29. Stoller Family Estate 2010 Cathy’s Pinot Noir, Dundee Hills, $100
This wine honors Cathy Stoller, co-founder of this winery in the gorgeous Dundee Hills of the northern Willamette Valley, who died in 2011. Fresh-sliced black truffle, smoke and Bing cherries waft out from this wine’s aromatics, followed by Van cherry flavors and a bit of chocolate and a final zip of red currant to close its lingering finish.
Production: 100 cases
Alcohol: 13.5%
Lists such as this are nice. But I content that wines with a production of less then 250 cases should not be included. There are wines here with microscopic production levels. That just amounts to teasing the vast majority of the readers.
Jim,
A valid point. I would contend that highlighting even small-production wines gives wine lovers an idea about what wineries to visit or wines to try.
Additionally, this is a bit of a slippery slope. Do we also exclude wines based on price point because they are accessible primarily to those only able to afford them?
We went into this with the thought of picking out the very best wines we tasted in 2013. During the process, we didn’t look at price point or production level. As a result, we also ended up with a lot of wines in which tens of thousands of cases were produced (in addition to small-production wines).