from mini-vertical of Boedecker Cellars Pinot Noirs

On Saturday, June 25th, we held a lightly structured mini-vertical tasting of our wines from 2003-2008.  Athena and I would like to thank everyone who participated, as you gave us the reason to taste more of our wines side by side than we had ever done before.

Overall verdicts:
- All the wines still had fabulous fruit and amazing vibrancy
- For the "Do wines age in Stelvin?" crowd, yes, the wines had matured similarly to wines in premium cork finish bottles...and not a single bottle out of all 40 bottles was flawed.
- Leave the 2008 and 2007 wines in bottle for a while longer. They're delicious, but still tightly wound.
- 2003 Pinots are finally tasting integrated. The fruit is still huge, and they are a riper style of Pinot, but they are approaching a state of balance now.
- Of all the wines, only the '04s were starting to show those cool flavor notes and aromatics you only get in aged Pinot Noir. I'm very excited to taste these again in 3-4 years when the foreground fruit drops back a little further.
- No one should be in a hurry to drink any of these wines. Certainly, they're enjoyable, but none of the wines are "peaking" yet. (The '05s and '06s are soooo delicious, it's difficult to resist opening them.)


Here's the ranking from 30 people at our "When we have time every couple of years" vertical tasting. Wines are shown in order of crowd preference. [Note: All wines were decanted for 4-5 hours prior to tasting.]


Flight 1: Athena & Stewart Pinot Noirs


2005 Stewart (Athena's personal "right now" favorite)
2006 Stewart
2005 Athena
2004 Stewart (Stewart's personal "right now" favorite)
2004 Athena
2007 Athena


Flight 2: Vineyard Designate Pinot Noirs [all very close in ranking]


2004 Momtazi
2004 Stoller
2008 Cherry Grove
2006 Momtazi
2008 Stoller
2007 Cherry Grove


Bonus Flight: 2003 Stewart& Athena - The wines that started it all
- As I state above, the wines from our premiere vintage in 2003 are just to the point where Athena and I think they are in balance.  This was such an atypical vintage for Oregon, we weren't sure how they would age.  Pleasingly enough, they are developing nuance with age while maintaining plenty of that juicy, powerful fruit.

Test Google Earth Tour of Boedecker Cellars' Vineyards

Test run of embedded Google Earth Tour

Ending the blogger's block

Trying to overcome the internal editor of the mind and just start writing again is always difficult.  Especially today when so many others are writing, it's hard to get passed the "someone else is probably already writing about this" blockage.  So folks, stick with me as I try to get back on the Vintage 2011 documentation horse.

OK, so how has 2011 been in Oregon so far?  Well, it's been wet and cold. Even with summer weather finally arriving this week, we're running ~ 4 weeks behind normal, and even 7-10 days behind 2010.  That's a little scary, since we didn't start harvesting Pinot Noir until Oct 20th last year.  But, it's early days here in the Willamette Valley, and we can catch up. 

Also, if I look at the other recent vintages that ran late into October (e.g., 2008, 2010), I'll take the extra stress about weather if I can get the beautiful flavors and aromatics that we get during the slow, cool years. Although it's overstated, Pinot Noir really is a cool weather varietal.  The nuance and transparent beauty we get here in Oregon during the stressful vintages cannot be beat.

More on vineyards and progress to come soon.  Also, we're hosting a mini-vertical tasting at the winery this weekend. I'll try to post tasting notes ASAP.