Ridiculously Good Wine

Had a 2005 Comtes Lafon Volnay a couple of days ago. Love this producer. There's a place called Willi's Wine Bar in Paris which always has several years and several kinds of Comtes Lafon white and red Burgundy. I have been known to sit at the bar and splurge on a bottle with dinner.

This was the village Volnay not his single vineyard. Spectacular. I know he's justifiably famous for his white wines, but the reds are just as good. I just wish I could afford more of the 2005 Burgundies - I tasted a bunch of them at the 2007 International Pinot Noir Celebration and they were all outstanding.

Blending

I'm starting the blending process for the '08s. Blending is one the most fun things you do at a small winery. Usually start in July, but the day job has been really busy. There are 50 barrels which have been separated into 11 lots. You can see a picture of some small bottles filled with samples above.

The current target is one main estate blend and two reserve wines. There are a lot of interesting components to work with - the Wadenswil this year has a tremendous upfront fruit component and the lots we picked last that hung for almost the entire month of October have some beautiful texture and balance. We'll carry the reserve blends over harvest and bottle sometime next year. Haven't made our mind up yet on the main blend. Check back for updates.

Venezuela in the House!

I get a call at about 10AM on Saturday the 8th asking for an appointment later in the day for tasting. I needed to be up at the winery anyway to work on blending, so I agreed. It was a Washington state phone number - Seattle area code, but the person calling had a bit of an accent. My hopes weren't too high - I've learned that the later the appointment the much higher the probability of a no show. Which is why I never open bottles early any more. People just seriously underestimate the amount of time you typically spend tasting per winery. Right around the time of the appointment I get a call - same person letting me know they're running late but that they still plan on being there. (Note to anyone making an appointment at a winery - we love status calls. Let us know if you changed your mind and aren't going to make it or you're running late or whatever, we really appreciate those.)

So around an hour later, two ladies and a gentleman arrive. Turns out that Irene who had made the calls is a native of Caracas, Venezuela and is visiting her friend Carolina (originally from Venezuela, but now in Seattle) and Carolina's new husband Juan Antonio. That's Carolina on the left in the picture above and Irene on the right. More amazingly, Irene had found and selected Twelve for a visit solely through the web while she was still in Venezuela. Irene knew our story, our labels, and which wines we no longer had. I've never had a more prepared visitor.

So we tried a 2007 Pinot and a vertical of the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Pinot Noir 144 (our reserve) and then Irene asked me about the "ooh-ooh". I figured out that she meant the "Uh-Huh" (which comes from the KC and the Sunshine Band lyric "That's the way uh-huh uh-huh I like it") Just the fact that she knew about that wine meant I had to go find a bottle and open it. I have maybe three cases total of that wine left, but you have to reward people who do their homework. Then we did a little barrel tasting of the 08s.

We shared war stories - Carolina told me about her mother pouring her $200 super high-end Malbec for her friends (who would have been just as happy with a $6 Malbec) and I told her about my wife accidentally using a $90 Chardonnay as a cooking wine. And we compared last names. Irene and Juan Antonio's were pretty easy. Mine - Lenyo - is very rare in the US and so consistently gets butchered (Lenno, Len-ee-o, Leeeno, etc...) that it was immediately ruled out as a name for the winery. But Carolina topped me - her last name, Uzcategui, looked pretty close to something you'd get out of a random letter generator. It is pronounced yoose-kah-tey-ghee and it's a Basque name.

So we took pictures and they headed out to dinner at Tina's. And I can now chalk off Venezuela as a country from which Twelve has had a visitor.

Classic England part 2

The restaurant was right on the river shown in the second picture of the last entry. Food was excellent. Wine list was typical for England - Australia, Chile, Argentina, France and South Africa well represented, nothing from Oregon. Check out the picture above of the amazing carving that's on the walkway to the restaurant. Didn't even notice it on the way to dinner (jet lag). Found it at breakfast the next morning.

Classic England

The day job took recently took me to a small city in England about 45 minutes west of London. Here's some pictures of the a classic English country hotel - The Newbury Manor. An aged but well-preserved pile of bricks in an immaculate garden setting. They even have real keys for the room doors. The grounds were in excellent condition in mid-July. More in the next post.