Region: Willamette Valley, Oregon, US
Composition: 100% Pinot Noir
Background: Sometimes you hear about a wine sale going on online and you get the chance to order a bunch of wine really cheap. Sometimes the wine is older, so you know you are taking a chance, but you do anyway, and you go into the venture with eyes wide open knowing you could end up with some dead bottles. You take that chance because it's all in the name of learning, and it's good to try older/dead bottles, too, since you don't see a lot of them on the market (unless you seek them out or have them in your personal collection). Anyway, that's how I came across this bottle.
I've seen St. Innocent Pinot Noir all over the place, but haven't ever tried it. I understand that this probably isn't the best example of their wine... on the St. Innocent website the winemaker says that Temperance Hill wasn't always his favorite:
Temperance Hill usually does not achieve the complexity of my other Pinots. It is not a wine I gush about or drink much. The 2000 Pinot noir, Temperance Hill is different. The growers have been working very hard to get the vines in balance and their success is evident in 2000.
The problem with 2000 was that even though the vines were getting sorted out, the vintage was a little underwhelming. There weren't any big weather problems that year (it looks like 1999, 2000, and 2001 were all fine vintages in Oregon), but I guess that particular site didn't fare as well and the fruit was okay but not spectacular. The resulting wine didn't have a lot of fruit or structure and I guess the winemaker could only do so much with it (he says the year 2000 was the year of terroir for the wines... they reflect the site as much as anything else). And while I am sure it was fine when it was released back in 2002 (and for a while thereafter), it's a little weary now: whatever fruit was there is gone, and there isn't a lot else to hold it up, mostly a lot of oak effect (the wine was aged for 16 months in 30 percent new American oak). 481 cases were made and I hope they were all consumed long before now.
Notes: This is a brownish-burgundy in the glass, clear but looking a little older. It has a nice rustic nose of forest floor and earch and mushroom, with a little blackberry and smoke. There's some strawberry/cherry on the tongue, but it is pretty overwhelmed by smoke and iodine and some rough tannins. The finish bursts with some oaky spiciness, but then fades off. I kept a half bottle around for round two the second night, and it was pretty bad by then, even though I kept it cold and gassed it. The second night it was all tannin and no fruit, which is to be expected from a Pinot that didn't have a lot of fruit to begin with and is also over the hill (or in a temporary bad spell, although I am not sure where it could go from here). It was okay but not great the first night, but the second night I gave up on it. It tried its best.
Cost: $20 at release in 2002 (I picked it up recently for about $10)
Overall: C-
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