WTN: 2000 Domaine Drouhin 'Laurene'

[Jenise]

While re-arranging the Wall of Pinot, I came across this uninventoried, totally forgotten bottle of high-class Oregonian pinot noir and popped it last night to accompany a dinner of grilled pork chop with warm mushroom salad. Though I would peg it somewhat past peak based on what I would like peak to be, for an "off" vintage in which the St. Innocents I have are years and years past punked out this was an exemplary bottle of wine which held up well in the glass, without degradation, over a dawdling kind of dinner. The nose was somewhat singular, not so much fungus AND plum as a fungal version of plum which is sometimes another way of saying "faded dark fruit", and not an especially generous version of that, in a way that unmistakably telegraphs 'old pinot'. On the palate, a well-balanced and earthy extension of that plum flavor with a little celery and a tiny note of band-aid on the periphery that we kept waiting to blossom but which never quite appeared. Tannins were resolved but the acid's good; the wine can probably hold here for a few more years yet. She's a classy old girl, that Laurene.

These Drouhin wines don't seem to get a lot of love from wine geeks, but I have had quite a number that I have really enjoyed. For me, they walk the line between New and Old World. And one spectacular place to visit.