December 18, 2009

Nice basic Evesham Wood Pinot Noir with a little age

My friend John recently found a bottle of 2002 Evesham Wood Pinot Noir Willamette Valley for $20 at a local shop, Great Wine Buys, in NE Portland. Apparently the good folks at Great Wine Buys will occasionally put something like this away for a while and then bring it out to the shelves. That there's a good wine shop, if you ask me. Not sure if there's any still there, but it's worth a call or visit.

John opened the bottle this afternoon and offered me a glass when I stopped by to hang out before the holiday break. I don't recall this wine specifically from its youth, but remember this bottling being pretty crunchy, fresh and pretty at release. Now it's a touch oxidized, mature and a bit meaty for its age along with nice cherry fruit. It's still fresh and bright on the palate, with juicy acid and woodsy cherry fruit, then fine tannin on the pretty decent finish. Consider this good Bourgogne rouge, Oregon style.

I was lucky enough to bring the rest of the bottle home and it seems a touch more fresh with the extra air time. I find that to be true of wines at this point, where air can bring out a more youthful character when you might think the opposite, that air would cause the wine to show more age. Am I alone in noticing this?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Funny that you would post this, as I too opened a 2002 EW PN Willamette about a month ago. My bottle got mixed with all the EW single vineyard bottlings in my subterranean bat cave/wine cellar. Yes, it had matured. Initially I wondered whether the general bottling from '02 would hold up. I was quite pleased to see it had more then held up. Lots of integration and structure. I still have one more. . .

Vincent Fritzsche said...

Very cool that you just tried this one as well. Russ is sourcing from a different site to anchor this blend now, but the 2008 vintage of this basic bottling will probably last a good while too. And integrate and otherwise gain even more interest.