On Our Table and in our Hearts

This Thanksgiving, the staff at The Oregon Wine Blog had many reasons to be thankful: great friends, family, health, and of course, excellent food and wine.  The holidays are always a time for reflection and in broad terms we're all pretty lucky.  We're thankful to you, our readers, for sticking with us for the past year.  We know that posting volume has decreased, but we are striving to maintain our quality and we'll kick things up a notch.  I'd also like to pay homage to Rick from the [BW] Beer Blog.  His influence helped inspire the creation of TOWB and we have learned many lessons from his expertise.  Rick recently retired from beer blogging and we tip our glasses to him.

On to Thanksgiving...this year a group of us decided for the first time to remain in Corvallis, OR

 for the holiday and forgo the stress of traveling through out the Pacific Northwest.  We all pitched in to cook a cornucopia of food including salad, rosemary garlic mashed potatoes with turkey gravy, green bean casserole, apple sausage dressing, cranberry amaretto sauce, rolls, turkey, and brownies for dessert.  The wine was excellent, from some of our favorite wineries, and paired well with the meal:

2003 Willamette Valley Vineyards Estate Chardonnay

This treat has been sitting in my wine cabinet for over a year waiting for the right moment.  I believe it was WVV's first estate chardonnay, or at least the first good one with the dijon clone grapes, and it sold out shortly after I purchased the bottle I had.  It rated a 90 with Wine Enthusiast.  It is just right for me, oaky but not too much, it has a nice fruit bouquet and is full-bodied.  We drank the chard as we were finishing up the cooking and getting ready to eat.  While there is no more '03 available, I think the winery has some '06 kicking around still.

2006 Willamette Valley Vineyards Estate Pinot Noir Clone Dijon 777

This was a small production estate wine put out initially for members of the Oregon Wine Guild, which is where my bottle came from.  The 2006 Estate Pinot rated a 90 in Wine Enthusiast, so I was very excited for this specific clone designate version of that wine.  I was not disappointed.  This clone reflects aromas of black tea, cocoa, and earth.  It was a well balanced wine that paired very well with the main course of our Thanksgiving dinner. At 93 cases of production, pick some up if you run across it.

2004 Kiona Red Mountain Chenin Blanc Ice Wine

A nectar of the gods.  Produced from grapes frozen on the vine in the Red Mountain area of Eastern Washington, this ice wine was rated platinum from Wine Press Northwest and comes in with a residual sugar of 18%.  Made from 100% estate grown chenin blanc grapes, this is a delicious, fruity match for any dessert.  We rated it back in December, loved it then, love it now.  They have a great tasting room and beautiful estate should you find yourself in Benton City.

So...there you have it.  Thanksgiving dinner and wine selections from the home of The Oregon Wine Blog.  Coming up will be a review of a recent visit to King Estate Winery as well as a 2005 Amavi Cabernet Sauvignon, recently rated number 43 on the top 100 wines of the world, which Rick kindly found for me in a coop in Moscow, ID.  

Until then, cheers!

Kiona - Red Mountain Chenin Blanc 2004 Ice Wine

Yes, this is the Oregon Wine Blog. Yes, we already have a Washington Correspondent who does a great job, but why should he get all the fun? Part of the reason I am reviewing this wine is because it came in my recent Willamette Valley Creme du Cru quarterly shipment.

I first got introduced to Kiona Winery in December of last year when invited to go to some of the vineyards in the Tri-Cities area of Washington. I remember they were building their larger tasting room, which is now open, but at the time it was inside of the owner's house - very quaint and intimate setting. The Red Mountain Chenin Blanc Ice Wine is a dessert wine, harvested late in the season after the first frosts and freezes of the year. This is a sweeter wine, so for those of you who are not big fans, this might not be the one for you.

I enjoy the nose on this wine - when you sniff it, you can smell the sugar, initially, but then you are able to catch the full citrus aroma of the grapes. The nose almost makes you think that there might be apples and pears in it. This could be due to the fact that the Chenin Blanc "showcases aromas of citrus, melon, and pears" and has a "tart green apple finish."

When swirled, the glass gets a nice coat. The initial taste of this wine is one that will be a sweeter on the palate, but then subsides relatively quickly and you are left with a lingering citrus after taste. If you give yourself a few moments after each sip, you feel as if you have eaten a couple of sweet grapes.

I definitely find this to be a good wine to sit and unwind with or one to help start off the week on a Sunday evening.