INSIDER'S PICK: 2018 DAEDALUS/ WILLFUL WINE CO. PINOT NOIR 'JEZEBEL' OREGON $19.99

At a time like this, it's pretty much impossible to be 'normal'. But it is important to try and keep what you can as close to normal as you can while you can. Even though we will not be doing the public tasting portion of the Insider's Pick until further notice, we will still be offering the wine for purchase with the usual 10% discount on Thursday and Friday. The wines will still be ones we highly recommend, and the tasting notes will still be our own. We hope you are able to come by and get some wines to enjoy.

Speaking of the 'impossible normal', we are all watching the horrible damage and destruction happening in Oregon with great trepidation. While the fires by and large aren't threatening to physically burn the vineyards themselves, the potential for 'smoke taint' to develop in the grapes from the poor air quality is definitely a fear. It can be such a location by location thing that there is no way to universally say what will happen, and there are many ways the wineries can escape or mitigate these problems, so we can't really determine anything about the wines until they are completed and in the bottle. But we are all rooting for them to be able to have quality wines to bring to us from the 2020 vintage, so that small wineries like this one will be able to survive this most difficult of years. For now we can support them with what is already in the bottle, coming from the 2018 vintage which was overall one of the warmest overall in Oregon but without the damaging extreme heat spikes. This, like the Roots Wine Co. 'Klee' in the Select Six, is an assemblage of fruit from multiple smaller sources the winery works with, a more value oriented version of their style and winemaking skill. Juicier on the nose at first from the warmer conditions, with a bit of cola and spice behind the fresh red cherry aromas, but still finding that racier acidity on the palate that brings out some of the tart fruit skin notes and savory flavors that is so Oregon. Folks that usually find Oregon Pinot a bit lean will not have that issue with this (and a lot of 2018s in general) but it is not atypical, and still speaks so much of what Oregon wines are all about.

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