Oyster Wines 2010

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Oyster Wine tasting-1.JPG

We're heading into May, the first "non-R" month of the year and so, by folk wisdom, the end of the oyster season. Not so. Oysters are great year-round in the cold-water climate of the Pacific Northwest. (It's those flat-tasting Gulf oysters you've got to watch out for.) But what wine to drink with our succulent local bivalves?

For the past 16 years, oyster-guru Jon Rowley has been searching for crisp white wines with the particular, knife-edge flavor profile that produces a "bliss factor" when combined with the briny oyster. Under the sponsorship of Taylor Shellfish, It's become a mini-industry, with dozens of participating wineries submitting upwards of 160 wines. A preliminary screening reduced the number fo 30, a second screening to 20, and, this week, a final round in three cities produced 10 winners.

The Seattle taste-off was held at Anthony's Homeport at Shilshole, where a dozen wine and food professionals (a Seattlest contributor among them) were challenged to rate a random sequence of wines. We were particularly taken with a Chateau Ste. Michelle sauvignon blanc and a pinot gris from Oregon's tiny Anne Amie winery. The top ten:


  • Acrobat 08 Pinot Gris (OR)
  • Anne Amie 09 Pinot Gris (OR)
  • Anne Amie Cuvee A 09 Müller-Thurgau (OR)
  • Chateau Ste Michelle 08 Sauvignon Blanc (WA)
  • CMS 08 White (WA)
  • Columbia Winery 08 Pinot Gris (WA)
  • Franciscan 08 Sauvignon Blanc (CA)
  • Heitz Wine Cellars 09 Sauvignon Blanc (CA)
  • King Estate 08 Pinot Gris (OR)
  • Kunde 09 Sauvignon Blanc (CA)

Rowley was inspired by Hemingway's description of oysters in A Movable Feast: "...and as I drank the cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy ..." A worthwhile sentiment, no?

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This page contains a single entry by Cornichon published on April 24, 2010 10:03 AM.

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