A friend from Wellington, NZ sent a link to an Ebay auction for a half-case of NZ Pinot Noir he has had and highly recommended. I won the bid for $103 shipped, and received it FedX today. Opened a bottle tonight expecting the worst (hey, could have been poorly stored since ’99.)<\/p>\n
The first sniff revealed that it was not damaged in any way – in fact even without resting after its travel it was apparant that this is a high quality Pinot. Very much a classic Pinot nose (unlike many recent offerings from CA and OR, where they have gone ‘overboard’ in one way or another) of damp earth with just a hint of Eucalyptus and over-ripe rasberry.<\/p>\n
In the mouth it is velvety-soft, still earthy, and finishes with a leathery fruit. Perfectly balanced, I think, with no one trait standing out too much – like the New England Patriots of Pinot Noir. Not a huge wine, this, as many from CA and OR have become, but beautifully balanced and enjoyable. I wouldn’t have expected it to work with our homemade pesto (homegrown basil) tonight, but it may be capable of providing a complimentary taste with many foods. Martinborough Vineyard is proud of their Pinots, and rightly so judging by this ’99. I think it is near its peak now, but additional cellaring should soften it even more.<\/p>\n
Expect to pay $35 or so for a more recent vintage (unless you beat me out for more on Ebay.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A friend from Wellington, NZ sent a link to an Ebay auction for a half-case of NZ Pinot Noir he has had and highly recommended. I won the bid for $103 shipped, and received it FedX today. Opened a bottle tonight expecting the worst (hey, could have been poorly stored since ’99.) The first sniff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farglesnargle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farglesnargle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farglesnargle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farglesnargle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farglesnargle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farglesnargle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farglesnargle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farglesnargle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farglesnargle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}