Kaplowitz Media. Wine | Sweet Cheeks Winery & Vineyard 2017 Pinot Noir in Review "Only Degenerates Gamble on Two-year-old Thoroughbreds"

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Sweet Cheeks

2017 Pinot Noir

APPELLATION: Willamette Valley
VINEYARD:
Sweet Cheeks Vineyard, Davis Vineyard,
Chateau Bianca, Five Fourteen Vineyard

VARIETAL: Pinot Noir
WINERY: Sweet Cheeks
ALCOHOL: 12.3

WEBSITE: sweetcheekswinery.com

NOTES:
Black cherry | Raspberry | Exotic spice

Fruity, go figure. Dense silkiness, weightily. Bit of a wet blanket thud for slight lack of structure. An attainable rigid sweet wobble. Raspberry becomes pomegranate on its back-end. Then tannins arrive fully. Black cherry and exotic spice. Almost erratic, not erotic. No true-true delineation there. An underlying & stabilizing earthiness led by cocoa. Boozy. Indelicate, say. 

A quite-present alcohol dryness sinks into tongue-corners. A fruity-forward juicy then watery aroma, simply. Body, that (more soon*). A bossman emphasizing his words to an underling by poking his chest. Black. Cherry. Black. Cherry. See? *A full-ish body but too a bit vacant. Untethered. No nuances. Moderate complexities in earthiness, altho that's precisely where there is room for more.

Sweet without cloying. Fairly interesting. A bit aggressive or at the least overly eager. Bottled in 2018, drunk in 2020. Better drunk in 2025, perhaps fuller then, a bit more rounded & fleshy. "Eager," I believe that sums it well. This Pinot is why only degenerates gamble on two-year-old thoroughbreds. That said & in keeping with that which was said, this vintage does ultimately finish in the money, on-the-board, etc.

FINAL GRADE: B+
A 90-100 B 80-89 C 70-79 D 60-69 F 0-59

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