Mother Nature brought the heat in 2014, and while a large crop helped mitigate the warmth a bit, this was a juicy and fruit forward vintage in its youth. Over the past year the wines have seemed to teeter between completely shut down, and pleasantly refreshing. Still, the wines are still quite young, and even at their best, not showing much for secondary characteristics as of yet. The 2014 Durant shows tremendous potential, but is still somewhat tightly wound. Bottle in October 2020 needed 24 hours to open up(and was fantastic two days after that). The Whistling Ridge wants another 2-4 years, but is also starting to show why it was the wine of the vintage for me. The Bishop Creek, tasted in January of 2020 was beginning to unfold it’s wings. It is light-medium bodied and very refreshing, with red fruits, it’s atypical but becoming a very good expression of the vineyard. No rush though, it also seemed quite youthful and still on the way up.
Whites however are excellent, with the Chardonnays leading the way. The Richard's Cuvee is best open for 5-6 hours, and the Durant is in the early stages of a heightened plateau. These are world class wines, and have really grown into that status with the last year or two in the cellar. The Willamette Valley Chardonnay is drinking well and an excellent new world counterpart to wines from the commune of Rully. This wine continues to be a tremendous value and has lots of life left in it.
The 2014 Whistling Ridge Blanc is evolving texturally, showing exquisite fruit expression and should last at least 8-10 years.
updated 1/17/20