IPNC week is here!
It’s the best week of the entire glorious Oregon summer – the 24th annual International Pinot Noir Celebration, commonly known simply as IPNC. 60 of the top Pinot producers from around the globe converge on Oregon wine country for four days of great tastings, seminars, dinners and general hedonistic delights. All told about 600 people attend the full weekend proceedings – about half of which are consumers from all over the U.S., and the other half are in the wine business one way or another. (And a few hundred more attend the Sunday-only tasting event called Passport to Pinot - tickets for this killer tasting are still available.)
Salmon-bake dinner at IPNC
We are honored to once again be a featured winery at this year’s IPNC, along with Burgundian superstar Domaine J-J Confuron. We’re featuring the amazing Confuron wines in our tasting room Friday through Sunday this weekend – so make sure you come by to check them out. We’re also honored to have just received some wonderful reviews for our wines – the new issue of Steve Tanzer‘s hugely influential IWC (International wine Cellar) has just been released and we are the beneficiaries of some monster scores from Josh Raynolds, the Oregon Pinot specialist for Tanzer.
Our 2008 D122 Pinot grabbed 93 points – the 2nd highest score given in the report! We also received scores of 91 for La Paulée, Audrey, and our forthcoming Dom Denise Pinot – I’ll take all four in the 90s any day! Add these to the 95-point review for Audrey and the 93-pointer for La Paulée in Wine Enthusiast, and we’re off to a great start this year in the press. It always amazes me when we get good scores, because honestly our wines are not in the style that tends to be the preference of the bulk of the critics of this era. Maybe elegance, finesse, balance and grace are indeed making a comeback. (Of course from our point of view they’ve always been in style and always will. Tastes may change, but our style remains the same!)
So please join us in celebrating the wonderful gift of nature that we call Pinot Noir – the only red wine grape capable of rendering wines of such ethereal beauty, subtlety and nuance. Cheers – and I look forward to seeing you this weekend at IPNC!
