O'Reilly's Wines
2006 O’Reilly’s Chardonnay - Oregon
Great fruit and acidity – an excellent example of what caliber of Chardonnay can come out of Oregon – all the grapes were the early ripening Dijon clones. The fruit for the O’Reilly’s Chardonnay is from Zorn Farm's Saint Columban Vineyard and David and Jean Beck's Vineyard near Amity and Carabella Vineyard in Ladd Hill. More exuberant than prior vintages due to the lovely, hot summer in 2006 - Rich texture and fresh melon and pineapple-like fruitiness with a tasty vanilla finish. 2/3 of the wine was fermented in stainless steel - a refreshing alternative to overblown Chardonnays. 1460 cases produced
2007 O’Reilly’s Pinot Gris - Oregon
One of our most popular new wines! The 2007 O’Reilly’s Pinot Gris is a classic Oregon Gris – plenty of limey aromas with rich guava-like flavors. Hallmark acidity will preserve this white in your cellar for up to five years.
Owen Roe Wines
2006 Riesling “DuBrul Vineyard”
No cellar is complete without this exceptional Riesling that will age beautifully for at least twenty years. Naturally high in acidity, it is balanced and crisp at 1.5% residual sugar. Excellent with Asian fare or simply served chilled on a warm day.
2006 Chardonnay “DuBrul Vineyard”
This Chardonnay from DuBrul vineyard has nice tropical fruit aromas and flavors with good acidity and a long silky finish. It is wonderfully complex with a creamy mouth feel. This chardonnay is delightful now and will really please those who can lay it down for several years as it will develop upwards of ten years in the cellar.
2007 Pinot Gris "Crawford-Beck Vineyard"
David and Jeanne Beck farm this 1.2 acre block of exceptional Pinot Gris on their hillside in the Eola-Amity Hills. The vineyard is carefully tended to provide highly concentrated fruit through low yields and sensible stewardship. Their attention to the vines finds expression in this complex and wonderfully aromatic wine.
2006 “Sharecropper’s” Pinot Noir
Some very fine vineyards in the Northern Willamette Valley provided the fruit for this wine. The 2006 Sharecropper's Pinot Noir is nicely balanced with loads of flavor. I doubt that we will be able to offer such a high caliber Pinot at this price for some time to come. (Grapes prices have soared)
This label hearkens to the spirit of the original sharecropping ideal of a partnership between landowners and the laborers who toiled producing the crops.
2006 Pinot Noir “The Kilmore”
Our marquee wine from Oregon! Arthur and Sherri Kalita's Vineyard in the hills above Yamhill produced some beautifully vibrant fruit in 2006. It is blended with Lenné Estate Vineyard owned and farmed by Steve Lutz and Mike Merriman's east-facing vineyard on Cummin's Ridge in Carlton. Each site has old ocean bottom soils which has little summer moisture forcing low vigor and small intensely flavored berries. The wines are rich and full bodied with black fruits and dark coffee.
This 2006 Pinot Noir is very rich and fragrant with a violet perfume and black fruit and coffee notes on the palate. A cellar gem not to be missed.
2006 Pinot Noir “Amity-Eola Hills”
The predominately Jory soils in the Amity-Eola Hills are very well-drained and volcanic in origin. These small mountains in the heart of the Willamette Valley can gather greater heat units than the surrounding Pinot Noir sites. What makes this area truly unique is the tremendous cooling breezes that channel through the Coastal Range which create great diurnal temperature swings. A result of the heat is darker fruited wine than those of the same soils in the Dundee Hills. The long cool evenings impart fruit vibrancy, acidity, and spice.
The 2006 vintage has turned out Pinot Noirs with massive weight and plenty of flavor. This wine is our richest Pinot Noir of the vintage. A majority of the fruit was farmed attentively by David and Jean Beck from their eponymous Crawford-Beck Vineyard. Their bowl-shaped vineyard is located near Amity and lies atop a ridge with the Pinot Noir vines fanned across each of the slopes.
2006 Pinot Noir “Santa Maria Valley”
The folks behind Bien Nacido Vineyard in Santa Maria Valley are responsible for growing this fruit. Two blocks in their Solomon Hills Vineyard are located in the far west end and coolest part of the Santa Maria Valley. The soils here are ocean-bottom and have traces of limestone reminiscent of the world-class Pinot Noir vineyards in the Old World. One is immediately struck with the intense ruby color and excellent balance of the 2006 Santa Maria Valley Pinot Noir. It has piney and tart-cherry flavors with a pomegranate-like fruit finish and a healthy backbone of acidity.
2005 Cabernet Sauvignon “DuBrul Vineyard”
Hugh and Kathy Shiels’ DuBrul Vineyard is located in northwest Yakima Valley on a small outcropping in the Rattlesnake Hills. The vineyard sits at around 1375 feet several hundred feet above the Yakima River Valley floor. This fascinating area was carved out by cataclysmic flooding from glacial Lake Missoula. There are areas with lunar-like exposed basalt rock and rock deposits with imbedded shells from the lake bottom mixed with sedimentary soils and volcanic ash.
The vineyard ripens its fruit with high sugars and flavors, however, unlike warmer areas it also retains marvelous acidity, a harbinger of age worthiness. These wines are Owen Roe’s most precious and are powerful, super-intense, and should age well into the next decade.
2006 Syrah “Ex Umbris”
Ex Umbris is Latin for “out of the shadows”. This wine was originally crafted to express the smoky notes imparted to the Syrah grapes by a raging wildfire. One of the characteristics of this noble grape is its inherent smokiness, a flavor that comes through even without Mother Nature’s assistance.
Art DenHoed’s Erickson Road Vineyard, Mike Sauer’s Red Willow Vineyard, and Joe Hatrip’s Elephant Mountain Vineyard in western Yakima Valley yielded Syrah with tremendous richness. It was then balanced by the cooler, smoky Lewis Vineyard in The Dalles, and the unctuous fruitiness of Alder Ridge Vineyard in Alderdale, WA. A fabulously aromatic and full-bodied Syrah!
2006 was a first rate Syrah vintage that exemplifies all the fragrance, texture, and deep plum/gamey characteristics of great Syrah.
2006 Syrah “Lady Rosa”
The DuBrul Vineyard provided all the fruit for this year's best Syrah. Seattle Magazine just announced that Hugh and Kathy Shiels’ DuBrul Vineyard is the top vineyard in Washington State. We have known that for many years.
The wine is sublime with fragrant violets and spice loaded with berries and a long silky finish. As you might expect, this will not be around for long – 260 cases produced.
2006 Cabernet Franc “Rosa Mystica”
This delightful grape variety exhibits characteristics of fragrant cedar, tobacco, and bright berry, however, each growing area – whether the Loire, St. Emilion, Pomerol, or here in the western cooler regions of Yakima Valley – imparts its own distinct identity. This Rosa Mystica Cabernet Franc has elements of Old World charm and fragrance, yet its bright berry and plush richness is all New World.
Three vineyards are situated on hillsides high in the western Yakima Valley. The fourth small block is from Dr. Steve Elerding’s Six Prong Vineyard along the Columbia River in Alderdale. Ripening their small crops in late October, all the vineyards yielded wonderfully rich fruit flavors with nice acidity. In the winery, we’ve been careful not to employ too much new oak, trying to gently coax characteristics that are expressive of this fragrant and complex varietal.
This 2006 wine has all the hallmarks of a world-class Cabernet Franc and its ripeness and power do not overshadow the delicacy of its cedar fragrance, olive flavor and beautiful berry fruit.
2006 Cabernet Franc Slide Mountain Vineyard
The Vineyard is farmed by Bruce Morford in the farthest west-end of Yakima Valley at elevations of over 1500 feet. This area is bordered by the Yakima Nation Reservation and the foothills of Mount Adams provided great winter hunting for the tribes that comprise the current reservation. During our visits here we were treated to herds of wild horses that roam the Toppenish Hills behind the vineyard. These animals were attracted by a mountain spring that Bruce also tapped to irrigate this block.
The wine is ripe and very silky with notes of aromatic cedar and spice. Flavors of berry, green olive and hints of tobacco meld to form a wonderfully complex and complete wine. As you might imagine with the small acreage, a limited amount was made.
2006 Merlot “DuBrul Vineyard”
Hugh and Kathy Shiels’ DuBrul Vineyard is located in northwest Yakima Valley on a small outcropping in the Rattlesnake Hills. This fascinating area was carved out by cataclysmic flooding from glacial Lake Missoula. There are areas with lunar-like exposed basalt rock and rock deposits with imbedded shells from the lake bottom mixed with sedimentary soils and volcanic ash.
The vineyard ripens its fruit with high sugars and flavors, however, unlike warmer areas it also retains marvelous acidity, a harbinger of age worthiness. The wine from DuBrul Vineyard is Owen Roe’s most precious with each being powerful, super-intense, and will age well into the next decade.
This is the only single vineyard bottling of Merlot that we make and it continues to amaze us. It is a very intense and remarkably age worthy wine that is the perfect pairing with some Ellensburg spring lamb or richer beef dishes.
2005 Yakima Valley Red Wine
37.9% Merlot, 20.7% Cabernet Franc, 41.4% Cabernet Sauvignon
DuBrul Vineyard, Red Willow Vineyard, and Slide Mountain Vineyard from the cooler, western end of the Yakima Valley have provided the Merlot and Cabernet Franc fruit in this wine. The warmer Elerding Vineyard farther east gave us the tasty and ripe Cabernet Sauvignon. The Yakima Valley Red Wine is designed to showcase that a world-class Merlot and Cabernet Franc based Bordeaux blend can be obtained from this remarkable growing area.
This is our signature wine. It speaks to our commitment to produce the best wines from the best grape varieties in each appellation, in this case - the bright berry flavor of the Merlot and fragrant notes of the Cabernet Franc are wonderfully framed with the structure and acidity of the Cabernet Sauvignon. All in all, this is a marvelously complex Bordeaux-styled red blend.
2005 Walla Walla Cabernet Sauvignon
80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14% Merlot, 6% Cabernet Franc
Most of the grapes come from a mature block of the acclaimed Seven Hills Vineyard in Walla Walla. The fruit is farmed sustainably and the natural approach yields excellent results. We find that the flavors are superb – very bright berry, cassis, and distinct cedary notes. The Merlot and Cabernet Franc are farmed by Adolf Klein at his Saint Isidore Vineyard, located about 6 miles west of Seven Hills. This gorgeous site is bordered to the south by the foothills of the Blue Mountains which serve to channel ferocious wind gusts through the vineyard. The buffeted vines struggle in the hill-top and produce smaller berries with intense flavors.
The fruit bearing buds were frozen in the winter of 2004 and did not bear a crop that year. The 2005 is a beautiful wine with the characteristic fragrance, cassis, cedar notes that we like to see in this great growing area.