541-752-7418 Sign In | Your Account

Search:

Avalonwine.com

Winery:
Owen Roe

$23.95 Regular

$21.55
in any 12 bottle order or Build a Case

Review:

For only the third time, David O'Reilly made this special wine, a tribute to his father. It is a Semillon dessert wine, similar in flavor and style to a fine Sauternes.

This is a very special wine for David O'Reilly.

First, rarely do the elements of nature combine to prolong harvest until after Thanksgiving in Yakima Valley. In the fall of 2005 they did, and we picked very ripe Semillon grapes at 36 brix. The fruit tasted of figs, butterscotch, and orange peel. The wine was barrel fermented in a combination of new and once-used French oak barrels and, in order to preserve its freshness, was bottled nine months later. The wine is 13.8% residual sugar, 14.2% alcohol, and still retains a great pH of 3.55 and 6.5 g/l of titratable acidity. Age and serve as one would a great Sauternes.

The golden-hued wine has gorgeous aromas of orange, apricot, and butterscotch with a creamy mouth feel with honey and quince-like flavors with a marvelously balanced lingering finish.

The second reason for this wine is the passing of David's father, Edward O'Reilly. This wine is made in his honor. He passed on last year after a good life, forty years of loving marriage, and raising twelve children.

So raise "The Parting Glass" to Edward. A parting glass is a wonderful Irish custom of a parting toast before all leave at the end of a gathering. It is also a very popular Irish song that would belong to an evening of cheer and, in the fashion of the Irish, it is sung in tribute to those who have passed away.

David says: "I know if my father were to have a wine made in his honor he would insist on one that my mother would enjoy, and so I think that this would delight both. Cheers."

"But since it falls unto my lot that I should go and you should not,
I'll gently rise and softly call, good night and joy be with you all."