Willamette Valley Pinot Noir Reserve Clos Julien
OK, the fish came from the Copper River in Alaska; not the Willamette. But the wine came from three of the top vineyard sites in Oregon: Gran Moraine, Willakia, and Laurent Montalieu’s own Hyland Vineyard near McMinnville – all certified “Salmon Safe” by inspectors who analyze the impact of agriculture on salmon habitat.
I was only thinking about what to drink with the wild, buttery Chinook salmon, fresh local favas, and the first corn of the season that Sue prepared last Wednesday. And lest you assume that twenty years of sommellerie in French restaurants makes me an OLDE-WORLD SNOB, I want you to know that this all-American wine-and-food pairing was one of the most perfect in recent memory.
Here is another great red wine for the summer: no lumbering cumbrous fruit-bomb, but a classic Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, deeply aromatic of ripe sweet cherries and cloves, with fine minerality and length.
Laurent Montalieu:
Twelve or thirteen years ago, you might have bought a Laurent Montalieu Pinot Noir at our first store in Pennsauken. He was a partner and the winemaker at Bernard Lacroute’s WillaKenzie Estate in Yamhill. While still there, he and his wife Danielle Andrus bought an eighty-acre vineyard in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA, which they named Domaine Danielle Laurent, and established Soléna Cellars. In 2003 he founded the Northwest Wine Company in McMinnville, a state-of-the-art winery that provides technologically advanced winegrowing expertise for more than twenty-five clients, including his own Soléna Cellars.
This wine:
In the glass, this wine has a limpid garnet color. The nose is pure smoky Pinot Noir, with aromatics of strawberry preserves, black cherries, rhubarb, and cloves. On the palate, the wine is light to medium bodied, with a beautiful sweet core of fruit, bright fresh acidity, and a long, fine-grained finish. This is another wine that puts on weight over time in the glass.
As always at Moore Brothers, this wine was shipped and delivered to us in refrigerated containers. Last week at home with Sue it tasted as fresh as I can imagine it would, on a leisurely picnic at Bridal Veil Falls State Park in the Columbia River Gorge, about twenty-five miles from Portland. Sometimes in a detour from “wine travel,” I visit a great old friend there – who was best man at my wedding almost thirty years ago.
I invite you take advantage of this special offer, and thank you again for your continued support of sustainable agriculture and sensitive, artisan winemaking.