If you follow the financial markets (my own personal guilty pleasure) you cannot escape having noticed the brutal decline of the Canadian dollar. In less than a year the Loonie has gone from nearly par to its present value of around $0.75 to the US dollar. That means our purchasing power of American goods has eroded substantially in just one year. If a year ago you somehow knew that events in the currency market would unfold as they did, would you have bought a ton of American wines with your highly valued Loonie before it crashed 25%? At Advinetures, we sure would have!
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In 1965 David Lett planted the first Pinot Noir vines in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Fifty years later the region is home to more the 400 wineries producing some of the best of this varietal worldwide along with other cool climate wines such as Chardonnay, sparkling and Syrah. But while Pinot Noir is certainly what put Willamette Valley on the wine map, it is their experimentation with some surprising ones that makes visiting this area truly intriguing for wine lovers.
2006 Dusky Goose Pinot Noir
A big but very structured wine, it still tasted like a Pinot but with everything dialed up. An extraordinary nose revealed notes of raspberry, candied cherry, spice and vanilla. The palate didn’t disappoint after high expectations based on the nose and the flavours continued to evolve long after opening. A bold but structured wine which we enjoyed very much.
Excellent
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Most of us wine enthusiasts have harboured, either secretly or not, the dream of some day owning a winery. Cristom Winery, in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, is the story of a man who actually pursued that dream and created one of the top wineries in the state.
Owner/winemaker Rollin Soles of ROCO Winery
ROCO Winery’s founder and winemaker, Rollin Soles, makes an impression as soon as he walks in the room. We arrived at his tasting room outside of Newberg, at the north end of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, at 9 a.m. for our appointment with him on a rainy Saturday morning in March. Rollin arrives a few minutes later and takes over the room before he says anything. He has a triathlete’s lean body, a big handle bar moustache, broad smile and a twinkle in his eyes that make you think he would have some great stories to tell. Even though he left Texas almost 30 years ago, he still has plenty of a Matthew McConaughy like drawl. We waited for the “allright, allright”… but it never came. Underneath the drawl, and the twinkle and the warmth is an educated, and articulate man who is passionate about wine and is making some of Oregon’s finest Pinot Noir.
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