2012 Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Noir Willamette Valley
Ever open a bottle where about every fifth sip you are forced to repeat, "Damn this is good!" Well, damn was this good! Very traditional in style (thank you) and effusively aromatic, with red fruits, pie spices (wish I tasted more of that in OR pinots), and an interesting and unusual touch of white pepper on the finish. Not youthful, not mature, but somewhere wonderfully inbetween for current drinking but without the kind of acidity, IMO, for extended aging (a less ripe entry-level Eyrie would usually be a 15 year wine and many on CT forecast that kind of future, but I wouldn't peg it out past 2021.)
2014 Savage Grace Wines Grüner Veltliner Underwood Mountain Vineyard Columbia Valley
Oh Michael Savage, can you do no wrong? Rich, straw gold color. Fuller-bodied and different from anything I expected (based on the colorless other WA GruVees I've had), this was simultaneously elegant and bold, more a Smaragd style. Shows green peas and flowers, quince and yellow apples, lime peel and yuzu fruit. Loved it.
2007 Shafer Merlot Napa Valley
At or past peak. Last of six bottles purchased years ago. Oddly perhaps, though it's drinking very well, we didn't love it. We own this now because we appreciate aged wines, but there was a nerve that created balance with the sweetness of the vintage in the younger bottles that this wine, elegant as it is now, lacks.
