A beautiful early vintage for me, and my first vintage with Whistling Ridge fruit. Also the first vintage where the majority of wines were fermented with some percentage of whole clusters. The wines are long lived and elegant, moving slowly into the tertiary flavors reminiscent of old world Pinot Noir. The Willamette Valley bottling is in a prime drinking window. The Hommage was composed of wines from Momtazi and Winter's Hill and carries the dark fruit signature of those two vineyards. THere is an ageless aspect to this wine, and while I look forward to seeing where the curtain finally falls, it would be quite a while from now based on current bottles. 2004 Souris is beautiful, reminiscent of old Pommard but with plenty of life remaining.
*Under cork, wines over 10 years of age develop considerable bottle variation. Our thoughts on these wines are based upon recent samples, but each bottle is unique.*
**This post covers Matello wines**