pinot mania @ ipnc

well, i'm fresh from a road trip that i took with my roommate katy (of flowers winery) and my good friend rebecca (of schramsberg winery) who was interning at domaine meo camuzet in 2005 while i was at maison champy in burgundy...yes that's right...a trio of enologists! we drove up to mcminnville (oregon) in the willamette valley (about an hour drive from portland) for the international pinot noir celebration. we three are quite the pinotphiles, so it was high time that we did some serious tasting of oregon pinots (as well as the californian, burgundian, and kiwi wineries that were also pouring). we were highly impressed with penner-ash winery and a few others. there is some great potential for pinots there. the quality is defintely there in the grapes. the winemaking could be tweaked. in the end, this trip pretty much confirmed my desire to move to and (hopefully) settle in portland. i miss city living (so not the case in petaluma) and i miss new england. the willamette valley and portland hold the keys to resolving this! i can live in a city and just drive 45 minutes to an hour into wine country, ski country, and ocean beach country. and i can be among the evergreen forests that remind me of home.

i also ran into dimitri bazas, the winemaker at maison champy, my old boss, and now a good friend. his palette is unbelievably amazing. the wine literally speaks to him, so it was very interesting to taste with him and refine my palette as well. who knows, dimitri and this trio of enologists may be doing some interesting things in the future...les anges...dimitri and i before we dug into our delicious fried chicken...
becky searching the horizon at penner-ash winery...
super katy at archery summit winery...

view of the estate vineyard at archery summit...

p.s. these photos were all taken with my new favorite thing...my new cellphone, the lg dare, or verizon's answer to the iphone...