A pleasant surprise during our trip to the Willamette Valley was Troon’s tasting room in Carlton, Oregon.
The highlight of the wines we tasted was the “Kubli Bench Cabernet Sauvingnon” (2006). This wine was superb, light yet full bodied, all in all a very well-rounded cab. Yes, we know, that’s not very descriptive–you’ll just have to trust us, it was awesome! We definitely brought some home.
In general, while last year their “high-end” wines seemed overpriced and didn’t quite deliver, this year they were excellent and you could tell they had put lots of care into developing them.
One disappointment, however, was that one of the best $10 table wines we’ve ever tasted, Druid’s Fluid, really went down hill with this year’s release. The 2007, which we tasted last year, was delicious and full-bodied like a nice, dark cab. However, this year our Troon ‘guide’ told us that they had changed the grape formula (most notably, from a majority cab to a minority) and the result was rather shallow and overly sweet. Additionally they have added a white and blush variety, which we think has something to do with the decline in the red. We do hope that next year’s Druid Fluid makes a come-back so that we can re-stock!