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The Tasting Panel!

Thanks for the help! Over the last year a hearty group of, now, 60 people have helped assess wines upon release. A little like us, a little like Parker, a little like your restaurateur or retail wine buyer, they have tasted early wines and given their opinion.

Although it is a way of getting a sample bottle early, and a way for us to begin distributing a wine, from what we hear it is also an excuse for a neighborhood wine tasting, a great meal for which you need add only great food, and a painless way to build a diverse wine cellar.

Last year we shipped 14 wines in 4 shipments throughout the year. For some panel members that was all the wine they got, for others it gave them a chance to cherry-pick releases and get favorites without worrying about them running out, which many of the 1998 Pinot noirs did, to late customers' frustration. Panel members get 20% discounts on all newly released wines.

On Saturday, May 19, panel members will get a chance to taste the Rex Hill-Bethel Heights-Chehalem experimental wines mentioned in our article on Transparent Winemaking, in a formal, blind, sitdown tasting as part of their annual winery lunch and tasting. It precedes a review of Vintage 2000 wines in barrel and the Best Barrel Tasting.Feedback from serious, impassioned customers helps us understand if we've hit the mark.

Highlights of this year's releases include:

the 1999 Vendange Tardive Pinot Gris (our first)
1999 Pinot Blanc (again our first)
1999 Stoller and Ridgecrest Pinots, and
1999 Ian's Reserve Chardonnay and Rion Reserve Pinot noirs, which may be the best ever made of these two varietals, especially for fruit intensity, balance and subsequent long aging.