Pinot noir is not for the faint of heart. I don't mean stoutness is required to drink it, but a fat wallet helps to enjoy truly great pinot noirs, whether from Burgundy, New Zealand, or Oregon, the trio of great producing areas. New Zealand has some reasonably priced Pinots, but the truly complex ones will still cost a pretty penny.
Burgundies, particularly the Nuit-St-Georges and Cote de Beaunes, are the holy grails of pinot. Oregon is another great source, and for the money, probably one of the better "bargains." I put that in quotation marks because "bargains" in Pinot Noir are relative. Which brings me to the subject of this post -- Lange's 2004 Freedom Hill Pinot Noir, which we bought on a trip to Oregon's beautiful Willamette Valley a few years ago. At $60 a bottle (we only bought one), this is not for the faint of heart, but it is truly a fantastic wine. I think it is better than some of the stuff coming out of Archery Summit and Domaine Serene, two of the more well known Pinot producers in the area. The Freedom Hill is one of Lange's cuvees, which is a fancy way of saying not your ordinary plonk (which sells for about $25 a bottle on their website, but you can get for $20 at places like Corridor Wine). It is rich, some cedary notes, and has beautiful, but less brash fruit. It aged quite well for the four years in the bottle and no doubt could have gone longer, but it went well with our Christmas lamb. A quick search on two of the more popular wine search engines (www.wineaccess.com and www.wine-searcher.com) revealed that the Freedom Hill is not really available in the DC area, but you lucky residents of states (such as Virginia) that allow direct shipping can order it through the vineyard or another site. Happy hunting!
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