Italian Pilsner in hand. Oklahoma Onion burger on deck. 70 degrees and sunny. Happy Saturday.
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Is there anything on this beer wall that is strongly recommended? I am particularly fond of IPAs and fruited/smoothie sours.
Heady Topper is consider one of the best IPAs although so many coming out all the time. I like Almanac stuff.
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Thanks for the Almanac rec. I should have mentioned that I’ve had Heady Topper and focal banger a few times and would like to try some of the others.
I never had the ones i can see there and i cant even read what they are, but had decent sours from them
Looks like flow pale ale and doom scroll IPA.
Sip of Sunshine is good and I’m assuming the other Lawson stuff is too
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The plain red and plain white cans look like red and white ferrari from the Veil? Those should be good. Ditto the Berry Mallow Tastee.
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Bottom right is the new EQ / Toppling Goliath collab King Al, I haven’t tried it but heard good things. (IPA)
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Thanks guys for all the recommendations! Now I have to figure out what to say to my wife when I come back from the store with a bunch of 4 packs.
It is, though I’d say that Sip of Sunshine is the best of those 5 pictured.
They should have some of their fall/winter stuff coming out soon. It’s always good.
“The internet told me to”
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87 is a great Nightshift brew, may even be their headiest IPA. What’s the Phone Home? Can’t tell.
Jack’s Abbey makes elite beer, but they tend to go for German-style and shy away from the IPAs. I’m guessing that Helles in the bottom right is tasty, though.
Night Shift has hit the big time? Damn, I remember visiting them 5 or 6 years ago when they were pretty new. Somewhere north of Boston, maybe Everett. There was another tiny place just a couple hundred yards up the road, located in a basement, that I thought was better.
Luckily they were selling a few as singles so I’ll get to try several.
Veil: white and red Ferrari, strange and eternal, and tastee. Two tripping animals, because who can resist the roadrunner and coyote on a beer can. La cumbre/comrade/cannonball collab.
I was debating between King Al, Sip of sunshine, and 87, but King Al was the only 4-pack I got after one of the staff recommended it. I cracked open a King Al and it’s smooth and delicious!
been vacationing off the face of the earth and came back to find “negroni” trending and jesus I feel so fucking old
Did some wine tasting in the Willamette Valley this past weekend, following in some of the footsteps of @anon10387340 and @ChrisV
Patricia Green Cellars: First stop of the day. Our line up was a pair of Sauvignon Blancs from a couple different vineyards, two pairs of pinots, where each pairing was two vineyards of the same soil type, one pair volcanic and one pair sedimentary. Final wine was their signature pinto blend. All of the wines were 2019. One question we asked that became a recurring motif of the excursion was, what did you do with your 2020 wine. Their answer was to distill it all and make spirits
Our impression of these all was that it was all pretty good, although a couple were on the flat and less flavorful side. The signature blend was our favorite of the lot, but it wasn’t worth a $40 premium over the pinots we liked (one from the volcanic and one from the sedimentary that really didn’t taste all that different from one another). But then the lady helping us let us know that they’d cracked open a bottle of 2021 wine for another table of club members. It hadn’t been formally released yet, but they had a few on hand in advance of the release date. We took one sip and both thought: WOW, THIS ONE! The 2021 wine was so much more flavorful and rich than the 2019s. We were so enthusiastic that the woman cracked open another 2021 from another vineyard, too. It was also heads and tails better than the 2019s, but not quite as good as the first. Still, we got out of there with what we could of the 2021s: two of the first (Balcome Vineyard), and one of the second (Shafer Vineyard).
Brick House: Second stop, prides themselves on only making wine from their own grapes from their own vineyards. So, what did they do with their 2020 pinots? They couldn’t afford lose essentially a whole year, and they didn’t want to buy juice, so they went with blending: making one non-vintage blend with 2019 wine that had been left over, and then keeping some back to blend with 2021 wine. They also fermented the 2020 grapes faster at a higher temperature than usual so as to reduce the amount of skin contact. Normally skin contact is good, obviously, but not as much when the skins are smoke tainted.
Line up here opened with a rose of pinot noir. Too many roses taste like a simple white wine that you wouldn’t even suspect was pink were you tasting it blindfolded. This one had considerably more flavor from the skins than usual and was one of the ones we took home. Then we had a pair of chardonnays, one current (2021 I think) and one library, 2013. I’m not sure I’ve had a chardonnay half that old that was still worth drinking, but this one sorta worked. It was pretty unusual, but drinkable. The current chardonnay was good but not as impressive as the rose. Then we had the blend with 2020 and 2021 and it, was really really good. If there was much smoke flavor at all, it was at most a subtle undertone, and it had a ton of the bold 2021 flavor we’d gotten at Patricia Green. We closed out with a full 2021 pinot, which was even better. Those 2021s, guys. Get them.
Flaneur: We had some extra time, and this place was both recommended by the woman helping us at Patricia Green and open to same-day online reservations. I forget what their answer for 2020 wine was, but we opened with a very nice sparkling. The chardonnay MrsWookie liked more than me, and the pinots we tried were both 2019. They would have been competitive with the PG 2019 line up, but they weren’t with the 2021s. Mostly, the wines here seemed about $20 too expensive, so we might have just walked away with a bottle of the sparkling, but a wine club member walked in to enthusiastically purchase several bottles of the aligote. I wasn’t familiar with the varietal, nor were other tasters there, so we were able to convince the lady helping us to find a chilled one and crack it open. Interesting and different from the usual white wine fare, it reminded me a bit of something like an Abarino. So, we got some of that, too.
Martin Woods: I’m not sure if Chris was at the winery or at the wine bar on the main drag in McMinnville, but we chose the latter. Apparently the Martin Woods rep who might have been there was needed to help with the harvest that day, so the bartender helped us out. We tried the gewuertztraminer and riesling first. I liked the gewuertz, but it was clearly outclassed by the riesling. The pair of chardonnays from different vineyards were good but not great. The pair of pinots we tried were perhaps the best 2019 pinots we tasted, but they were merely 2019 pinots. Guess we’ll have to come back for the 2021 pinots, though, because one would suspect that the winery putting out the best 2019 pinots should also be able to do well with the 2021 fruit.
Fox Farm: We though we were done with tastings, but there was a small but free one happening in our hotel lobby. OK, sure! The owner himself was there, and he had the simplest answer to the 2020 question: just sell it on the bulk market, presumably to be blended into something where you won’t notice the smoke. The winner in this line up was, surprisingly, the opener, a pinot gris. That’s usually the varietal I’m most skeptical of, as so many can be borderline watery and flavorless, but this one had a lot going on for it. It might have even been more flavorful than the pinot noir rose that was second. The red pinot noir was a 2019, and good by that standard but still disappointing compared with what we’d come to know with the 2021s.
I’ll respond in more detail later, but it’s interesting about 2019 as it’s been lauded as one of the best Oregon vintages in a long time, I love many many 2019 wines, and I’ve loaded up on it and plan to age most of what I have for 10 to 20 years. But it’s not a vintage that drinks really easy young, and I’ve heard from many recently that they have entered the “closed up” window, which may be your problem with it right now. (I also tend to like more austere, Euro style wines that hint at rather than drub you over the head with fruit.) I don’t think I’ve tried any 2021 yet, so I’m interested in tasting some when I return next spring. Marcus Goodfellow told me that 2021 is awesome though.
Good call on the Martin Woods Rieslings. I thought it was one of the best domestic Riesling that I’ve ever had. I agree that the Martin Woods Chards are good but not great. Try Walter Scott, Goodfellow, and Vincent. (Vincent’s pricing on all his wines are some of the best values in Oregon. He makes great Chards, PN, and Gamay. His Bjornson Vineyards Gamay is outstanding. Comparable to a very good Cru Beaujolais village.)
Most 2020 Chards were picked before the smoke, so not surprised that you didn’t pick anything up there. I picked up the smoke in their blended PN before they told me it had grapes from 2020. They said I was one of the few that confidently told them they could pick it up. My buddy loved it and didn’t pick it up and he’s a somm with good tasting skills (better than me for sure), so maybe I’m just sensitive to it?
Ooops I guess I mostly responded now.
Well, if you prefer the subtle pinots, then there is a risk that you don’t like the 2021s one bit. They are quite a bit bolder. But I would still be enthusiastic to taste them. Both PG and Brick House were really excited to taste them and thought it was a remarkable vintage.