Robert Parker Wine Advocate Scores for the 2008s

We just got our scores from Jay Miller's Oregon report for the Wine Advocate (Parker actually doesn't do the Pinot Noirs, Jay does). I added a phrase or two from the review along with the score.

2008 Twelve Pinot Noir: "Bright and vibrant on the palate with an edgy, elegant personality" - 89 points.

2008 Twelve Pinot Noir 144: "similar aromatic and flavor profile to the Yamhill-Carlton bottling (the wine above), but with greater depth, concentration, succulence and finesse" - 91 points

2008 Twelve Pinot Noir Uh-Huh: "plush, velvety wine with layered fruit, outstanding volume, impeccable balance and several years of aging material" - 92 points

We'll be releasing the last two on November 20 at our official grand opening of our tasting room in McMinnville. If you can't make that nor the Thanksgiving weekend tastings, send us an email or give us a call if you want some. We only made 100 cases of each of the reserves.

Tasting Room Grand Opening - November 20

We've been working on finishing the tasting room since we had our soft opening in July. We now have lighting, a bar, a sink and some other accessories and are ready to have an 'official' grand opening in conjunction with the release of our 2008 Pinot Noir reserve blends - the 144 and Uh-Huh.

Come see us on November 20 from 12-8 at 581 NE 3rd Street in downtown McMinnville. the 20th is also the monthly Art and Wine walk in McMinnville, so after trying our wines you can wander down 3rd Street and check out a bunch of other places that will be featuring guest artists and wineries.

Harvest Update

2010 will go down as the fastest harvest we've ever done. We picked the entire vineyard in one day which we've never done before and hope to never repeat. And we processed all the fruit in one long shift on the sorting line which we also hope to never repeat.

On the bright side, the fruit looks really good. Sugars have soaked up (we leave the crushed berries in a cold place for a couple of days before we start fermentation) to 23+ Brix which means low to middle 13s on alcohol. Flavors were great, seeds were ripe, should be a very nice vintage. Some pictures of harvest are shown above.

2008 Pinor Noir Reserves

We opened our as yet officially unreleased 2008 144 and Uh-Huh for some lucky people during the last two Saturdays at our new Tasting Room in McMinnville. The 144 (made from old vines picked on Oct 29) is showing incredibly well especially considering these were just bottled at the end of July. The Uh-Huh (our first whole cluster fermentation) is a little tighter - just needs some more time in the bottle. Really long finish. Both are very nice wines. Official release will be November 20 in the tasting room.

And we've retired the black graffiti label for the 144 and replaced it with the ballerinas shown above. The Uh-Huh label will stay the same.

Sorry for the lack of posts - Harvest Update

I've been trying to figure out how to balance the blog and our new Facebook page (twelvewine). Can't figure out if I should just double post or try to create original content for each place. The latter is going to be extremely hard, so some variation of the former is going to have to happen.

In that spirit, Let's get up to date on harvest. Weather over the last couple of weeks has really been helping. Our canopy is still mostly green and the birds haven't made too big of a dent, so we're looking forward to letting the grapes hang out there as long as we can. You'll see lots of picking over the next week, because the weather forecast starting next weekend is ugly. We're going to try and pick as late in the week as possible. One thing we've learned is that if you wait long enough in Oregon the weather forecast tends to change. Maybe next weekend will just be a one-off storm - we'll see.

Looks a lot like 2008 out there - smaller than normal crop, good flavor formation, nice brown stems, just waiting to see if we can get a little more sugar.