Pinot Noir

Last year’s winner looks happy in his picture. Happy but bald. Rooster has shaved half of his beard bald because it was itching him, and now he wants a deep pore cleansing treatment. Since it is his birthday tomorrow I will give him one, but it was a little odd when, while eating lunch with IT Boy today we discovered that our spouses share the same birthday. And we are both providing facials.

WHY I LOVE OREGON PINOT NOIR

The Rules: Tell us in approximately 100 words why you love Oregon Pinot Noir.

The Prize: A trip for two during September to Oregon Wine Country. We will include airfare, a rental car (don’t try to drive it into a tree), great restaurant meals, friendly tasting room staff, and special tours of Oregon’s top wineries.

The Entries:

Rooster: Not every wine stands proudly on a table layered with fish, lamb, beef and game. But Pinot Noir does. Not every Pinot Noir captures the flowing river, rich lava, and undulating flavor of the Willamette Valley. But Oregon Pinot Noir does. Loving Oregon Pinot Noir because of warm spice flavors, rich berry core and toasted barrel accents is too simple. Loving them because of deep, layered aromas is too obvious. But cherishing Oregon Pinot Noir for all these things and for the care with which its grapes are grown and vinified—now that’s love that has truly ripened.

Chicken: Flowing lava, flowing rivers, flowing flavor. Those are just some of the earth-born qualities that cause Oregon Pinot Noirs to surpass all others. Then there are the supple, layered aromas, the bottle-captured memories: black cherries (trees bent with fruit in the summer sun), roasted nutmeg (a winter kitchen, flour powdering the floor), and rose petals (scented confetti, better than a parade). Bring it to your lips and it is pure flavor—the barrel toasted sort redolent of vanilla and kissed with fruit. Swirl, smell, taste. Oregon Pinot Noir is grown with care, aged with affection, and always sipped with love.