Newsletter


Story Teller Wine Company
I am a holiday procrastinator. What do I mean by the phrase “holiday procrastinator?” I am currently housing a very dead, very dry twelve foot Blue Spruce. At least I have removed all the lights and ornaments. But if anybody was to try and light a candle in my living room, that dessicated shrine to Christmas would burst into such a fireball that Soviet radar technicians would think there had been an accidental ICBM launch. But at least I can claim my affliction is genetic. I can remember my parents leaving up Christmas wreaths on their front door year-round. Until the year they were shamed into taking it down by neighbors that decorated it with tiny styrofoam Easter eggs. So I have to apologize for not alerting you to this wine way back in December when I first became aware of its existence. But I guess I can now claim I’m in time for Valentine’s Day. 2008 Honig Schlucht Borgo Pass Vineyard Pinot Meunier (19.00) Years ago certain members of the Pinot Noir family decided that life had become boring and predictable. I mean really, how long can you go on being silky and cherry? So a group of Pinot Noir punks called a meeting and decided to mutate. Those leather clad mutants became Pinot Meunier, or in the vernacular of the street, the “miller’s grape.” It earned that moniker (meunier is French for miller) because the underside of its leaves can look as though they have been dusted with flour. If you happen to rumble in Germany, the word Mullerrebe (miller’s grape) can be seen on many a leather jacket. And yes, I know there is an umlaut in Mullerrebe, so don’t be overly diacritical. I also know that those kind of symbols aren’t handled too well by some folks’ word processing software. So Storyteller newsletters will remain an accent free zone. It also explains why you will never see a reference to Meryl Streep in any of my newsletters. Some of you may be familiar with Pinot Meunier’s role as a blending grape in the Champagne region. But it took the Willamette Valley’s David “Papa Pinot” Lett to recognize its potential as a stand alone still red wine. David planted his Pinot Meunier vines in the 1960s and he was pretty much the first person on the planet to commercially release a 100% Pinot Meunier wine. And even as the grape rises in popularity in places like Austria and Germany, there’s not exactly a whole lot of it being made in the western United States. So when I heard about this couple making Pinot Meunier in the foothills of Oregon’s coastal mountain range, I had to check it out. Barnaby and Olga Tuttle are based in Alsea, Oregon a tiny town on the edge of the Siuslaw National Forest, about halfway between Corvallis and the Oregon coast. You don’t find too many wineries or vineyards in Oregon that are this far west. 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 Pickle, has this Pinot Meunier on Gruner’s wine list. Friday Night Wine Tasting, February 12, 6:00-9:00PM: Cupcake Jones meets Storyteller! I have been drooling over the prospects of this wine pairing challenge for the past two months. Portland is quite lucky to have a lot of great bakeries and dessert places. One of our more revered institutions is Cupcake Jones, the brainchild of Lisa Watson and Peter Shanky. On Friday evening I will have dozens and dozens of four of Lisa’s finest cupcake creations on hand at Storyteller Wine Company. The challenge is going to be pairing those cupcakes with top notch dry wines. That’s right, there won’t be an open dessert wine bottle to be seen. No easy-peazy sticky wines with cupcakes tasting for us! So drop on by this Friday to see if I can succeed in violating the last of the great wine and food pairing taboos! There will be a 5.00 tasting fee for this event. As a little extra incentive, I promise a few pre-Valentine’s Day surprises will be unveiled during the course of Friday night’s tasting. One surprise I can’t keep to myself any longer is the return, for one night only, of my former assistant, one Pearl Abbey Kilpatrick. Pearl is visiting Portland on vacation this week and she has graciously agreed to hang out with us for three hours on Friday night. Oh yes, the “super pour” Friday evening will be the 1991 vintage Cote-Rotie from one of my favorite Rhone producers, Jamet. So you might not want to miss this one! Saturday Wine Tasting, February 13, 12:00-5:00PM: 2008 Oregon Pinot Noir Yes, even more new arrivals from the much-discussed 2008 vintage will be tasted this Saturday. There will be no charge for this tasting. 2008 Oregon Pinot Noir Hit List 2008 Haden Fig Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 18.00 (194.00 a case) I get more phone calls about Russ Raney’s Evesham Wood wines than almost any other Oregon winery. So while we wait for several months for Russ’ 2008s to get released, why not try out a bottle of Haden Fig from Erin Nuccio, a protege of Russ Raney at Evesham Wood. You can tell the grape doesn’t fall too far from the vine after just one sip of Erin’s debut wine. Nice, earthy aromas and flavors of black raspberries and black cherries, along with a nice bit of spice. Fans of Evesham Wood’s style will really want to try this new entry into the 2008 sweepstakes. 2008 Big Table Farm Resonanace Vineyard (Yamhill-Carlton) Pinot Noir 45.00 (129.00 for 3…252.00 for 6…468.00 for 12) Brian Marcy and Clare Carver made a big splash last year with their 2006 Big Table Farm White Hawk Vineyard Syrah. That’s the same vineyard that produces fruit for Maggie Harrison’s Lillian Syrah and the Big Table version was awesome. Their Syrah really surprised people because nobody had ever heard of Brian and Marcy in these parts. Let’s just say that having worked for Turley Wine Cellars, Neyers Vineyards, Helen Turley and associates, Blankiet Estate and Marcassin, Brian knows how to make a pretty nice wine. Luckily for us, Brian has now turned his attention to Oregon Pinot Noir. He made 94 cases of this wine and the fruit is from a great vineyard, Kevin and Carla Chamber’s certified biodynamic Resonance Vineyard. But don’t go thinking this is some big monster of a wine. It clocks in at an honest 13.1% and it is balanced and light on its feet. Wet rocks, sweet red cherry fruit and just a bit of tart raspberry or cranberry fruit on the finish. Classic stuff and worth every penny. The label even has a really cool black and white drawing that Clare made of their favorite cow, Josephine. Cheers, Michael Alberty Head Storyteller PS A heavy metal Public Service Announcement I have been asked to let the Storyteller faithful know that Charles Smith of K Vintners plans an all out wine tasting and rock and roll assault on Portland, Oregon. The blitzkrieg will be launched at 7:00PM March 1 at the Doug Fir Lounge. The winemakers from K Vintners and Charles Smith Wines, Gorman Winery, Mark Ryan Winery, Sleight of Hand Cellars, Trust Cellars, Reynvann Winery, Efeste Winery, SYZYGY, Gifford Hirlinger, Nicholas Cole, DaMa, Northstar, Dunham Cellars, Des Voignes, Sparkman Cellars, Zero One Vintners, and Dusted Valley Vintners will be on hand to pour wine while a live DJ plays tunes that are guaranteed to make your ears bleed. But in a good way. In Charles’ own words, “come taste wines the way they were made to be tasted…with loud rock and roll in the background!” Tickets are 25.00 in advance and 30.00 at the door. You may pre-buy tickets by calling Mistress Lynne of K Vintners at 509.526.5230 I will definitely be attending this event as I have a theory that Motorhead and K Vintners wines are going to be a very good match. I also want to see if Steve Brooks of Trust Cellars will be wearing ear plugs. Visit www.StorytellerWine.com >> 5511-B SW Hood Ave, Portland \| (503) 206-7029 \| 1.800.753.2531

Story Teller Wine Company

I am a holiday procrastinator. What do I mean by the phrase “holiday procrastinator?” I am currently housing a very dead, very dry twelve foot Blue Spruce. At least I have removed all the lights and ornaments. But if anybody was to try and light a candle in my living room, that dessicated shrine to Christmas would burst into such a fireball that Soviet radar technicians would think there had been an accidental ICBM launch. But at least I can claim my affliction is genetic. I can remember my parents leaving up Christmas wreaths on their front door year-round. Until the year they were shamed into taking it down by neighbors that decorated it with tiny styrofoam Easter eggs. So I have to apologize for not alerting you to this wine way back in December when I first became aware of its existence. But I guess I can now claim I’m in time for Valentine’s Day.

2008 Honig Schlucht Borgo Pass Vineyard Pinot Meunier (19.00)

Years ago certain members of the Pinot Noir family decided that life had become boring and predictable. I mean really, how long can you go on being silky and cherry? So a group of Pinot Noir punks called a meeting and decided to mutate. Those leather clad mutants became Pinot Meunier, or in the vernacular of the street, the “miller’s grape.” It earned that moniker (meunier is French for miller) because the underside of its leaves can look as though they have been dusted with flour. If you happen to rumble in Germany, the word Mullerrebe (miller’s grape) can be seen on many a leather jacket. And yes, I know there is an umlaut in Mullerrebe, so don’t be overly diacritical. I also know that those kind of symbols aren’t handled too well by some folks’ word processing software. So Storyteller newsletters will remain an accent free zone. It also explains why you will never see a reference to Meryl Streep in any of my newsletters.

Some of you may be familiar with Pinot Meunier’s role as a blending grape in the Champagne region. But it took the Willamette Valley’s David “Papa Pinot” Lett to recognize its potential as a stand alone still red wine. David planted his Pinot Meunier vines in the 1960s and he was pretty much the first person on the planet to commercially release a 100% Pinot Meunier wine. And even as the grape rises in popularity in places like Austria and Germany, there’s not exactly a whole lot of it being made in the western United States. So when I heard about this couple making Pinot Meunier in the foothills of Oregon’s coastal mountain range, I had to check it out.

Barnaby and Olga Tuttle are based in Alsea, Oregon a tiny town on the edge of the Siuslaw National Forest, about halfway between Corvallis and the Oregon coast. You don’t find too many wineries or vineyards in Oregon that are this far west. 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 Pickle, has this Pinot Meunier on Gruner’s wine list.

Friday Night Wine Tasting, February 12, 6:00-9:00PM: Cupcake Jones meets Storyteller!

I have been drooling over the prospects of this wine pairing challenge for the past two months. Portland is quite lucky to have a lot of great bakeries and dessert places. One of our more revered institutions is Cupcake Jones, the brainchild of Lisa Watson and Peter Shanky. On Friday evening I will have dozens and dozens of four of Lisa’s finest cupcake creations on hand at Storyteller Wine Company. The challenge is going to be pairing those cupcakes with top notch dry wines. That’s right, there won’t be an open dessert wine bottle to be seen. No easy-peazy sticky wines with cupcakes tasting for us! So drop on by this Friday to see if I can succeed in violating the last of the great wine and food pairing taboos! There will be a 5.00 tasting fee for this event.

As a little extra incentive, I promise a few pre-Valentine’s Day surprises will be unveiled during the course of Friday night’s tasting. One surprise I can’t keep to myself any longer is the return, for one night only, of my former assistant, one Pearl Abbey Kilpatrick. Pearl is visiting Portland on vacation this week and she has graciously agreed to hang out with us for three hours on Friday night. Oh yes, the “super pour” Friday evening will be the 1991 vintage Cote-Rotie from one of my favorite Rhone producers, Jamet. So you might not want to miss this one!

Saturday Wine Tasting, February 13, 12:00-5:00PM: 2008 Oregon Pinot Noir

Yes, even more new arrivals from the much-discussed 2008 vintage will be tasted this Saturday. There will be no charge for this tasting.

2008 Oregon Pinot Noir Hit List

2008 Haden Fig Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 18.00 (194.00 a case)

I get more phone calls about Russ Raney’s Evesham Wood wines than almost any other Oregon winery. So while we wait for several months for Russ’ 2008s to get released, why not try out a bottle of Haden Fig from Erin Nuccio, a protege of Russ Raney at Evesham Wood. You can tell the grape doesn’t fall too far from the vine after just one sip of Erin’s debut wine. Nice, earthy aromas and flavors of black raspberries and black cherries, along with a nice bit of spice. Fans of Evesham Wood’s style will really want to try this new entry into the 2008 sweepstakes.

2008 Big Table Farm Resonanace Vineyard (Yamhill-Carlton) Pinot Noir 45.00 (129.00 for 3…252.00 for 6…468.00 for 12)

Brian Marcy and Clare Carver made a big splash last year with their 2006 Big Table Farm White Hawk Vineyard Syrah. That’s the same vineyard that produces fruit for Maggie Harrison’s Lillian Syrah and the Big Table version was awesome. Their Syrah really surprised people because nobody had ever heard of Brian and Marcy in these parts. Let’s just say that having worked for Turley Wine Cellars, Neyers Vineyards, Helen Turley and associates, Blankiet Estate and Marcassin, Brian knows how to make a pretty nice wine. Luckily for us, Brian has now turned his attention to Oregon Pinot Noir. He made 94 cases of this wine and the fruit is from a great vineyard, Kevin and Carla Chamber’s certified biodynamic Resonance Vineyard. But don’t go thinking this is some big monster of a wine. It clocks in at an honest 13.1% and it is balanced and light on its feet. Wet rocks, sweet red cherry fruit and just a bit of tart raspberry or cranberry fruit on the finish. Classic stuff and worth every penny. The label even has a really cool black and white drawing that Clare made of their favorite cow, Josephine.

Cheers,
Michael Alberty
Head Storyteller

PS A heavy metal Public Service Announcement

I have been asked to let the Storyteller faithful know that Charles Smith of K Vintners plans an all out wine tasting and rock and roll assault on Portland, Oregon. The blitzkrieg will be launched at 7:00PM March 1 at the Doug Fir Lounge. The winemakers from K Vintners and Charles Smith Wines, Gorman Winery, Mark Ryan Winery, Sleight of Hand Cellars, Trust Cellars, Reynvann Winery, Efeste Winery, SYZYGY, Gifford Hirlinger, Nicholas Cole, DaMa, Northstar, Dunham Cellars, Des Voignes, Sparkman Cellars, Zero One Vintners, and Dusted Valley Vintners will be on hand to pour wine while a live DJ plays tunes that are guaranteed to make your ears bleed. But in a good way. In Charles’ own words, “come taste wines the way they were made to be tasted…with loud rock and roll in the background!” Tickets are 25.00 in advance and 30.00 at the door. You may pre-buy tickets by calling Mistress Lynne of K Vintners at 509.526.5230

I will definitely be attending this event as I have a theory that Motorhead and K Vintners wines are going to be a very good match. I also want to see if Steve Brooks of Trust Cellars will be wearing ear plugs.

Visit www.StorytellerWine.com >>
5511-B SW Hood Ave, Portland | (503) 206-7029 | 1.800.753.2531

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