I share your fondness for Oregon Pinot! I’ve been looking forward to this offer.
As noted in an earlier post, a cool summer and pre-harvest rain made '07 a challenging vintage, but as always, the good producers react/adjust/work really hard/make less wine; whatever it takes to ensure quality prevails.
To me, these are three examples of the subtle elegance that is Oregon Pinot.
I’d love to hear what you think… I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Good Morning everyone! All of us at Torii Mor are thrilled to once again be part of the Woot community. It’s been awhile, but now we’re back. I haven’t gone through your comments yet, but I’m really excited to see what the lab rats think. This is a phenomenal deal on these wines. The 2007 vintage is just now starting to really open up and show it’s stuff.
The winemaker’s are busy getting ready for this year’s harvest/ crush, but they will jump on the boards throughout the day to answer any of your questions.
I’ve got too much wine, especially with 3 or 4 wine club shipments happening this month and next, however I can’t turn down a good Oregon Pinot Noir, in for 1.
Reviewing the notes, I can understand your confusion. What the winemaker is trying to say is that the wine really won’t start opening up until 2010. (Laying it down until then would be beneficial.) I guess it’s time we updated the notes. The wine is definitely not past it’s prime and will actually really start to show over the next couple of years. I hope that helps.
It appears there is quite some confusion concerning the year 2010. Our winemaker was suggesting not to open the wine until 2010. These wines are just now starting to show some character that will develop even more over the years. That being said, I think I did see a typo saying “best before”. We apologize for any confusion and want to ensure you all that the wine is definitely not past it’s peak, but just now building up to it.
After reading the lab reports on the Eola Amity Hills, it seems that this wine is currently going through one of it’s “phases”. I’ve noticed that for some reason, our wines from the Eola Amity Hills AVA seem to be very volatile, meaning that as it is developing in the bottle, it will be very expressive for a few weeks, then kind of “close up” for a couple of weeks and back and forth. This remedies itself with another year or two of aging. This wine is typically one of our most expressive with bold dark fruits, earth, chocolate / vanilla spice and some slight herbal notes.
The 2007 Torii Mor Olalla Vineyard Pinot Noir is drinking VERY well right now!
I didn’t know that Pinot Noir also went through a “dumb” phase like some Cabs do?
I remember RPM saying that he used to pick up blow out deals on Napa Valley Cabs that were in the “dumb” phase because people thought they were going bad/past their prime, and that after he let them lay down for a few years to exit this phenomenon that the wines were terrific. Does anyone actually know what is going on when the wines in this “dumb” phase?
Actually a friend and I were debating the aging potential of Pinot, and didn’t think that it benefited from long term (10+ years) aging. Any thoughts on the Pinot aging process as compared to the Cabernet aging process?
Great question, I’m interested to hear the winery’s response. If certain Pinots also go through “dumb” phases, then I’m guessing it’s probably a trait of all well-structured, classically styled wines?? Too much wine these days has too much fruit or too much oak, masking the subtleties. Maybe other wines also go through it, but you just can’t distinguish it when you’re drinking a 15% fruit bomb or some syrup that spent 2 years in new oak???
We opened a few early 90s Oregon pinots at Easter this year, and they were fun to drink. Very little fruit, a whole lot of earth. Cerebral wines. I need to find some more.
I don’t have any experience with west coast Pinot Noir however I have drunk many Burgundy wines from France from 20 to 70 years old and they age fantastically. Hard to believe a grape as delicate as Pinot Noir can age well but it does. I think of old Pinot Noir as an iron fist in a velvet glove. Old Cabernet is all in your face, complex, layered and structured, old Pinot Noir is very subtle and delicate and of course earthy.
We didn’t get any of the flavors you list, except maybe the vanilla. Maybe it had to do with a “phase” or maybe bottle shock from travel. We enjoyed trying the wine, but for our review, all we had to go on was what was in the glass.
The wine is definitely not past it’s prime and will actually really start to show over the next couple of years. I hope that helps.