John Sexton is one of my favorite photographers. He apprenticed with Ansel Adams, and has made quite a name for himself in the past 30 years with his black and white photography. He has published several monographs, and his most recent book is a retrospective of the past 30 years of his work. So I was very pleased to get his newsletter telling of an exhibition of his work at OSU during the month of April. Unfortunately, the gallery (which is actually part of the fine arts building on campus) is only open on weekdays from 8-5, but since things were a little slow at work on Friday, I decided to take the afternoon off and drive down to Corvallis. The drive down I-5 is long and boring, but I eventually made it to the OSU campus around 2 pm. It's been quite a few years since I've been on the campus of a relatively big school, and boy was it nice. There was so much energy and so much going on. I'm envious of my children and their opportunity to experience college. Who knows, maybe when I retire...
I walked around on campus a bit, and eventually found the fine arts department housed in a wonderful old Victorian-style house. The gallery is the first room through the front door, and they had about 30 prints hung on the plain white walls around the room. While I have all of John Sexton's books, there's nothing quite like viewing actual prints - the dynamic range from dark to light and the incredible detail captured by his large format cameras just can't by fully captured in reproductions. Like his mentor, he spends a great deal of time in Yosemite, and there were numerous prints of snow-covered trees, long exposures of the flowing Merced River, and wonderful plant details. While Ansel Adams tended to focus on the grand sweeping landscapes, Sexton has an eye for shape and detail. There were also numerous prints of trees of every texture taken during that magic time between sunset and the end of twilight.
After spending some time enjoying the gallery, I got back in my car and headed north toward home. I drove up through the heart of Oregon wine country, so I figured I ought to stop at a winery or 2. Since we had just spent a day touring the wineries in the Salem area, I thought I might stop in at someplace further south.
The first winery I came to was Eola Hills. We have tasted their wines at Newport and been relatively pleased with them, but we've never been to the winery. Their tasting room is a large beautiful room with a lot of exposed wood. It's actually part of the winery itself and you can see a large number of barrels stacked in the room behind the bar. They have about 25 wines available for complementary tasting, so I had to be somewhat choosy about what I tried. Fortunately I had a dump bucket all to myself, so I was able to spit during the tasting, allowing me to sample 11 different wines. I won't go through all of my tasting notes, but will summarize as follows:
They have 2 tiers of wine - their standard wines and their Reserve wines. While the standard lineup represents a reasonable value ($6.95 up to $12.95), they're really not worth the time if you're looking for better wines. I tried a couple of the standard wines, but focused mostly on the reserves. Both of their Chardonnays are decent, but way too oaky for my palate. The 2007 Pinot Noirs were decent too, showing good extraction for 2007 and some dark earthy notes. I thought that their top of the line Wolf Hill 667 was over-oaked however.
Their real strength, in my opinion, is the big reds from Lodi fruit. The 2007 Reserve Sangiovese was very nice (although a whopping 16+% alcohol) with lots of rich fruit and very smooth tannins. The 2005 Reserve Merlot was nice too, with dark fruits and smooth tannins. The 2005 "La Creole" Cabernet Sauvignon was tannic and fairly simple, but might get more interesting in a few years. Finally, they make a very nice LBV-style port from locally grown Cab Sauv. Apparently it doesn't ripen enough for table wine, but works well for port.
The wines are not going to knock your socks off, but it's well worth a stop if you're driving through Rickreal, especially if you enjoy the big warm climate reds.
Tasting through 11 or 12 wines took the better part of 40 minutes, so I figured I'd best head straight home. Rachel was at the pool setting up for the big home swim meet this weekend, and picked up pizza on her way home. We popped open a bottle of Ferrari-Carano Zinfandel and had a most enjoyable dinner.
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