CORKAGE

Just spent the weekend in Aspen at the Food & Wine Classic where I got to taste a tremendous number of really good wines.  A weird thing happens, though, when there's so much quality wine around.  You appreciate it just a little bit less.  You get jaded kinda fast.  So as I write about the wines that moved me in Aspen, you can rest assured that these wines really stood out from the pack, or else were drunk in a context that was particularly fun and memorable.  (It's always worth remembering with wine that context is decisive .  Set and setting is half the battle.)

First day in Aspen, I went to an Oregon pinot noir tasting.  Speaking in extremely general terms, there are 2 types of pinot we tasted from Oregon.  One is the lighter style, which focuses on lighter fruit, and the second is the heavier, denser style, focusing on darker fruit.  At least that's how my palate/brain makes the distinction.  For me, the first type can be very exciting, while the second type does nothing for me.  

One wine stood out from the pack by miles and miles.  The 2006 Ponzi Abetina vneyard.  A really really really special wine.  I almost said a really really "pretty" wine, but that would be like calling Katherine Hepburn pretty -- it doesn't do it justice.  Actually, Katherine Hepburn is a good (if not very contemporary, sorry) analogy for this wine.  Bright but complex, intense but lovely, brash but charming, coming on strong but holding a lot back -- uniquely alive and exciting but in an intelligent way.  You taste the wine and there's just so much going on.  There's so many of the flavors I love in a pinot -- flowers, spices, earth, mushrooms, strawberries -- in a package that is not easy to pin down and describe.  It fills the mouth but is never dense or thick.  There's a lot of negative space in there (can you believe I just went there?), and yet it's a full and complete wine.

I have more reference points in pinot noir than in any other wine and yet I really can't find a wine to compare this to.  Never had a Burgundy I can usefully compare it to, never had a California wine I can usefully compare it to.  It's unique, and yet it's clearly and obviously a pinot.

Ponzi Vineyards, founded by Dick and Nancy Ponzi in the late 60s, is a pioneer in Oregon and one of the very first (if not the first) to plant pinot noir grapes there.  I believe my first Oregon pinot, in the late eighties, was a Ponzi.  So it is even more meaningful to see that this Ponzi pinot is one of the best ever made in Oregon.

Daniel Johnnes, wine director for all of Daniel Boulud's restaurants, led this Oregon pinot tasting.  He said he first drank the Abetina over dinner with the Ponzis, at their winery.  He was blown away and had to beg them for enough bottles so he could include the wine in this tasting -- and share the experience with all of us.  That's the excitement of this wine.  (And, obviously, you get from that story that the wine is not widely available.  You'd probably have to call the winery to figure out how to get some, but I promise you, it would be worth the effort.)

Note:  Please click here for palmnut’s recent post on his trip to Oregon wine country.  A great piece.