Portland Monthly

Five of the city's top wine connoisseurs sampled more than 400 Oregon wines to select the best the state has to offer. Now it's your turn to sample the results!

www.eatmagazine.ca

I tasted a lot of different wines in the Willamette, but Marcus Goodfellow’s Matello Wines stood out, and this single vineyard Pinot Noir was my very favourite. Determined to not “dumb down” his wines, he is a terroir-ist in my favourite sense. Goodfellow focuses on entirely Willamette fruit, treating each site individually, with the respect due. Not one to seek centre stage, Marcus makes small quantities of character driven wine. Less truly is more – less irrigation (read none), less inoculation (read none), less winemaker intervention, less filtering = more identity, more character, more texture, more flavour. “It sounds strange to say it, but inconsistency is the goal”, Marcus offers, and I get it. He’s not interested in wines that taste the same year in and year out, because it’s not natural. Climate changes, weather changes, the vines change = wines change.

www.portlandfoodanddrink.com

2010 Matello Wines Rosé of Pinot Noir (approximately 13.00-16.00)

If the Tradition is Owen Wilson, the Matello is Linus Pauling. Marcus Goodfellow’s Matello Rosé of Pinot Noir is a newcomer to the Willamette Valley pink sweepstakes but in a few short years it has become one of the best examples around. It’s a wine that will make you think way more than you should have to with a rosé. I also like the fact that this wine smells like Pinot Noir, tastes like Pinot Noir and manages to capture the elegance of the grape despite the pink window dressing.

2008 Matello Winery Pinot Noir Winter's Hill Dundee Hills

90 points

($45) Pale, bright red. Wild, intriguing scents of redcurrant, Campari and dried rose, with notes of botanical herbs and orange peel coming up with air; smells like the bastard child of a Negroni and a Chambolle-Musigny. Light-bodied, seductively sweet red fruit flavors turn tangy with air and show very good clarity and spiciness. Singular, lean and refreshing wine with strong finishing bite and a lingering echo of zesty red fruits. Don't serve this without warning the unsuspecting.

by Cole Danehower
March/April 2011
nwpalate.com

Marcus Goodfellow is flat out one of the best winemakers in Oregon—it’s just that not many people know about his wines. Oh, the trade does; the insider industry folks all speak admiringly of the wine as well as the winemaker, and it is almost a rite of passage to indicate your familiarity with the sub rosa Matello label.

by Matt Kramer
December 28, 2010
OregonLIve.com

MATT KRAMER ON WINE

By now you're surfeited with advice about how to celebrate the coming new year. You've doubtless figured out for yourself your preferred approach. Consequently, the wines this week aren't pitched to some imagined notion of how you could or should see in the new year. Some folks are party animals. Others -- count me in -- prefer a more personal, intimate approach. All I will say is that any of the following will serve beautifully, enhancing your chosen approach.

2008 Matello Winery Pinot Noir Hommage A & D Willamette Valley

91 Points

($30) Bright red. Musky red berry and floral aromas are complicated by suggestions of cinnamon, star anise and white pepper. Racy and taut on entry, then gains sweetness and breadth in the mid-palate, offering attractive red fruit flavors and a touch of bitter cherry pit. Deeper and more fruit-driven than the Winter's Hill; less edgy and a bit more mainstream. The spicy finish is sweet, expansive and impressively persistent. Still, this isn't a wine to serve to friends who use, say, Kosta-Browne as a benchmark for their pinot love and can't see past it. But pinot is really a big tent wine so give it a shot: you never know.

Matello listed amongst Wine & Spirits Magazine's Most Popular Restaurant Wine Brands