In honor of Janet, of our collective tissue and of San Vicente, our wine offering this week is the 2024 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir from Vincent Wine Company.
When life is most interesting, I find it often comes down to recognizing and celebrating our collective tissue. The people, places, triumphs and tragedies that bind us human beings together. The connections we didn’t know existed, until we do. The shared glass of wine that acts as a catalyst for a life long friendship.
One of the great joys of opening Legacy Wine Co. and reintroducing ourselves to our wine community in Queen Anne and beyond has been hearing these stories of collective tissue from all of you. We recognize that we are temporary stewards of a space with an incredible history. There’s intention in naming the shop, Legacy Wine Co.
Janet came in to explore our new shop and taste with us a few Saturdays ago. I could tell as soon as she stepped through the door that the space meant something more to her than just a neighborhood wine shop. Janet was a regular of the old shop in its heyday and a dear friend to the founder and legend, Dan McCarthy. She regaled us with Dan stories, of their wine trips abroad with friends, of the magic of tasting with him. Then she noticed something was missing.
For decades there was a tin ornament hanging from the wine racks just behind the bar. On it, San Vicente, the patron saint of wine. Janet had given Dan this ornament when he moved his shop from its original location on Queen Anne Ave to the location where Legacy Wine Co. stands today. She couldn’t help but feel the void as she tasted through our lineup of Saturday wines.
The following Saturday, Janet came back to taste with us again and brought with her a gift. She found a nearly identical tin ornament of San Vicente in her own cellar and wanted us to have it. Needless to say, we hope it will hang in the same spot as the old tin for decades to come.
In honor of Janet, of our collective tissue and of San Vicente, our wine offering this week is the 2024 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir from Vincent Wine Company.
The winery takes its name from both winemaker, Vincent Fritzche, and…you guessed it…Saint Vincent of Saragossa! Vincent has been making his incredible wine in the valley since 2009 but to our knowledge has never had local distribution until now. I’m going to let Vincent tell you all about both his wine and the growing season that was 2024, but you really should stop reading now and snag a few of these before we sell out. This is a sub $30 stunner, a wine to swirl and sniff or chill and glug. For those in the know, Vincent is considered the best value in the valley. When you taste this wine, you’ll understand exactly why that is.
Here’s what Vincent had to say to us about both the wine and the 2024 vintage as a whole:
2024 Willamette Valley Recap
“The 2024 growing season in the Willamette Valley was a bit of an enigma, with an old school, cool, damp spring giving way to a modern-day hot summer, with one stretch in July showing 90+ high temperatures for nearly two weeks straight. Yet flowering was in mid-June, like the old norm, and harvest for us didn't begin until September 20, a bit earlier than the old days but late-ish these days, and by then fall weather had set in. We've found that to be a major key to making great wine, gentle fall weather at harvest time, perhaps like an airplane gliding in for a perfect landing rather than coming in too "hot." Cold mornings, mild days, a little rain doesn't hurt and can actually help keep things in check. We got all that in 2024 and the wines are gorgeous.”
2024 Pinot Noir Willamette Valley
“Our Willamette Valley cuvee, with the morel on the label, is our first selection of the new vintage. We choose barrels of Pinot Noir from all four of our vineyards that are most open and ready to drink. The goal is to provide a terrific value in handmade Pinot Noir from top vineyards, with the best barrels from our production going into higher level cuvees including our single vineyard wines. Once again, the WV Pinot Noir is a great value. Medium red color with broad aromatics, floral spicy red fruits with earthy, rooty accents, this just smells like classic Oregon Pinot Noir. On the palate, the wine is medium bodied, with red fruits and a spicy herb flavor, soft textured with a gentle chalky tannin. This is a lighter introduction to our Pinot Noirs, something to drink young to over the next several years, but as with most of our wines if you lost one or two in the cellar for a decade you might find it still delicious and alive.”
Seriously, don’t miss this one. At a minimum, snag a single bottle as a test case. I have a strong suspicion this will become many a savvy customers' holiday wine choice.
