Ken Wright Cellars Bryce Vineyard Pinot Noir 2017
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Located in the Ribbon Ridge AVA, Bryce vineyard is on ancient marine sedimentary parent material at 300 ft elevation on a South to Southeast inclination. The wine is floral and spice focused. Crisp linen and alpine flowers dance with dried blueberry, huckleberry and sandalwood. A lively, balanced acidity elongates the finish.
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The Bryce Vineyard selection is the sole Ribbon Ridge offering from Ken Wright, and belongs alongside the best of the expansive portfolio. Aromatic, elegant and beautifully detailed, it’s a wine to explore carefully, being sure to give it time and attention to taste all it has to offer. Compressed fruit flavors of blueberry and blackberry are accented with sandalwood and toasted almonds. The length and seamless texture will keep you coming back for more. Editors’ Choice.
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Wine Spectator
Dynamic yet brooding, with deeply layered blueberry and pomegranate flavors that meld with dusky spice and savory accents, building tension toward well-buffed tannins. Drink now through 2028.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2017 Ken Wright Bryce Vineyard Pinot Noir is perfect for the most fastidious lovers of this grape variety. TASTING NOTES: This wine, though quite dense, is beautiful on the palate and an attractive bite on the palate. It should be a superb match with pan-seared Loch Duart salmon. (Tasted: February 12, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Over 40 years of wine making has taught Ken a simple truth: source is everything. Located, in rural Carlton, Oregon, Ken Wright Cellars is devoted to producing wine that showcase the inherent quality of world class vineyard sites. With a clarity and breadth that is unequaled, Pinot noir is the ultimate vehicle for conveying the aroma, flavor and texture of the location in which it is grown.
In 1986, with family, belongings and 10 barrels in tow, Ken moved to McMinnville and started Panther Creek Cellars. His concept of focusing on vineyard-designate bottling began during those years at Panther Creek and this was cemented as a core philosophy in 1994 when Ken Wright Cellars was founded. Ken Wright Cellars now produces a single vineyard Pinot Noir from 13 different vineyard sites in the Northern Willamette Valley.
Their approach to the craft of wine growing is one of stewardship rather than manipulation. We use organic certified practices as a base and expand upon that with advanced nutrition-based farming. By analyzing both their soil profile and vines, maintaining proper crop levels, personally sampling each vineyard, and hand-sorting each cluster, we ensure that the inherent character in the fruit is revealed in the finished wine. Minimal handling of wine is essential to preserve what it is; a gift of nature.
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.”
Ribbon Ridge is a regular span of uplifted, marine, sedimentary soils (called Willakenzie), whose highest ridge elevations twist like a ribbon. An early settler from Missouri named Colby Carter noticed this unique topography and gave the region its name in 1865—though it wasn’t declared its own AVA until 140 years later, in 2005. The AVA is enclosed by mountains on all sides between Yamhill-Carlton and the Chehalem Mountains, and is actually part of the larger Chehalem Mountains AVA. Its soils have a finer texture than its neighbors with parent materials composed of sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone. Given its presence of natural aquifers in this five square mile area, most vineyards are actually easily dry farmed!