The Buzz (continued) Michael Alberty Storyteller Wine Company 2/8/2010 2008 Honig Schlucht Borgo Pass Vineyard Pinot Meunier Barnaby is well known in the Portland community for his ten year stint at the front of the house of Portland's legendary dessert destination, Papa Haydns. But after years of ordering wine for the restaurant, Barnaby began to contemplate a life of winemaking. After a few years of assisting Chris Berg at Roots Winery, Barnaby has launched his own label, Honig Schlucht, which roughly translates to "honey grove" in German. As you might have guessed by the name and location, this is not your average winery. Honig Schlucht (ho-nig shlookt) is proudly described right on the label as a "Teutonic wine company." On the back label they even have an official endorsement from Ewald Moseler, a legendary Portland-based importer of German wines. When is the last time you saw a wine importer endorsing someone else's wine like that? Purely rhetorical, the answer is "never." Ewalds endorsement is an indication that Barnaby and Olga seek to make red wines in the Germanic tradition of gracefully lighter body and significantly lower alcohol levels. To steal a line from the Drouhin family, the Tuttles are combining Oregon soil and German soul. Heck, their wines are even housed in long-necked Alsatian/German-styled hock bottles. The grapes for this wine are purchased from the owners of Borgo Pass Vineyard, which is just a few miles east of Barnaby and Olga's location in Alsea. The vineyard, which for some reason shares its name with the treacherous approach to the vampire's castle in Bram Stoker's Dracula, is as far west as you can get and still be able to put the words "Willamette Valley" on your label. The Pinot Meunier cuttings were planted thirty years ago, so they are almost as old as the Eyrie plantings. When you combine the fruit from vines this old with Barnaby's approach to winemaking, you come up with something special.

Barnaby Tuttle wants his fruit to speak for itself so he uses only neutral French oak barrels. There is no creaminess here, no vanilla distractions or unnecessary amplification. This wine is just nice, pure Pinot Meunier fruit. Which is is exciting for me at least, because I love what Pinot Meunier brings to the bottle. I love this overlooked grape's elevated acidity levels, softer tannins, pale reddish pink color and subtle earthiness. Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon fame once wrote, "Pinot Meunier can make a really sublime red; more interesting than Pinot noir. It has more soul, more earthiness, more strangeness, more spiciness and funkiness." In other words, a perfect wine for slightly off-kilter wine geeks like me who look for a break from Pinot Noir every once in awhile. And when it comes to measuring strangeness and funkiness, I'm turning to Mr. Grahm every time! So take it from me, a long time Pinot Meunier fan, this Honig Schlucht wine does the miller's grape justice. I knew from the first pour from the bottle that the wine was on the right track. It was a beautiful, washed out ruby color that I could read my tasting notes through. The wine's aromas ran the range from dusty raspberry and tart cherry to fresh-turned garden soil and a trace of wet hay. It seriously reminded me of sniffing a glass of a basic Bourgogne from a good producer. It definitely did not make me think of a wine from this side of the Atlantic. There was no drop off in enjoyment once I finally tasted the wine. Brisk acidity just slapped my palate around like a spurned lover. It was tangy and satisfying and I didn't even need to look at the label to know that the alcohol percentage of this wine was probably less than 13%. 12.5% to be exact, but who's counting when you are having this much fun drinking a wine? The acidity of this wine acted like a Ramon Mercader ice-pick to the part of my neocortex that measures thrills. After all the initial burst of acidity excitement was over, I could pick out flavors like dried wild strawberries and tart raspberries along with a distinct presence of something I can only describe as a combination of brick dust and bone marrow. As I muttered those thoughts, Barnaby just laughed at me and said "it's the soil." It turns out that the soil at the base of Oregon's coastal mountain where the Borgo Pass Vineyard is located is very rich in iron. Can the iron in the soil cause me to taste things like crushed bricks and iodine? That's a debate for another newsletter. Let's just say I'm happy those flavors are in this wine, regardless of the mechanism of their delivery.

It was nice to be led to this wine by a good friend and customer. Thanks Riggs! You can't drink Pinot Noir all the time so it's nice to find a rustic, spicy alternative like the Honig Schlucht Pinot Meunier. It's hard not to appreciate the lifted acidity and lowered fruit ripeness they get from using fruit from cooler, high elevation locations that are almost to the Pacific Ocean. You also have to admire the willingness of a winemaker to boldly push out into uncharted waters. A Teutonic winery located in an area once though to be too rainy for anything other than moss and fir trees? Come on, even ten years ago a lot of folks around here would have laughed at the prospect of such a thing. So please join me in supporting this maverick effort. Barnaby only made seventy cases of this wine and I guarantee you will not find it outside of a few bottle shops and restaurants in northern Oregon. At 19.00 it is a flat out bargain given its quality. But to encourage those of you may be sitting on the pinot fence, I will offer a ten percent discount on any number of bottles purchased. If you go for twelve or more bottles the discount will jump to 15%. And as far as food combinations go, I may have found the perfect match for this wine. Here in Portland there is a fantastic new restaurant called Gruner. Yes, I know. But we are an umlaut free zone, remember? They have a rabbit dish on the menu that includes buckwheat spatzle, wild mushrooms and crispy shallots. I cannot imagine a better food pairing out there than that dish. And luckily for all Portlanders, Gruner's ultra snappy sommelier, Ms. Dana Pickell, has this Pinot Meunier on Gruners wine list. Michael Alberty Storyteller Wine Company

Teutonic Wine Company  •  3546 NE Tillamook Street  •  Portland, Oregon 97212