2005 Ken Wright Abbott Claim Vineyard Pinot Noir

[dananne]

From magnum.

Ten days ago, Anne and I bought a farm in central Missouri. It wasn't the one I previously mentioned on some thread in July -- that one fell through, but everything happens for a reason, and we ended up with a far nicer place. It's in Saline County, about 45 minutes NW of Columbia, nestled in some hills above a bend of the Missouri River. The house is a 75 +/- year old, 1 and 1/2 story farmhouse, meticulously maintained by an elderly couple who lived there for 54 years before recently moving into town due to their advancing age. It sits above a 1-ac pond with a nice floating dock (for swimming and fishing, as it's stocked with bass, crappie, bluegill, and channel catfish -- some of which are between 30-50 lbs, which we saw with our own eyes, or we wouldn't have believed it). The land is 35 acres, split between rolling pastureland and timber. We'll use it as a second house prior to our moving up there for good in a few years.

Anyway, we moved some things up there over Labor Day weekend, and we took this wine up there to celebrate our becoming "farmers."

The wine is a newer addition to Wright's stable of single-vineyard offerings, and it's located just E of Carlton in the Willamette Valley. It was darkly hued, and it offered darker fruit flavor profiles of black cherry and black currant. Plums and red spices on the nose. Despite the color and flavor profile, it did have a lighter texture appropriate for a Pinot, and it felt very lush in the mouth. Really nice wine. As we've said before, Ken Wright is our favorite winery, and his Pinots tend to range from excellent to exceptional. This falls in the first category, if not the latter. 13.5% alc. It ran about $150 in magnum. Some fine tannins could have used another two years to soften out, but I'm guessing the 750s will age just a slight tick faster than the magnum.