Favorite Oregon Pinot Noir Bottles from Jackson Family Wines With its stylish label, we sipped this wine along with numerous small bites at a local Oregon restaurant. It’s food friendly, but that doesn’t mean it takes the passive backseat. This Pinot Noir is rich, complex and loaded with mushroom and roasted onion flavors disrupted by notes of dark berries and black pepper. Can’t find the 2013? Give the 2015 a whirl.
Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show Tony Mangan Memorial Award for Best Organic Wine
Favorite Oregon Pinot Noir Bottles from Jackson Family Wines Winemaker Erik Kramer does a great job of making wines with beautiful savory notes, which we love. This single-vineyard wine is no exception. From a fairly new estate, this vintage has a balanced dry and fresh fruit nose with a gorgeous, long finish. It’s a wine that instantly made our mouth water for a tomato or mushroom pasta. If you can find it, search out a bottle of the 2008 Emery Pinot Noir from WillaKenzie. More complex with notes of umami, this is one of Erik’s favorites.
Wines for Thanksgiving The WillaKenzie Estate winery Gisele Pinot Noir is crafted from selected lots from the estate and aged for 10 months in French oak, 20% new. Look for aromas and flavors of bright red fruits with tangy notes of cola, herbs, barrel toast and cocoa. Good acidity makes it a natural to pair with your Thanksgiving feast.
The Stonestreet estate makes the most of its position on the Mayacamas Mountains overlooking the Alexander Valley floor. The volcanic soils, dramatic shift between day and night temperatures and range of elevations all influence the finished wines. Ripe and intense, this offers impressive fragrance and complexity. There’s a mix of dark fruit, both fresh and warmer, cooked tones with spicy and savoury accents. It’s drinking nicely now and will continue to develop over the next three to five years. 4½ stars.
This is a rich and rewarding style of Chardonnay made with grapes grown from high elevation vineyards (400 to 1,800 feet) in Alexander Valley. There’s freshness to temper the ripe core of fruit that’s accented by spice and sweetish notes suggesting butterscotch and caramel. Expressive and enjoyable. 4½ stars.
Thanksgiving Wine Pick This is a lovely pinot noir with layered flavors of currant, forest floor and tobacco. Great balance. Spot on.
This is a gorgeous pinot noir with tangy fruit and vibrant acidity. It’s concentrated with both red and black fruit, layered with earthy and spice notes. Lingering finish. Impressive. 4½ stars.
Sonoma's Top 100 Wines 2018 This is a hedonist’s delight, with very ripe, fleshy cherry, berry and pomegranate fruit that’s on the sweet side, yet with tannin and acid structure to support the ripeness. Slightly jammy, yet not as much as a ripe Zinfandel, it delivers the goods for those who adore broad-shouldered Pinot Noir.
Favorite Oregon Pinot Noir Bottles from Jackson Family Wines This great wine came from a “bad” vintage, or so winemaker Lynn Penner-Ash thought. It has since become a favorite wine representing six different vineyards with its chocolate nose and hints of caramelized fruit. Their 2011 Estate Dussin Vineyard Pinot Noir was another one of our favorites. So well balanced, this wine plays with green peppercorn notes that translate to overall herbal and vegetal hints paired with fresh, tart berries. It’s a bit different and it is so good. While it is sold out on their site, you might be able to find it in restaurants in bottle shops. Also consider their 2016 Palmer Creek Vineyard Pinot Noir. It’s a vibrant, people-pleaser Pinot."
Favorite Oregon Pinot Noir Bottles from Jackson Family Wines This great wine came from a “bad” vintage, or so winemaker Lynn Penner-Ash thought. It has since become a favorite wine representing six different vineyards with its chocolate nose and hints of caramelized fruit. Their 2011 Estate Dussin Vineyard Pinot Noir was another one of our favorites. So well balanced, this wine plays with green peppercorn notes that translate to overall herbal and vegetal hints paired with fresh, tart berries. It’s a bit different and it is so good. While it is sold out on their site, you might be able to find it in restaurants in bottle shops. Also consider their 2016 Palmer Creek Vineyard Pinot Noir. It’s a vibrant, people-pleaser Pinot.
Favorite Oregon Pinot Noir Bottles from Jackson Family Wines This great wine came from a “bad” vintage, or so winemaker Lynn Penner-Ash thought. It has since become a favorite wine representing six different vineyards with its chocolate nose and hints of caramelized fruit. Their 2011 Estate Dussin Vineyard Pinot Noir was another one of our favorites. So well balanced, this wine plays with green peppercorn notes that translate to overall herbal and vegetal hints paired with fresh, tart berries. It’s a bit different and it is so good. While it is sold out on their site, you might be able to find it in restaurants in bottle shops. Also consider their 2016 Palmer Creek Vineyard Pinot Noir. It’s a vibrant, people-pleaser Pinot."
10 Merlots From Around the World That You Should Be Drinking Now The gorgeous Merlot comes from Mt. Veeder in Napa Valley. Mt. Brave’s winemaker Chris Carpenter focuses his passion for Merlot on producing the very-best expressions of the grape from mountain sites. The concentrated berries of the Mt. Brave vineyard produce a Merlot with a complex texture with distinctive minerality and floral aromatics. Flavors of blue fruits and mocha abounds with a rounding texture that lifts this wine on your palate. The long, steady finish exhibits why mountain Merlot stands alone.
Tasting Fine Napa Valley Merlots Mt. Brave and La Jota Vineyard Co. winemaker Chris Carpenter described the challenges of mountain vineyards in dealing with rocky soils, angles to the sun and tree lines. He produced 250-300 cases of the 100 percent 2015 Mt. Brave Merlot, Mt. Veeder that had all the elements of an extraordinary wine with dark fruit and espresso flavors that lingered.
Wines from California We are Currently Loving With intense and impressive fruit, it’s time we admit that Merlot is back! And we’re not mad about it. This is a special occasion wine, a wine to gift to your host. Its price is hight, but it is so worth it. The grapes have been given great care and in turn, the barrel-aged wine gives off bright fruit with just the right amount of earthiness and a hint of florals on the nose.
From Toad Hollow to Mt. Brave: A Surprise Choice for Thanksgiving Yowee! The Mt. Brave is the wine that got Dottie (and, OK, John, too) so excited. We had the 2015, which is very young (it needs decanting), but already gorgeous. The first three words we used were “classy, structured and impressive.” But the word we kept coming back to was “spicy.” We guessed it had some Cabernet because of the structure, some Petit Verdot because of its nice weight and maybe even a touch of Malbec because of the spice. Nope, it’s 100 percent Merlot. This is the kind of wine that truly shows what the U.S. can do with Merlot – it was not only delicious but endlessly fascinating to us -- and therefore would pair perfectly with this great American dinner.
Wine of the Week The transporting nose is fresh with eucalyptus and fresh mint leaf and anchored by denser aromas of kirsch-filled chocolate ganache and a hint of blueberry. These turn to a magnificently structured palate of black cherry, mulberry, and purple plum, with a touch of fenugreek and mineral at the edges, that is absolutely impossible to stop drinking right now, but that also has the potential to age for more than a decade. Still, I’d pop the cork in the short term: The fruit here is so irresistible, and at such a beautiful stage of its evolution, that I wouldn’t want to miss the up-front pleasures it offers right now. This is the wine to serve to people who claim to hate Merlot: If they have any chance of being cured of that issue, this is the wine to do it.
The Turkey and Wines to Grace Your Table This Thanksgiving Walking Napa Valley’s version of the red carpet is a collection of highly allocated, hard-to-get Cabernet Sauvignon stars. We’ve got our glasses at the ready for the bold and beautiful new releases, like Lokoya’s foursome of mountain-grown Cabernets, each of which offers a study in the region’s microclimates and varied terroir, from the porous soil of Diamond Mountain to the cool and wet terraces of Spring Mountain. This year’s 2015 vintages— which weathered a challenging growing season with grace—are especially full of backbone: The Mt. Veeder ($395), for instance, brings the wine’s signature blueberry notes to the fore with new vigor. All those tight tannins can obscure the flavors if you sip too soon (decant for two to six hours first), but they also lend the wine the structure it needs to age for the next 15 to 25 years.
Wines of the Week This estate on Howell Mountain was first founded by Swiss immigrant Frederick Hess in 1898. Initial success at winegrowing was noted by awards at the 1900 Paris Exposition, but prohibition was once again the death knell to a successful property. Today, the property is owned by the Jess Jackson family. This Merlot offers intense aromas and flavors of blackberry, toasty oak, cola and dark chocolate with notes of mineral and floral perfume.
From Toad Hollow to Mt. Brave: A Surprise Choice for Thanksgiving We also liked La Jota, from Howell Mountain. This and the Mt. Brave are both properties of Jackson Family Wines, which sent us the bottles for tasting. Both were made by Christopher Carpenter, whom Dottie spoke to earlier this year about his stunning, mountain-grown Cardinale Cabernet Sauvignon. When we talked with him a few days ago about the wines, he told us he had been speaking a lot lately about Merlot in anticipation of Merlot Month, which was October. “What I think is happening is that the places where some of the weaker Merlots were being grown are gone and what’s left are these jewels, these sweet spots around Napa Valley for Merlot and we happen to have a couple of them,” he said... The La Jota is made from fruit from two historic, neighboring Howell Mountain vineyards: W.S. Keyes vineyards, the first vineyard planted (1888) on Howell Mountain, and La Jota, planted 10 years later by Keyes’s neighbor, Frederick Hess. Carpenter made the first vintage of La Jota Merlot in 2005, a year after “Sideways.” Did he or Jackson, a consummate entrepreneur and visionary, have any second thoughts about launching a new Merlot label then? “Not in the least,” said Carpenter, who was named winemaker for La Jota that same year. “Keyes vineyard was the wellspring for Duckhorn’s Howell Mountain Merlot back in the ’90s,” he said. “I had been working with that Merlot for a while because the Merlot portion of Cardinale is from that exact block.” He added: “Jess wanted to create a wine that was new to La Jota and that was our contribution to the history of La Jota.” The first year, Carpenter made 200 cases and now he’s up to a little over 1,000. Unlike the Mt. Brave, the La Jota is 10 percent Petit Verdot, which he says adds structural tannins, black pepper and spiciness. “That wine has become very popular as people have discovered it and have understood that this is a wine that has its own character, its own distinction and speaks to what can be done with Merlot on a place like Howell Mountain,” Carpenter said. What does he think of our idea of having one for Thanksgiving? “That’s fantastic,” he said. “Why not have both?” Hmmm….
7 Wines That Will Make You Even More Grateful at Thanksgiving 2018 Merlot’s making a comeback in the wine world and the 2015 La Jota is a prime reason why. A wonderful balance of fruit (especially blackberry) and earthiness, it’s a mid-bodied wine that will defy expectations of what a Merlot should be.
Tasting Fine Napa Valley Merlots For La Jota, Carpenter delivers two fine merlot release from estate Howell Mountain vineyards in the town of Anqwin including the 2015 La Jota Vineyard Co. W.S. Keyes Merlot Howell Mountain, awarded 96-points by Robert Parker, Jr. Sourced from old gnarly vines in what was described as the “most highly prized merlot vineyard in the country,” the Keyes Vineyard release was one of the finest and most complex merlots that I have tasted from the color, bold flavors and mineral elements through the long finish.
Pinot selections for Thanksgiving Highly food friendly, this fine Pinot Noir Rosé has strength on the palate featuring excellent fruit and balance. Complexity builds to yield a wonderful wine with a great finish.
10 wines worth sharing for Thanksgiving Another chardonnay and pinot noir specialist from the Jackson family, this time producing wines from multiple appellations. The Monterey and Sonoma Coast wines are especially good values. The Russian River Valley wines are stars.
Six pinot noirs for Thanksgiving For a little more money, there’s the 2016 La Crema Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, with ripe yet lively cherry and raspberry and enough structure to stand up to the food. Note that La Crema has a number of appellation bottlings; the Willamette Valley is also very good.