Buy this stuff up guys. Its very good. I’m in for one.
I can’t rat this one since I can’t have alchohol for 10 days. I took a Golf Ball off the mouth and am on antibiotics.
I’ve Wooted a lot of wine recently, and can’t find the space to lay all the bottles down.
How long can you keep corked wine in an upright position?
Which one of the two 2008 wines you have featured on wine.woot (blue jay and this) are more “ready to drink now”? what about which one should age better?
Thanks, love your wines!
I’m in for 3 because this is a better price than what I got as member of Roessler Cellars Wine Club.
[edit] “As a member, you will receive a combination of three bottles of pre-release appellation and single vineyard wines each quarter. The average cost of each shipment will vary between $100-$130.” from their website.
[QUOTE=Shapley1, post:16, topic:283324]
…I think I saw my tasting notes at the bottom of the intro page if you want to refer back to it, but generally I get more of the FOREST FLOOR side to the earthiness on the La Brisa and more of the mushroomy side on the Bluejay…
Forest Floor? Okay I’m sold. Practically dripping out of my chair now with anticipation. Life’s been
such a busy spinning that I haven’t had the chance to slow down and have a serum drink in over a year. (Or more…) How does this happen? I know not. Sadly.
So I will await and choose the most lovely sunset in my own Texas forest…my own small precious eco-system I’ve managed to carve out and hang onto in the midst of a cosmo-city about to burst at the seams…ahh, yes…I will tip a toast to you, and you, and you.
Here’s to the ‘Forest Floor!’
Based on my experience with previous vintages… definitely the Blue Jay for drinking now and the Las Brisa for laying down
Was it a chin-popper or someone elses’s shot?
It was a $20 bet per hole. Ball was about 2 feet from a tree. Off the tree, on my mouth. At least one tooth went through my lip. All teeth are in place. The $20 bet cost me around $125 in stitches.
The trully sad part is that I really thought I was going to finish the round. I think I may need Psych help!
Sorry I didn’t get back to the Kosher question, but our wines are not Kosher. Sorry about that!
I would agree, although I’ve been enjoying both wines at this point. The Bluejay tends to have more velvety tannin, and the added filtration kind of acted like a racking to soften things up a bit.
Still, I think they are both doing well…
I have the 2007 La Brisa and the 2008 Red Label/Sonoma County in my cellar, but haven’t tried either yet. If I wanted to open one of those to get a sense of what the 2008 La Brisa is like, which would you suggest? In other words, terroir versus vintage. Thanks.
I would say that 2008 is somewhere in between 2006 and 2007, in that it is a little more restrained than 2007 and quite a bit more fruit forward than 2006 was at the same age. The 2006’s have really blossomed over time, and in many ways I wish I could have held them back and released thewm now, but I liked them early as well. We have been pouring a couple of 2006’s - the Hein and Ridges - in the tasting room the last few weeks, and they are really shining, although those 2 wines really took a long time to open up.
I have the same situation. I’ve been storing bottles inside the Styrofoam packing elements from the shipping boxes, and stacking those to create a makeshift rack. Of course, I can’t see what is in each bottle, but I can keep the bottles stored on their sides.
Ah, the ageability question… 
it’s always hard to know for sure, but I feel like both of these wines will hold up to several years of aging. If I had to bet on it, I would probably trust the La Brisa to age longer than the Bluejay from 2008, given the smoke taint filtration, but then it’s hard to know as I haven’t ever filtered for smoke-taint before. Maybe it will end up lasting longer for it! Sorry to sound like a novice on my own turf, but the Smoke filtration thing was definitely a new one for us.
I think the “knocked-back” aromatics I mentioned for the Bluejay have largely come back, as a result of filtering early and allowing it to rest for a good 8 months or so before bottling, but so far I have found that all of our wines continue to develop in bottle, and so it will most likely pick-up some further complexity over time.
It will be interestig to hear what the labrats have to say, but my wife and I have enjoyed the La Brisa a lot at home over the last few monthys, and it just keeps getting better…
So what do you think the optimal year range would be for this wine?
Wow… another evasive answer, I’m afraid, but its’ 50/50! The terroir is definitely the driving force in the flavor profiles of the wines, but the vintage can also be a pretty accomplished driver… Vintage will probably affect more of the weight, structure, and forwardness, while the AVA/vineyard is really going to drive the overall aromatic and flavor profile. This is an oversimplification, and the nuances of vintage can bring out or knock back elements in the character of the wine, but I think the region will stand out more. Red Label is Russian River + Carneros in 2008, and La Brisa is True Sonoma Coast + Petaluma Gap for both 2007 and 2008, so they are going to be quite different regional expressions of Pinot.
Sorry to not have a better answer for you!
I don’t tend to be able to keep my wines around long, given that I drink them too quickly :), but I’d be comfortable with 5+ years. It’s hard to talk about 10 years, given that we’ve only made wine for 10 years and the winemaking has changed over that time, so it’s hard to know how our current wines would do compared to some of the earlier wines. I do think that we’ll see some good ageability in our wines going forward past the 5+ I’ve mentioned, but it’s hard to know for sure at this point.
I tend to enjoy the wine now, but I’m sure that it will improve over the next few years and it will continue to last past that. Some folks prefer the aged quality to an aged wine while others prefer youthful character in a wine, so it’s hard to say what “optimal wil be”…
Really loved the Blujay! Does the La Brisa have as much fruit coming through as the Blujay? Or is it more subdued?
Cheers!
There’s definitely a lot of fruit in the La Brisa, just a different range. But it also has more of the foresty aromas on the earthy side, along with some leather and cola. Overall, I’d say the La Brisa is a combination of Bright fruit with dark, foresty undertones.
Earliest woot I’ve made for a long time. in for the full monty! Winemaker is nuts about showing terroir, rpm loves it, so it’s NOT Parkerised… and wellington corroborates this, it has a universally high reputation round here after tasting, so it’s also accesible. And I LOVE blackberries. 
I’d LOVE to rat this, but only if you can overnight that bottle to me in Macau! Would go well with Macanese lamb dishes. And possibly with baked clam too, though that might be pushing it. I suspect UPS isn’t up to the distance, sadly.
Klez,
From Roessler’s Dan Heim in the Jan09 trio wooting:
"1. I feel that the wines are very approachable right now, however with time these wines will begin to permeate more, and reach stages of integration. For me, young wines normal give off a feel that something is missing. With these wines it normally takes between 3 – 5 months after bottling for this integration to take place. The wines just seem to blossom after that as the acid, tannins, oak and juiciness of the wines hit a balance.
In terms of how long these wines will continue to improve… We are still drinking our wines from the 2000 & 2001 vintages, and they are great. However, for the 2006 vintage, I might suggest a little less aging. I would say drink now – 2011.
"
I’m guessing that this will last longer than the 06, that being a less vintage year, or so it seems from this and other descriptions I’ve seen in that forum of the 06 as being lighter.