Ponzi Reserve Pinot Noir 2012
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Wine Enthusiast
This reserve bottling spent 20 months in 50% new French oak. Spicy and complex, it deftly moves from pretty scents of lavender and blueberry into a firmly knit wine nuanced with nutmeg, star anise, ginger, citrus and tobacco. Drink now through 2020.
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Wine Spectator
Firm tannins surround a dark core of cherry, plum and dusky spices, coming together harmoniously with the texture as the finish persists elegantly. Has depth and distinction. Best from 2016 through 2022.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Pinot Noir Reserve comes from the estate's oldest sites based on a hillside about eight miles from the winery, planted with vines in 1975 and 1978, intended to be a wine for cellaring. It was fermented after a five-day cold soak with a seven-day post-ferment skin maceration before aging in French oak barrels for 20 months (50% new). The bouquet is generous and attractive with ripe red cherries, raspberry preserve, vanilla extract and sous-bois aromas that are nicely defined. The palate is medium-bodied with rounded red berry fruit, soft as a pillow in the mouth, caressing in texture with lithe red cherries and wild strawberry on the sumptuous finish. Disarmingly approachable, though intended for cellaring, I would not begrudge opening this now and drinking over several years.
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Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
The Chehalem Mountains is a northwest-southeast span of several distinct mountains, ridges and peaks in the northern part of the Willamette Valley. Of all of Willamette Valley's smaller AVAs, it is closest to the city of Portland. Its highest summit, Bald Peak at an elevation of 1,633 feet, serves to generate cooler air for the rest of the AVA and its hillside vineyards. The region covers 70,000 acres but only 1,600 acres are planted to vines; soils of the Chehalem Mountains are a mix of basalt, ocean sediment and loess.