WTN: PG

[Jenise]

Went to the neighborhood tasting last night which was zinfandel. Wines were not provided by the club but brought by guests. The majority of the wines brought seem to have been the cheapest available jammy/wan/perfumey/Lodi at the corner market, many appearing in triplicate. The wine I brought, a Raj Parr, was certainly not in that $ category but all the same it was ridiculously acidic and I couldn't drink it either. The night was saved when I spied this outlier on another table: 2024 Lange Pinot Gris Willamette Valley . Lange is a great, longstandig Oregon label wherein the son has taken over as winemaker and by all accounts is surpassing his father's reputation, or so I'm told. And this was a bright and flawless version of the grape, with layers of flowers and white fruit. I never buy PG, but this one makes me ask why.

Because there are so many horrible pinot gris (or, even worse, pinot grigios) out there?!?

It's hard to find really good pinot gris, at least given what is available here in BC. The Phantom Creek (BC) pinot gris is quite nice. We don't get many Alsace pinot gris here nowadays either. They aren't available here, but the Eyrie pinot gris (2 bottlings) are really good and age very well.

[Jenise]

Yes, John, so many horrible ones. In the U.S. it's cheap plonk/bar-fly white. I've had Eyrie's and yes it's usually good; this was better. Better than any Oregon PG I remember having. I have to guess that whoever brought this got it locally and for a relatively low price (because that's what they do) with no idea what they were buying. I agree about Phantom Creek's. Very rich and Alsatian. And I'm often impressed with PGs from Friuli and even NZ, though the latter hardly ever show up in our market.

A sad majority of the wines came from Grocery Outlet where the max price is about $6. Here's a story for you: one woman explained to me that she bought hers at the Lynden Grocery Outlet (as compared to Ferndale, which is closer) where "the wine guy" was a 23 year old teetotaller. He therefore couldn't recommend anything but pointed out the two zins they had, and she held one in each hand and prayed for help. She felt a tug toward the one in her right hand and that's what she brought, so I should "thank the Lord!" for that wine. Which, TBH, was actually one of the better ones there though that's not saying much as none I tasted were actually GOOD-good.

...where "the wine guy" was a 23 year old teetotaller...

!!!

So I'm guessing he hadn't accumulated a lifetime's worth of wine experience before going sober.

[Jenise]

...where "the wine guy" was a 23 year old teetotaller...

!!!

So I'm guessing he hadn't accumulated a lifetime's worth of wine experience before going sober.

I doubt if he went sober, vs. never having got started. Lynden is a very conservative town. When I moved here 20 years ago, the Safeway there sealed off the hooch aisle with yellow barricade tape on Sundays!

...where "the wine guy" was a 23 year old teetotaller...

!!!

So I'm guessing he hadn't accumulated a lifetime's worth of wine experience before going sober.

I doubt if he went sober, vs. never having got started. Lynden is a very conservative town. When I moved here 20 years ago, the Safeway there sealed off the hooch aisle with yellow barricade tape on Sundays!

Shortly after I'd moved to Indiana, I learned that the laws of the time forbade wine sales on Sunday. Fine. One Saturday evening, I popped into the grocery to pick up a bottle of wine for Sunday. I was refused at the checkout as it was 12:02 and officially Sunday. Later, I was at an all-night grocery at about 2 am Monday morning and, bright boy that I am, recognized that it was no longer Sunday and brought a bottle of wine to the checkout. Sorry, no can do, by Indiana law Sunday doesn't end until noon on Monday (!!!!!) I guess that I shouldn't have been surprised given that this state's legislature did consider a bill to make pi 3, but my moral outrage at the hypocrisy of their laws knew no bounds, In that same era, I had phoned a local restaurant about their corkage fee as we had planned on bringing a bottle of '83 Beaucastel from our cellar. Once I had explained the concept of corkage fee to the woman on the other end of the phone, she responded "Isn't that kind of like bringing your own eggs and bacon to a diner?" Needless to say, we never went back there.