2010 Purple Hands Pinot Noir Stoller Vineyard

2006 Two Hands Brave Faces

2010 Isole e Olena Chianti Classico

2009 Novy Family Wines Four Mile Creek

2010 Purple Hands Pinot Noir Stoller Vineyard – $19.94

My comments

The owner/winemaker is Cody Wright, the son of well known and popular Oregon winemaker/owner Ken Wright. This was a new winery to me when the local wine store had an e-mail special on the wine. In my opinion, any time you can get hold of a good Pinot Noir for under $20, you buy. This sat in the cellar for almost 2 whole days, so it’s time to try one.

Winery history

Purple Hands winery strives for the expression of genuine inherent terroir of soil and grape. We search for ideal moments of ripeness and complexity balanced with authentic strength of soil character.

Our wines are windows into dynamic breadths of terroir, extracting and unlocking a code of sweet and savory from our rich Oregon soil.

My Tasting Note

The wine is a bright red color with a slight ruby tint. The soft and nuanced nose has black cherries, raspberries, fresh flowers, and subtle earthiness. This is medium body at most, with racy acidity, and soft but persistent tannins. The silky palate has tart, juicy fruit, spice, and a bit of earthiness which carries through on the slightly short finish. This is a nice, light weight style of Pinot with juicy acidity and a touch of earthiness and spice to balance out the fruit. This is a nice change up from the broad shouldered California Pinots. (90 pts)

2006 Two Hands Brave Faces – $17.09

My comments

Two Hands is one of my wife’s favorite wineries and ranks pretty high on my list. This is a winery not afraid to allow their grapes to get fully ripe before picking. Some of their wines get awfully close to the over ripe and syrupy side of the line, but most of the time they don’t cross that line. Remember, ripe fruit is not a flaw in a bottle wine.

I was able to grab a case of this wine from my local wine store during a blow out sale a year or two ago. To me, this was an absolute no brainer buy for a touch over $17 a bottle. This is 65% Shiraz, 35% Grenache and 100% BarossaValley. This is the type of wine that made Australia famous before the mass produced “critter wines” did their best to kill that reputation.

Winery history (Core Values)

Quality without compromise is central to the Two Hands philosophy, driving all the decisions from fruit and oak selection to packaging and promotion.

We strive to differentiate ourselves; to be unique, fun and innovative in our business approach while maintaining a high degree of professionalism and integrity.

Our wines are made by a process of barrel classification – selecting the very best barrels for the Flagship range followed by Garden Series then our Picture Series. This is achieved by sourcing the best parcels of fruit available to us from six premium regions within Australia.

We handle every parcel of fruit, however small, separately from crushing through to fermentation and oak maturation to ensure complexity and personality in the finished wines.

Fruit will be the primary feature of all our wines, with oak playing a supporting role.

Much more information available at: http://www.twohandswines.com/

My Tasting Note

The wine is a deep, dark maroon color. The very outgoing and friendly nose features blackberries, Asian spices, black pepper, dying charcoal embers, cherry, vanilla, blueberries, and bittersweet chocolate. This is fairly full bodied with ripe tannins and good acidity. The palate is loaded with juicy berries, spice, and pepper. The finish is fairly long with some dark chocolate adding a nice element to the spicy, peppery, berries. This is drinking very nicely and should hold in the cellar for at least another year or two. (92 pts)

2010 Isole e Olena Chianti Classico – $18.59

My comments

This wine made my “Best Buys” list for 2012, finishing at number 8. To see the whole list see my post, Top 10 QPR Wines of 2012.

Even though I do like a “regular” Chinti, in my opinion, you need at least a Chianti Classico if you’re having pasta with a meat sauce, which is on our menu for this evening.

Winery history

Many of the wineries in the Chianti Region double as tourist attractions. Not Paolo De Marchi’s Isole e Olena; when you turn right at the main gate and drive by the burnished steel fermentation tanks, you will come to a muddy square where you may find someone working on a wagon with an arc welder.

“We don’t have time for tourism,” says Paolo. “It would distract us from our wines.” His dedication is our gain; Isole e Olena’s wines are superb. In addition to Chianti Classico, there is Cepparello, a pure Sangiovese of towering complexity and finesse, and a breathtaking Vinsanto. The winery also produces a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Chardonnay, and L’Eremo, a Syrah.

Syrah is an ancient grape from the RhoneValley, which Paolo originally intended to use to add color and depth to his Chianti Classico (he feels that the Cabernet used in most Tuscan wineries can overwhelm Sangiovese). However, he has since decided that the best way to improve Chianti is by careful selection of Sangiovese (Chianti’s principal grape), and is working to that end. Meanwhile, L’Eremo placed fourth in a world-wide blind tasting of Syrah, after three wines from the RhoneValley.

Isole e Olena is also worth visiting if you like to talk wines. Though Paolo has dropped out of the Consorzio del Marchio Storico (formerly Gallo Nero) for philosophical reasons, he firmly believes in the Chianti Classico region, and his opinions are the result of much thought. For example, there is a movement to establish extra-high quality subzones within the Chianti Classico region. “Since one of these zones includes Isole e Olena, it would be good for me,” he says with a grin. “But so long as wineries can double their quality by hiring new enologists, I’m against it — it’s too soon.”

My Tasting Note

The wine is a nice ruby red color. The very enjoyable nose has cherries, plums, baking spices, dried herbs, violets, and a touch of earthy underbrush. This is barely medium body with ripe tannins and very good acidity. On the palate the wine has nice tart red fruit and spice up front with some earthy elements coming in later adding depth and complexity. The finish has good length with the tart fruit, spices, and earthiness held together nicely by the acidity. If you can find this for under $20, stock up. (91 pts)

2009 Novy Family Wines Four Mile Creek – $9.50

My comments

Perennially a value priced favorite. In this vintage, it seems to have a bit more oomph than most vintages. Perhaps there was a surplus of very good grapes from some of the better vineyards or some grapes headed for single vineyard wines were declassified. Either way, we’re the winners. This is a jammy, fruity blend of Zinfandel, Grenache, Syrah and Nebbiolo.

Winery history

Our winemaking goal is to produce wines that best capture the distinct flavor and character of a given vineyard site. To that end, we focus on sites that provide us with exceptional fruit. We are fanatical in our protection of the vineyard flavor and are determined not to let any overt winemaking components mute the personality of an individual site.

In the cellar, we vinifiy each wine separately by block, clone and barrel type in order to maximize the individual components and provide greater complexity to the final blend. This approach also provides us with much more flexibility in crafting a wine using only the best and most harmonious lots.

Given that the majority of our wines are single vineyard offerings, it is critical for us to maintain the site’s individual character in order to provide you with a truly diverse offering of wines. To that end:

We believe in minimal intervention, “gentle” winemaking. In other words, we let the wine make itself. We do not want to do anything to the wine that isn’t absolutely necessary.
We believe in bottling our wines unfiltered and unfined whenever possible, convinced as we are that fining and filtering strip wines of flavor and character.
We believe that the best wines express their origins. Our goal is not to produce the world’s best Syrah or Zinfandel but rather to produce the very best wine from a given site.

My Tasting Note

The wine is a deep ruby red color. The easy going nose has blackberries, black cherries, baking spices, vanilla, wild flowers, and a touch of earthiness. This has medium body, soft, ripe tannins, and good acidity. The wine provides a mouthful of jammy fruit with some earthiness and spicy oak coming in on the back end. The finish has decent length with the spicy, earthy fruit. Not a lot of complexity but a very tasty week night wine. Offers an outstanding “quality to price ratio” if you can find it for under $10, like I did. (88 pts)

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Notes – I use the “official” Cellar Tracker name for the wines. I use Cellar Tracker to help manage and organize my cellar. I highly recommend checking it out at www.cellartracker.com. Loading you existing cellar is a lot less intimidating than it would first appear. There is a good chance 99% of your wine is already in the system, so you generally only need to enter part of the wine’s name and the system will find it for you.

Prices noted are the prices I paid at the time of purchase. I don’t shop around to find the best prices, but my local store is usually VERY competitive. I generally get case discounts, and since I work there part time, I get a 5% discount. Wines purchased direct from a winery do not include any shipping charges. None of the prices include the sales tax.

All wines that were sent to me free of charge to sample will be noted and I will show suggested prices when available.