REVIEWER FAVORITES: Claire Nesbitt, jamessuckling.com
Wine choice of the week: brick house 2020 cascadia chardonnay
Willamette Valley is full of vibrant wines, and it was a joy to tap into them during my tasting trip there last week with my colleague Andrii Stetsiuk. Most of our tastings were pinot noir, but there were plenty of other stunning examples expressing that unique Oregonian character: purity and vibrancy of fruit, with underlying minerality and tightness alongside fine tannins and bright acidity. The same sense of place extends to the chardonnays, which aren’t as plentiful but are of equally impressive quality, as we have been writing about in the last few years in our annual Oregon reports.
My wine choice this week is a chardonnay from Ribbon Ridge AVA, in the center-north of the valley: the Brick House Chardonnay Ribbon Ridge Cascadia 2020. It’s produced from vines that were planted in 1990. Brick House, which is owned by Doug Tunnell, a former CBS News foreign correspondent, has embraced an organic farming philosophy since its founding, and it was certified Biodynamic by Demeter in 2005 – a rare occurrence for Oregon vintners. Their care in nurturing the land can be felt in their wines, both pinot noir and chardonnay, and their southeast facing slopes achieve a perfect balance of ripeness, freshness and structure in the wines.
The Cascadia 2020 has opened up since we tasted it last year, and it showed beautiful aromatics of yellow pears, jasmine, fresh salted butter, oyster shells and wild thyme when I tasted it last week, yet it was still vivid and fresh. It’s the kind of wine that I would sit back with in the evening after a long day – immensely bright and drinkable but with complexity and tension to ponder over. And at only $48 a bottle from the winery, it offers fantastic value. —Claire Nesbitt