I’ll tell you, it’s quite awesome being in the wine industry during the holidays. After spending the busy season doing wine tours and getting to know wine, it was a lot of fun busting out my favorite wines from the Willamette Valley, as well as opening up some wines that I was sitting on for a special occasion.  The drinking commenced around 11:00am, just after finishing my coffee. I can freely admit that here. I don’t think anyone reading a wine tour blog will judge me. I started everyone off with some tasty Roses of Pinot Noir. My favorite Rose of the day was from Keeler Estate in Amity. Right before the main meal was ready I opened 3 bottles of Pinot Noir.

 Every member of the family got a splash of each one to figure out what they liked. During this time I also started decanting my 2012 Pinot Noir Reserve from Redman Estates. I had been sitting on that baby for a while. 2012s are regarded to be such a good year and are hard to find these days.

It was awesome enjoying the 2012. My girlfriend has come quite far in wine tasting. We discussed the wine thoroughly. We noted how well balanced the wine was and that this wine was in its prime for drinking. The texture was thick and we could really taste the dark fruit notes, which the Ribbon Ridge AVA is known for. My mother tried her best to suppress her laughter during my professional assessment. I was able to appreciate the fact that it was indeed quite funny. There is no way I would have been talking about a wine like this a year ago, and i’m sure we sounded quite funny to those in the room were not as deep into wine tasting as my girlfriend and myself. Now all of a sudden I was Mr. Wine Snob.

I am now looking forward to Christmas. My wine collection has been severely depleted so I will have to load up again. I look forward to tasting some top quality Pinot Noir throughout these colder months. I will keep you all in the loop along the way.

Happy Holidays!