What I Drank With Dinner (WIDWD)

For me, a good wine is measured not only by what is experienced inside the bottle, but also on the outside through labeling. Inside, the wine should delight the eyes, the nose, and the palate. Outside, the bottle's labeling should in some way connect me to the people and places behind the wine.

Granted, it's not always that I expect a wine to fulfill expectations in both areas. There are many inexpensive wines that do well on the inside, but don't always have to deliver on the outside. However, my bar is set pretty high when it comes to more expensive wines, such as those $15 or more, especially any wine priced over $30.

You can imagine my surprise in discovering a $42 bottle of Hatcher 2004 Pinot Noir at my local wine retailer, which offered little on the outside other than the basic who (Hatcher), what (2004 pinot noir), and where (Willamette Valley). Turning the bottle over, this is what I found:

"Ancient maps followed the contours of the imagination, known lands varying only in degree from those unknown. To imagination must be added faith, the true north shining among the cold extravagant stars. This is the terra incognito where all endeavors great and small begin, including the bottle you hold in your hand."

This statement was clearly a play on the front label's map design, but it offered nothing toward informing the reader of the people and places behind this wine. In reading it again, I started to realize that Hatcher was asking its prospective customers to use their imagination, take a leap of faith into the "terra incognito", or land of the unknown, and try this bottle.

For some, waxing poetic on the back label of a wine bottle might be appealing. But this approach does not satisfy me, especially at a $42 price point. For that amount of money, I would like to know what I am getting in a bottle of wine. In the absence of this information, how is one to know that "the bottle you hold in your hand" isn't just another over-priced, mass produced wine.

After visiting the producer's web site and reading the tasting notes on this wine, I found more generic statements about vintages and winemaking. Along the way, I started to understand why this and other Hatcher wines carried such a high degree of anonymity. These are essentially bulk wines made from the blending of excess juice purchased from other wineries.

You see, Bill Hatcher, founder of William Hatcher Wines, is also the person behind Oregon's largest wine producer, A to Z Wineworks. A to Z is merely a bulk buyer of wine crafted elsewhere, which is blended together and then packaged under its own label. Considering that the labels and tasting notes of William Hatcher Wines provide no information other than their varietal, vintage, and appellation, it is reasonable to assume they are blended, bulk wines.

For the record, I have no issue with this approach to bring wine to market, a long-standing practice that originated with négociants in France. In fact, there have been countless bottles of wine I have enjoyed through the years produced by Old World and New World négociants, including a few from A to Z.

Even still, I would like to see more transparency from the folks at William Hatcher Wines on the approach they take in blending bulk wine purchases. At the price points they are selling this stuff, it seems reasonable to provide more disclosure on this practice so consumers are well informed as to how these wines came to be. At the very least, they should be open about this on their web site as they do with A to Z Wineworks.

Were it not for my interest in writing about this topic, I would have passed on the Hatcher 2004 Pinot Noir (13.5%) in the store. Instead, I placed it into my shopping cart, looking forward to the day when I could post about my experience not only with the outside of this bottle, but also the inside.

We opened it a few weeks later to pair with one of Kari's standout dishes, duck breast, which she prepared with a fresh Bing cherry, demi-glace wine sauce. The duck was served with soft polenta and a green leaf lettuce salad tossed in a light dressing with fresh sliced apples. It was a wonderful dinner, but the Hatcher pinot just did not meet the bar for us.

On the eyes, it was a deep, rich dark color - almost like a cab - which immediately signaled this would be a full-bodied pinot. On the nose, I picked up notes of dusty eucalyptus and menthol with a hint of earth. On the palate, it tasted like it looked: extracted, over-ripe fruit, viscous texture, with too much oak.

This wine is not my style of pinot, for I prefer a more graceful, elegant approach to this varietal. And the shortcomings on the bottle's label and producer's website only convinced me more to stay away from Hatcher wines in the future. To each his/her own, but I am not impressed with either the outside or inside of this wine, especially at that price point.