very short finish, diluted, won't become my favorite, perfect for "guests who don't care" wine or with fish course if one doesn't drink whites.

Interesting. I thought 05 was pretty hot there, so the wines were also pretty hot.

Rains around crop season didn't do anybody any favors.

Must have been 2004 I was thinking of...

You were thinking of 2003 - a very hot year. 2005 was a cool harvest with sporadic rain throughout. We usually get a couple of weeks of sunny weather in late September/early October with temperatures in the 70s to low 80s during the day. This didn't happen in 2005, just clouds, a little rain, and temperatures in the high 60s to low 70s.

Seems like the guys at Beaux Freres had more rain than that:

Quote:

---

September brought mild daytime temperatures and chilly nights. The weather was excellent for ripening, although very slow. On September 30th, with a mere 10% of our harvest completed we got our first real rain. This was followed by day after day of cool, damp drizzle. Optimistic forecasts of warmer, sunny weather failed to materialize, only to be reforecast to the same end. We waited, spirits began to dim; doubt began to creep in.

---

http://www.beauxfreres.com/2005.htm

We almost always get rain prior to harvest up here, and getting a couple of inches, as we did in 2005 is not unusual (we got a similar amount in 2004, and we got over an inch in 2002, 2003, and 2006). Real rain is when you get 3.70 inches in September followed by over 4 inches in October, like we did in 1997. For the older dry-farmed vineyards, an inch or two doesn't have that much effect. It does wreck havoc on the younger and/or irrigated vineyards.

The bigger issue, as both Beaux Freres and I stated, was the cooler than normal weather that followed. This is not to say that it was cold - it was still in the 70s during the day. But it was not the typical hot and dry week that we usually get at that time of year. For those that waited long enough, we finally got several sunny days in a row toward the middle of October and a lot of wineries used that window to harvest. We actually got another sunny (and slightly warmer) stretch toward the end of the month, but I only know of one producer that waited that long to pick. This was a year when you had to do a lot of work on the sorting table, as rot was an issue.

The wines I've tasted so far from 2005 (only from half a dozen producers so far - lots more to come) are very nice wines - great flavors and aromatics with lower than normal alcohol. While I normally think that the broader designation wines can be a good value, I think that the vineyard-specific and reserve level wines will be far superior to the Willamette Valley designation wines in this year. They will probably not age as well as the 2002s, the 1999s or the 1998s though.

Were there excessive sulfur notes on the Torii Mor?

I have noticed this problem on some of their wines.

Duke, thanks for your detailed analysis. It ties it all together.

Claret, I haven't noticed sulfur. The wine is so trancelucent that it's would be hard to miss if it was there,
but as always, I may be wrong.

Serge and Duke,

Not to change the thread to a "05 Oregon Harvest" thread, but I'd add a couple of points:

First, the initial "real rain" came on... Sept 29th, or so. Those that had ripe fruit prior to that time had no harvest issues at all. We picked all of our fruit for one cuvee on the 28th, so it was completely unaffected by the rain. And we picked half the fruit for another cuvee on the same day.

Second, there were some regional variances in the weather. At our site, life was nowhere near as gloomy as the Beaux Freres note above. Yes, we had some rain on the 29th, 30th and a little on the 1st, but it wasn't severe-- maybe an inch, possibly an inch and a half. But we then had four days of nice weather, and we picked all our remaining fruit just before the next batch of rain came.

Most notable to me is that the '05s are wines of substantial structure: Good acids, and not excessive sugars. These wines will age very well.

Tom

Tom,
glad to change the subject. I haven't given up on '05 vintage all together based on just one winery one wine I tasted and I look for more information.

BTW, I have a standing order with WineWatch for '04 Diversite, will Southern carry it in Florida?
Will you come to Florida soon as you thought you would few months ago? Thank you for your kind words, Board-O has passed them onto me.

Serge,

Yes, so far as I know, Southern will have the 2004. That said, there is VERY little of it, so you will need to make sure that WineWatch gets a slice as soon as it arrives. I've not shipped the wine yet; so it will likely be about 30-days before it gets to FL.

In '04 we only made 490 cases of wine in total. All of our distributors have received only about one-third of what they got in prior years. A couple markets will not get any '04.

I'll try to remember to let you know when it ships; but if you don't hear from me within the next few weeks, remind me to send you an update.

Best,
Tom

P.S.-- In stark contrast to some of the other dialog; Sam Tannahill has said to me on two occassions that he feels that the Pinot Noir that he and Cheryl made in 2005 (all of them, not just Le Cadeau) "are the best Pinot Noirs that we have ever made".

Tom,
is this too late to buy/get shipped direct from you?

Missing on your '04 will break my heart. We are going to NYC at the end of Jan, and I don't wanna miss the wines.

Serge,

Send me an email:Tom@LeCadeauVineyard.com

I'll see what I can do; the '04s sold-out in about 3-weeks after I labeled them on Nov. 20th. (This is net of my distributor allocations... which have been dramatically cut since '04 was such a small production year. As previously noted, the FL shipment is still waiting to go, but there will only be about 40-six-packs of '04 for the entire state... and this is divided 60/40 between Cote Est and Diversite. I do not have any Rocheux to send to Florida).

Tom