Tag Archives: Luminous Hills

Smoked Sausage and Lentil Stew with Pinot Noir

Here’s a nice easy recipe for our busy days staying at home.  It takes a little bit of preparation in sautéing the onions, carrots and celery, but really the prep work takes less than 30 minutes.  Then into the crock pot, and don’t think about it for 7-8 hours.  When ready, open a bottle of wine (no shortage of wine in our house), and enjoy your dinner!  The recipe is here. 

2014 Luminous Hills Estate Grown Pinot Noir, Oregon, Yamhill-Carlton

For the stew, I opened the wine fridge and grabbed a bottle of 2014 Luminous Hills Estate Grown Pinot Noir, Oregon, Yamhill-Carlton.  We visited Luminous Hills sister winery, Seven of Hearts, about 3 ½ years ago, and wrote about that fun visit.  That trip was my first time spending a long weekend tasting Oregon Pinot Noir, and I loved it.  The Luminous Hills Pinot was one of our favorites, with a really nice balance to it when we first tasted, and again when we opened the other night with the stew.  Not overly fruity, but a good balance between the fruit and the acid, slightly lighter body, with a bit of earthiness to it.  It showed well with the stew, or the stew showed well with the wine, or they both paired quite well, depending on your point of view. 

Pepé providing writing help.

I occasionally get a bit of writing help from our kitten, Pepé (black and white and named in honor of Pepé Le Pew, my father’s favorite cartoon character).  Here you can see him looking over my shoulder checking my work. 

L’Chaim,

Larry

Seven of Hearts is Your Lucky Card in Carlton

The simple storefront for the Seven of Hearts / Luminous Hills tasting room in Carlton.

In our admittedly limited experience in Oregon, most of the wineries have their tasting room at the winery. Seven of Hearts is different, with their tasting room in a store front in “downtown” Carlton. Carlton consists of maybe two stoplights and another few stop signs, so downtown might be stretching it just a bit.

Seven of Hearts / Luminous Hills tasting room shares space with Honest Chocolates.

Walking into the shop is interesting. It seems slightly unorganized inside, with a tasting bar, a desk, some displays and more stuff scattered about. But at the same time you’re taking in the visual, you’re getting the nose. You’re getting the smell of whatever they’ve been pouring that day, and you’re also getting a whiff of the chocolate that is not only being sold, but also being made, at the back of the shop. Byron Dooley is the proprietor of Seven of Hearts, and his wife is the proprietor Honest Chocolates. (That’s really sad: a relationship based on wine and chocolate. Whatever the sacrifices they’ve had to make, it’s working for them. Sarcasm, folks.)

Byron buys most of his grapes from various Willamette Valley vineyards, but a few years back he purchased a small vineyard, now called Luminous Hills, where he grows Pinot Noir and bottles it under his Luminous Hills label. The majority of his wines are sold under his Seven of Hearts label. Here’s a quick summary of what we tasted:

Byron’s style for Chardonnay is fairly understated. The 2014 Willamette Valley Chardonnay underwent no malolactic (ML) fermentation, but saw some new oak, while the 2014 Gran Moraine Vineyard Chardonnay had ML, but only neutral oak. We really liked the Gran Moraine; a few bottles of that came home with us.

His Pinot Noirs were also tended toward an understated style. It was interesting though that the 3 PNs we tasted from Seven of Hearts, all blends from various vineyards, were good, but not great. However, the 2014 Luminous Hill Pinot Noir was very good, one of the best we tasted on our trip, and a very good value.

He also makes a GSM (Grenache, Mouvedre, Syrah) blend, and a Bordeaux blend. We tasted both the 2014 GSM and the 2014 Tradition. We liked them both – the GSM especially was nicely balanced and would probably lay down for a few years, comparing nicely to a good California GSM – but we were in Oregon for the Pinot Noir, so neither of those made the cut to be brought home. The Tradition tasting is served with a bit of the Salted Currant Ganache from Honest Chocolates. Byron also makes a Pinot Noir port, and pairs it with Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Toffee Bark for tasting. I didn’t try the port, but the chocolate was delicious.

By the way, for all the feeling of clutter in the tasting room, Mackenzie and Eric provided us with a great tasting environment. Not rushing us, answering all our questions, even those we hadn’t yet asked. Very knowledgeable and nice.

We tried another of the chocolates from the back, and walked out with a dozen truffles for us, and more to take home as gifts. Quite good!

L’Chaim,

Larry