by Dr. Bob Ouellette

October 3,2001
Worcester Wine Tasters

 Comments-

 Except for a couple of wines, most of those tasted tonight were obtained from Oregon directly. These wines had been stored in a controlled cellar and not tasted previously .If you look at the scores, you will notice a close resemblance no matter what vintage we tasted and that was a surprise to some of us. True, like in most wine growing areas, vintages do vary in quality in Oregon despite the fact that many are willing to go out on a limb and state that Oregon produces very good pinot noir wines. Shades of some Burgundy vintages!

 Scoring these wines was very difficult. The scores were all over the place with some tasters giving extremely low marks that distorted the final number. I’m not sure that these tasters were thinking too much of Burgundy ? In general, I scored several in the 90’s and found them fairly close to their counterparts in France. Hamacher, Rex Hill, and McKinlay all showed a light strawberry color, a typical barnyard that greeted the nose, appreciable currant fruit, good balance, and in some instances a smooth finish.

 One wine in particular, the Willamette Valley was definitely a bad bottle. Several low grades downgraded the Hamacher, despite some good scores. All of this led to many comments from the audience in lowering the expectation that many had before the tasting started. It’s unfortunate that we could not present the 1994 and 98 vintages that have received fine press…but again, I suppose that we could say the same about a tasting of Burgundies of average years….

drbob@oxfordwineroom.com