18 Years of Oregon Pinot Noir

This one was fun! Two bottles of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir just happened to get opened in the same week. A great excuse to get two glasses and do a little comparison to see if the wines couldn’t teach me a little something. Now, both were from two different vintages (1998 & 2016) and two different producers (Ken Wright Cellars & Domaine Serene, respectively) so there were going to be some inherent differences. The ‘98 Ken Wright ‘Guadalupe Vineyard’ Pinot Noir was just as you’d expect a well-aged bottle of Pinot to be - elegant, earthy and pensive, but with a surprising blast of dried, ripe red fruits. The ‘16 Domaine Serene ‘Evenstad Reserve’ was in line with a more modern interpretation of the valley: big and ripe (for a Pinot, of course) with obvious use of at least some percentage of new oak, the earthiness faintly in the background. I enjoyed both for very different reasons and saw a similar, through line of Willamette Valley style: bright, piercing red fruit notes over a rich earthiness.