I'm trying yet another bottle of Chasseur Pinot Noir after previously trying the Sonoma Coast and second label called Cazar. I guess this winery really has made an impression on me and now I'm trying all of the wines! The Russian River Valley Pinot Noir is sourced from the Umino and Ferguson vineyards and uses all Dijon clones such as 667, 777, and 459. It's aged in French oak barrels for 10 months.

This is definitely a darker colored wine than the previous Pinot's I tasted from this producer, which to be honest is actually quite common of the appellation.

On the nose I get aromas of pomegranate, red raspberry, black cherry, and subtle hints of orange peel. There are also some secondary aromas of black tea and peppercorn if you search hard enough beneath the fruit.

On the palate the first thing I notice is the wines' seductive and rounded texture. It's a silky wine that glides across the palate, but then pierces down with sharp acidity on the finish. I get beautiful flavors of black cherry that combine with red currant, spice, rhubarb, red raspberry, and just hints of black tea. The tea quality is actually quite intriguing and perhaps has to do with the tactile quality of the tannin that this wine possesses. The finish is quite long and displays very nice fruit flavors and spicy undertones.

I guess what I really dig about the wines from Chasseur are their stunning purity. They're wines that perfectly represent the essence of Pinot Noir and express the ripeness and exquisite balance that can only be found in the California sunshine. Major Kudos to Bill Hunter.... 93+ points

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I'm excited to taste this wine because last time I visited Napa I was lucky enough to taste the 2008 Napa Cab with Thomas Rivers Brown up at Outpost on Howell Mountain, and it turned out to be the best wine I experienced on the entire trip. (Tasted 100+ wines that week).

The 2009 Rivers Marie Cabernet is a 12 barrel blend of fruit sourced from various vineyards and AVA's : (25% Oakville, 42% St Helena and 33% Spring Mountain from the Baconbrook Vineyard.) It was aged in 50% new French Oak.

The color of the wine is indicative of it's ultra-young state and expresses a brilliant dark purple hue along the edges of the glass and a black core.

On the nose the wine is still pretty tight, but does show some very nice black currant and cassis notes, as well as secondary aromas of espresso bean, cedar, black licorice, mineral/crushed stones, and menthol. It's quite obvious that the wine is pretty wound-up and needs plenty of cellar time to release it's full range of complexity on the bouquet.

On the palate the wine opens up with some really delicious black raspberry flavors that combine with melted black licorice and creme de cassis liquor notes. The wine has beautiful balance and a silky smooth tannin structure that seems to melt over your tongue. Red fruits such as raspberry, currant, and red plum actually begin to pop-up on the mid-palate and the finish as well. 92 points

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Craggy Range is really great winery that makes some remarkable wines that capture the essence of the vineyards from which they're procured. As we all know New Zealand is home to some of the best Sauvignon Blanc in the world, and Craggy Range has always been amongst my favorites in that particular category. What's really exciting as of late is the potential that many New Zealand wineries are now showing with Pinot Noir, and so I'm very interested in sharing my thoughts with you all about this single vineyard Pinot made by Craggy Range.

The 2009 Craggy Range Te Muna Road Vineyard Pinot Noir was sourced from a vineyard located in the Martinborough appellation. Like Marlborough, Martinborough benefits from a climate that is closely aligned with the famous cool climate regions of Burgundy and the Loire Valley. This Pinot was aged for 10 months on the less in French oak barrels.

On the nose I get classic Pinot Noir character and fresh aromas of cranberry, red raspberry, red plum, mineral/earth, and wild flowers. It's most definitely defined by a cool climate style and reminds me of smelling a classic red burgundy. It's a vibrant and young bouquet that expresses it's youthful tart-like fruitiness.

On the palate the wine zips across the palate with brisk acidity and tart fruit flavors of red currant, cranberry, spice, mineral, and just a hint of orange peel. The mid-palate is very lush and shows some really nice elegance and body. However, on the finish it also displays just a touch of tactile bitterness that reminds me of citrus rind....very interesting!

I enjoy this wine for it's purity, varietal integrity, and vineyard expression. It has a very unique minerality and spiciness that I believe comes from the soil and micro-climate of the vineyard. The oak treatment has obviously added to the complexity and body of the wine, but it's a very subtle influence that allows the fruit to express it's flavor in a rather unadulterated fashion. 90+ points

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I had to taste this wine after trying the second label named "Cazar" yesterday and absolutely loving it. This Pinot Noir from the Sonoma Coast appellation is sourced primarily from the Twin Hill Ranch vineyard and is a blend of several different Dijon Pinot Noir clones. It was aged for 10 months in 60 gallon French oak barrels.

On the nose I get some really nice boysenberry, plum, and black cherry notes, that combine with secondary nuances of coriander, tobacco, and orange peel. It's a very intriguing aroma profile that develops in the glass and has multiple layers of complexity.

On the palate the wine shows remarkable purity and delivers delicious notes of ripe black cherry, boysenberry, and rich homemade strawberry rhubarb pie. Now....I'm talking wild strawberries, the ones that are dark, ripe, and nasty!! There's also a nice touch of toasted oak on the finish.

I really love this wine but, shhhhhhhhhhh........don't tell them that I enjoyed their second label just as much, if not even a bit more. This wine has more complexity and better acidity, but the "Cazar" just had this deliciousness that I couldn't get over and it was about $10 cheaper. 92+ points

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This wine is the sister label to Bill Hunter's Chasseur label and is a beautiful representation of Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir in it's purist form. I really haven't tasted purity of fruit like this since last tasting a bottle of Kosta Browne Kanzler a few years back or by tasting the wines made by Chad Melville. This wine is seriously like a bowl of fruit and is absolutely delicious. If you want want unadulterated Pinot Character and you looking for a wine that is vastly underpriced.....then here it is.

On the nose I get incredible amounts of fresh strawberry and raspberry preserves, subtle hints of mineral and wet pavement, and just a dash of dried herb.

On the palate the wine sings with fresh and tart raspberry preserves, strawberry rhubarb pie, and just a touch of toasted oak on the finish. It's really rather simple wine......but carries a purity and deliciousness that I often find in the higher end selections.

This may be the best priced Pinot Noir in the market and having tasted probably about 150 Pinot's this year, I'd definitely say it's the best value coming in at less than twenty bucks. 93 points

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This wine is quite honestly one of the best Pinot's I have ever tasted. Never mind the fact that it's from Australia, it just flat out competes with the best producers of Pinot Noir in the world. Here's a little snippet of history that I copied from their website:


"Wine was grown in Victoria's Yarra Valley from the mid 1800's through to the 1920’s and was a principal export of the new colony. The industry was halted in the 1920’s by the economics of the day, changing tastes and the high price of wool. 
It would need a visionary to re-establish winemaking in the Yarra Valley and in 1969 one came along. Dr Bailey Carrodus was ideally qualified to become a great vigneron. A degree in botany, another in winemaking and a doctorate earned at Oxford for research into plant physiology, combined with a passion for great wine, a love of food and art, and a fiercely independent mind equipped him well.
In 1969 after a long search for the perfect site Dr Carrodus planted 12 hectares of vines at the foot of the Warramate Hills.
 The gentle slope with its northerly aspect and deep grey silty loam shot through with bands of gravel fulfilled all of his requirements. Good drainage, all day exposure to the warm sun, and enough elevation from the valley floor to avoid the spring frosts. He named his vineyard Yarra Yering and in 1973 produced his first vintage of Dry Red Wine No’s 1 & 2." - yarrayering.com


The color of this wine is a very light red that has faded to a soft pink-brick color around the edges of the glass. The wine is also a bit cloudy and suggested that it was unfiltered and unfined.

On the nose the wine exhibits beautiful and complex aromas of stewed cherry, red plum, sandalwood, mineral, loam, cranberry, orange peel, baking spices, and some very interesting game meat notes.

On the palate the wine displays a glorious and luscious texture, sharp acidity, and extraordinary length. Flavors of earthy red raspberry, bing cherry, mineral, earth, tobacco, tea berry, plum, and just a hint of saddle leather touch down on the palate with a soft and elegant refinement.

Ok, lets cut the bullshit.....the wine is absolutely delicious and I've only ever seen complexity and such impeccable balance with the upper echelon of France's Burgundy region. 96 points

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ANTICA TERRA’S 2009 ESTATE GROWN PINOT NOIR RELEASED TODAY WAS JUST NAMED THE #1 INTERNATIONAL PINOT NOIR IN TASTING LED BY TIM ATKIN IN LONDON

WILLAMETTE VALLEY, OREGON, November 1, 2011 – The Antica Terra 2009 Estate Grown Pinot Noir was just selected as the top wine in a London tasting last week (Oct 28) with 40 Pinots from around the world. Tim Atkin (MW) was the Chairman for the Wines of Germany International Tasting and compiled a list of the top Pinot Noir producers to include. The wines were judged by an esteemed panel of experts including Atkin, Jancis Robinson MW, Hamish Anderson, Xavier Rousset MS, Peter McCombie MW, Gearoid Devaney MS, Neal Martin, Christine Parkinson and Anthony Rose.

The 2009 Estate Grown Pinot ($100, 750ml) is officially being released today and is winemaker Maggie Harrison’s first wine made with grapes grown entirely on the Antica Terra vineyard. The Antica Terra 2009 Chardonnay ($50, 750ml) is Harrison’s first Chardonnay and is also being released today. Both wines are extremely limited production with a total of just 146 of the Estate Pinot and 139 cases of the Chardonnay.

“Winemaking, especially in the Northwest, requires a great deal of flexibility, tolerance of unpredictability – and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown,” says Harrison, whose approach to winemaking is informed by the notion that beauty is conveyed in the accumulation of minute human actions. She believes the quality of the wine will be determined by her combined interaction with fruit and vine; the more moments spent working with the wine in a thoughtful and sensitive way, the more nuanced, graceful and profound the results will be.

In the Antica Terra process, clusters and individual berries are meticulously hand sorted at less than one ton per hour. The wines are fermented naturally, manually punched down and tread by foot, siphoned and bucketed into barrel by hand, never settled and aged on the lees before being bottled without fining or filtration.

About Antica Terra
Antica Terra is located on 40 acres of rocky hillside in the Eola-Amity Hills. Vines were first planted here in 1989 in a clearing within the oak savannah, a place carefully prepared amid the fractured mixture of sandstone and alluvium sown with fossilized oyster shells. Antica Terra’s recent history started with the arrival of co-owner and winemaker Maggie Harrison, who moved to Oregon in 2005 from Ventura County where she had spent the previous eight years (1998-2005) making syrah at the iconic Sine Qua Non winery.

Consumers can join the mailing list to purchase wines directly via www.anticaterra.com or by calling 503-244-1748.

Have too much wine to drink it all before you move?  You don’t have to whine about it, you can move it to your new home safely by following these few tips:

First, check with the local alcohol beverage control board in the state where you are moving to find out if there are any restrictions on how much wine you can bring into the state for personal use. 
Now that you know how much you can move and how much you might have to drink before you move, the two issues you face with moving it are: maintaining a consistent temperature and breakage. Temperature fluctuations are devastating to wine.  The older the wine the more the flavor is affected by extreme temperature changes. And obviously, if not packed properly, bottles are easily broken.
So let’s get it moved safely so the cheese doesn’t stand alone!
Tips:
    •    While it’s not always in your control, if at all possible, try to avoid moving your wine collection during the hot, summer months.  If you have to move it during the hot months, make sure to the mover has temperature controlled trucks. 
    •    If your collection is not too large, try and transport it yourself ensuring you can maintain the wine at a temperature of about 55 degrees  and try to prevent the container  from being shaken too much as it could result in loss of flavor.
    •    Pack the wine in double wall cartons with dividers and wrap each bottle individually with bubble wrap. The last thing you want is glass vibrating against glass.  You want to have your wine explode with taste – not from having two bottles hit each other!
    •    Ensure that you have extra cushioning/padding at the bottom of the box to absorb the impact in case the container is dropped.  Use packing/styrofoam peanuts to fill all voids in the container as settling will occur during transit. Here are a few examples of wine shipping containers:
    •    Uline - Corrugated Wine Carriers
    •    Universal Form Products -  Wine Shipper Coolers
    •    The Spirited Shipper -  Wine Shipping Boxes
    •    Label the container with FRAGILE on all sides and the top.   Use extra tape to secure the bottom of the container.
    •    It goes without saying, do not move opened bottles of wine.


Did you know?
    •    It generally takes months for a cork to dry out so don’t worry whether the bottles are upright or on their side.  Your domestic move should take weeks, not months so dry corks shouldn’t be an issue.  Also, the more modern synthetic corks don’t generally dry out. 
    •    While you will be anxious to open the container once it arrives and celebrate your new home, do that with a NEW bottle of wine!  Give your wine collection time to rest after its journey.  Plan for one week to rest for each day it was in transit.

Now that you have your wine collection secure and ready to go, you can focus on moving or shipping your furniture and household items and of course your wine glasses, safely and securely as well. 

Cheers!

This guest post was contributed by Transit Systems, a nationwide moving and shipping company. Transit specializes in shipping furniture, but can offer tips to help with any of your small move needs - from wine to antiques, or even an entire household move! If you're starting to plan for a future move, check out the Transit site to get a free shipping quote today.