Seven of Hearts - Part 3: "Estate Grown Pinot Noir" or "The Pinot Clone Wars"

In a late-coming third part conclusion (see part 1 and part 2) here are my final notes from our visit to the Seven of Hearts tasting room in Carlton. These last two wines are both estate-grown from Byron's Luminous Hills Vineyard in the Yamhill-Carlton District AVA. Pommard as well as clones 667, 777 and 115 are used...

Wait, wait, wait - what clones? Makes wine sound like some kind of science-fiction plot from Lucas Films, right? And just when you thought all you needed to know were some basic French (noir, blanc, gris) color words to get you through Pinot.

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WBW #65: Snow Day Wines - Bodegas El Nido 2003 Clio Jumilla

Clio (2003)
Bodegas El Nido
Monastrell 70% | Cabernet Sauvignon 30%
Jumilla DO, Spain

This month's Wine Blogging Wednesday topic (No. 65) hosted by Michelle Lentz was choosing a wine that you'd enjoy drinking during a full out precipitous attack of the white stuff. Thankfully, since moving to Oregon I've only had to "endure" the snow once, while I know back in Ohio and most of the Midwest in general they got pretty much slammed. Thanks Lake Erie!

That said, I think I had a pretty good idea as to what kind of wine I was in need of - big body, dried fruits, and a warmer level of alcohol. My first choice? Port of course - and I think a lot of people turned there at first. But then something shiny caught my attention. A bottle from El Nido (The Nest) winery in Spain. The pearlescent label was really familiar, and it turns out I sampled another of their wines in my Spanish Wine course last year.

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Spanish Wine Dinner at West Cafe

Tuesday night I headed out with some friends to Portland's West Cafe. There we enjoyed a six course dinner paired with different Spanish wines. Our group had two vegetarians (me included) and one vegan. So we really got the full gamut of offerings at our table. Overall the pairings were very well done, and so I'd like to share the menu with you and some of my comments.

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Twitter Cheap Wine Challenge

So this week Wine Ophelia (Raelinn Schmitt) proposed that a bunch of bloggers all post notes for one of their favorite under $10 bottles of wine. Then after everyone has posted, we should gather (locally) to do a big blind tasting via Twitter (à la Twitter Taste Live) to share these great buys with our friends and followers. So it took me a while, going through some of the notes that I have from the past year, and I was able to narrow my selection down to TWO bottles.

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Seven of Hearts - Part 2: Exploring Burgundy & Pinot noir

Hopefully you enjoyed the first part of this series of posts on Seven of Hearts.

Today we'll explore four different Pinot noirs which we tasted in their Carlton tasting room with owner and wine maker Byron Dooley. As mentioned, Byron's focus is to create wines that reflect the old-world French styles of Pinot noir from Burgundy. So let's start by briefly exploring this famous French region.

First and foremost, I love maps, and this is a useful one showing most of Burgundy.

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