2004 Dobbes Grande Assemblage Cuvee Pinot Noir

[dananne]

We stumbled on Dobbes Family Estate wines while on the '05 summer trip, prior to the Washington offline. In fact, it was an '03 Grande Assemblage Cuvee that we brought to dinner at Anthony's to share with the folks from the board. Since we enjoyed the wines so much, and they were such great wines for the $ ($20s instead of $40s), we made it a point to revisit them this past summer. This was part of a case that we put together for shipment once the weather cooled. One of our Thanksgiving wines this year.

Bright ruby in color. Decanted at time of 1st pour. Cherry and cinnamon stick on the nose, with like flavors. A lithe wine with silky texture, good acidic balance, and some complexity on the long finish, including a hint of red spices and coffee. A balanced wine in a somewhat feminine, subdued style -- it doesn't seek to clobber you over the head with fruit and alc. A nice food wine at 13.5%. 645 cases made. Around $24 at the winery, and well worth every penny.

FWIW, uses 95% Willamette fruit and 5% from S. Oregon's Rogue Valley.

[wondersofwine]

Thanks for the note. I will have to secure some Dobbes' wine.

[dananne]

Really nice folks, and they ship, which is even better. In fact, they even called before shipping to see what the weather was like here and if we thought it was cool enough. From my experience, even folks that pay attention to such things when shipping don't take the time to call you for your opinion. This winery is really on our thumbs way up list.

[winoweenie]

Totally agree Dan. Had messages from 3 of my mailing list wineries that I'll answer today. WW

[dananne]

Had another of these, and while the tasting notes would be mostly the same, what we noticed this time was a more pronounced minerality and slightly more subdued fruit. It seemed more Burgundian. Anyway, still really nice wine, and a great winery, particularly for the prices. We've never tasted a bad Dobbes wine.

[dananne]

We had another last night to mark our arrival home in Atlanta. We had spent the last week traveling around Missouri, camping much of the way (save for when the weather made that impossible -- pretty catastrophic flooding in many parts of the state). At least it was warmer -- when we were there in January, the temp was -2 most of the time.

Anyway, about the wine: Nothing much to add to the above. Really nice juice, and I'm happy we still have a few bottles left. It should continue to drink very well for several years, and in general the Grande Assemblage will likely age more gracefully than will the Skipper's Cuvee, which is a Pinot blend from Rogue Valley fruit. The latter typically shows more jammy, bouncy fruit and is meant to enjoy sooner rather than later. In general, though, I recommend any Dobbes wine, and they have continued to do a nice job holding down their prices, unlike others in Willamette.

[dananne]

Had yet another last night. Interestingly, it was a little slow to open up, at first coming off as a touch underripe and stemmy. After about an hour it was resembling the juice we remembered, but I'll have to be sure to let the others decant a bit in the near term, as they are clearly in some weird stage of development.

[dananne]

Still wondering what happened with the last bottle a few weeks ago, I popped another on Saturday, though only Anne was drinking. She reported that nothing seemed amiss, and that it was a dandy drink that seemed in it's prime window. Weird, but I'm not going to argue about it. The day before, we popped an '04 Skipper's Cuvee, which Anne liked, but not as much as this one. I'll post on it separately.