August 6, 2017
What is the best part of a blind tasting? The moment when we reveal the wine and the people have spoken. At Lenné we love to get consumers together to taste wines blind not just because it is a great wine education experience, but most of all because it is a lot of fun. Saturday, August 5th, we had fifteen tasters deciding the fate of eight high-end Oregon Pinot Noirs fromt he 2014 vintage. The flight was a really good one and all the tasters agreed it was difficult to pick clear winners and losers. Having done these tastings for years, we can tell you that the qaulity of Oregon Pinot noir has never been better.
The more we do these tastings the more we are impressed with the sophistication of consumers in not only picking out what they like, but also discerning real stregnths and weaknesses of the wine. The two wines that were beautiful but over oaked were recognized by tasters and came in at the bottom of the pack. We usually have tasters go through the wines, tasting and smelling for 20 minutes in silence so they don't influence their fellow wine critics. Then they rank the wines in order of preference and the scores are added up and the winners and losers revealed.
The fun part is when we let the tasters comment about each wine one by one, report it's rank by the group then pull the paper bag off and reveal the producer. That is when the magic happens and your ideas are confirmed or shattered.
Here are the wines we had to judge from on Saturday and as always we only reveal the rank of the top three wines unless you attend the tasting. These were all from the 2014 vintage.
1. William Hatcher $55
2. Lenné Pinot Noir $38
2. Vidon 3 clones $40
The other wines in the tasting were(not in order of rank):
Penner Ash Willamette Valley
J. Christopher Sandra Adele
Alexana Revana
Maison Roy Incline
Domaine Serene Yamhill Cuvee
