Region: Willamette Valley, Oregon, US
Composition: 100% Pinot Noir
Background: Tonight we have the second in the mystery lot of discount wines (mostly Pinot Noir from Oregon) I picked up the other day, the same lot that handed me the somewhat unlucky St. Innocent the other night. This time I fared better. This wine is definitely somewhat evolved, but still very tasty.
Penner-Ash is located in Newberg, Oregon, and it looks like they just opened a new sustainable (good for them) gravity flow (who isn't doing that these days?) winery last May, situated at one of their vineyards. They focus on Pinot Noir and Syrah, and dabbled in Viognier last year, releasing it this year. Lynn Penner-Ash is the winemaker, and worked at Stag's Leap in Napa before moving to Oregon, where she made wine at at Rex Hill before buying some land and releasing her first vintage of Pinot Noir (the 1998, and only 124 cases of it) under the Penner-Ash label in 2000. By the time she released this 2001, which is a blend of several vineyards (whereas their other Pinots are single-vineyard offerings), she had upped the ante somewhat, and was making a lot more wine-- 831 cases of this were made.
The strangest thing about this bottle is the very deep punt. If you believed that punt depth determines the price of a wine, this wine would be very expensive indeed. I could almost jam my fingers up to my knuckle into the punt, which prompted a spate of bad punning in the house, and I spent a long time trying to get a picture of it, the results of which you can see on the right. I finally measured it and it was almost three inches deep! That is just strange, and it does make the bottle very fat compared to normal bottles with their puny punts. I guess it is another way to stand out from all those other silly Burgundy bottles on the shelf.
Notes: Medium ruby in the glass, this has a nose of smoky meat, leaves, sweet earth, and some black cherry. It's medium-weight in the mouth with some cherry, earth, and cinnamon/allspice. There's also some slight burnt toast and coffee (just like breakfast!), but not too much. The finish is soft, with little tannin but some nice lingering warm spices and a very very faint cherry cough drop flavor that is lasts a good long time (unlike a wine I had last week which was overpoweringly cherry cough drop flavored). Overall it is very plush and lush and full; hedonistic.
I could put these notes into WSET lingo, which kind of takes the joy out of things but is very thorough and makes me consider things I don't always remember to consider. Perhaps I should do this more often:
Appearance
Clarity clear
Intensity deep
Color garnet
Other core much darker than pale pinkish rim
Nose
Condition clean
Intensity pronounced
Development developing/aged
Aroma characteristics cherry, smoke, tobacco, meat, earth
Palate
Sweetness dry
Acidity low-medium
Tannin low
Body light-medium
Intensity medium-pronounced
Bubbles none
Flavor characteristics cherry, earth, cinnamon, allspice
Alcohol level medium
Length long
Conclusions
Quality good
Maturity ready to drink
Value category high-priced
Cost: $20 (originally $45)
Overall: A-
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