Wine: Cloudline Pinot Noir

Everything is connected; no one thing can change by itself.
—Paul Hawken

Monday, a handful of friends and I had the opportunity to have our buddy Tommy, the smokin', wine tastin' madman, cook up a massive feast of traditional Cambodian and Chinese dishes: fresh spring rolls, fried egg rolls, two whole ducks, a whole fish, live shrimp, and a variety of other shellfish. He even made all of the sauces from scratch.

The first of us present were roped into Tommy's nearly homicidal work camp: he had us rolling the fried egg rolls. I laughed out loud when he showed us the obscene amount of (delicious) filling we had to cram into the little wrappers. We literally could have filled a couple of pillow cases with it. I told him there'd be no way we could do it in a reasonable amount of time. He said, "Less talk, more work," and stepped outside for a smoke break.

Well, at about this same time another friend and I opened a bottle of the Cloudline Pinot Noir. He believed the wine wasn't going to be palatable, especially after I explained that it is Cloudline Cellars' first wine.

We were both wrong — he about the wine and I about the egg rolls. The Cloudline, a Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley (Oregon), has a moderately attractive ruby color and is noticeably clear. Ripe cherries jump out of the glass. The wine is well balanced and a good match for fatty fishes in particular. It goes for $17/bottle.

Value: 3.5
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.0
Flavor: 3.0