2008 Loring Wine Company Pinot Noir Shea Vineyard
Community Tasting Note
DaveZack wrote:
Sunday, March 25, 2012 - Got this bottle from the winery for $23.46 during a pre-release futures special pricing event (if my memory serves me correctly).
Brian does it again!
This is a fantastic Pinot Noir. The bouquet is absolutely gorgeous, exhibiting beautiful floral elements, along with typical Oregon Pinot traits, such as dark fruit, plenty of earth, and suggestions of spice and oak.
Brian Loring is easily my favorite Pinot negociant in California (a winemaker who buys grapes and/or must to complete the winemaking process); a LWC Pinot is guaranteed to be delicious, well-priced, and a bargain as the wine relates to its price-to-quality ratio.
This is a rich, dark, brooding, creamy, delicious, well-balanced Pinot Noir. Up-front, there's an abundance of dark fruit (plums, black cherries, and blackberries), along with creamy oak and tannins, earth, tons of spices (pepper and other herbaceous notes), all complimented by a long, lingering, elegant finish.
Brian sources his grapes from some of the best Pinot vineyards on the West Coast. He extracts fantastic depth-of-flavors from his purchased grapes and somehow/someway assembles world-class Pinots. I've never had a LWC Pinot that wasn't at least VERY good; most of them are FANTASTIC. This wine earns an EXCELLENT score on a price-to-quality ratio.
We paired this wine with a corned beef and cabbage/carrots dish, assuming that an Oregon Pinot would be fairly light-bodied and delicious and elegant. This wine ended-up being much more substantial than we would have assumed. Though it paired well with the corned beef, this is such a serious, dark, creamy, extracted Pinot that I would recommend pairing this wine with serious beef dishes (a ribeye smothered in Kosher salt and freshly-cracked black pepper, curried lamb shanks, etc.).
No matter how you turn the Stelvin screw cap (LWC Pinots are always enclosed with Stelvin screw caps; as any serious wine lover knows, there's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that!), you canNOT go wrong with a Loring Pinot. As usual, job VERY well done, Brian!!
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