Tiny Bubbles…

Happy New Year everyone! I hope all enjoyed a safe and entertaining evening, and I trust your bubbles were as satisfying as mine…

After much debate concerning my sparkling choices, I decided to go with the Soter, a name I’ve gotten to trust since my Thanksgiving bottle of lovely Oregon Pinot Noir. Soter’s sparkling wine was the PERFECT end to a lovely New Years Eve that included quite a dinner and a great bottle of Cabernet, but I’ll blog about that later.

The cork popped from the 2003 Brut Rosé Beacon Hill Vineyard without incident (no one was hit in the nose and no overflow issues…). Upon pouring it into the glasses, the wine was a sight to behold- a beautiful pink color with streams of tiny, elegant bubbles flowing up the glass. The essence of berries filled my nostrils and when it hit my tongue, well, all I can say is strawberry cream. It was DELICIOUS. The nice finish allowed me to savor and it faded just in time for my next sip.

This wine is made with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and was fermented in a mixture of new oak, neutral oak, and steel barrels. After being in the casks for 6 months and blending and bottling, this wine spent 4 years on the yeast before it was disgorged (sediment and yeast removed) in March, 2007. According to Soter, “…Every Soter sparkling wine is vintage-dated, vineyard-designated, and disgorgement-dated. The disgorgement date is very important to us, because we feel that the consumer has a right to know how long the wine has been aged on the yeast and how long it has been corked. Very few producers anywhere adhere to this practice.”

I enjoyed my lovely Oregonian nectar as the skies of Los Angeles filled with lights and sounds of New Years revelers setting off a plethora of illegal fireworks. As the bottle emptied, the celebration subsided, and the quiet of the night settled in as I dozed off into 2009…