Winemaker Notes
Lange Classique Pinot Noir is an assemblage of all their North Willamette Valley vineyard sites and is a fine example of expert blending by the winemaking team, embodying true "Classique" style and spirit. Aged in 15% new French oak, grapes designated for this blend were hand-harvested and fermented separately by vineyard and block, allowing the Lange's to create this precise and tightly-focused signature wine that consistently over-delivers for the price.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Tart and piquant aromatics of fresh cranberry relish, salty sea air and spicy blood orange pulp leap out. This wine has ample fruit but offers a linearity and complexity that has it punching way above its price point. The palate offers a saline mineral streak that frames turned earth, hints of forest floor and exuberant spiced red fruits. This vintage, the Pinot Noirs, are some of the best I've ever made; picking on balance was critical, says Jesse Lange. It was a breezy growing season, so the wines were set up for greatness. It was a ripe vintage, so picking on balance was key. Freedom Hill comprises 80% of this wine.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Just bottled in June of 2024, the 2023 Pinot Noir Classique is a youthful red ruby color and is very appealing already, with notes of fresh flowers, wild fresh herbs, and ripe berries. It has a lot of lovely tension and is very nicely styled, taking on great crunchy fruit. I love the tension and drive behind it, and I imagine it will provide a lot of enjoyment. It will likely be released in the late fall of 2024.
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James Suckling
Attractive mix of smoky minerality, dried grapefruit peel and crushed red berries, as well as undertones of dried flowers and mild spices. Racy, juicy and sleek with medium body and a dusty texture to the tannins. Flavorful and expressive.
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Vinous
The 2023 Pinot Noir Classique opens with crushed chalk, dusty lavender and blackberry aromas. Juicy and crisp, it offers ripe red and blue fruits swirling across a lively stream of acidity. Perfumed inner florals and a tactile mineral crunch linger on.
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Wine Spectator
Brisk and youthful, with sleek cherry and cranberry flavors that take on accents of green tea and spices as this speeds along the finish. Drink now through 2032. 7,600 cases made.
More than thirty years ago, Don and Wendy Lange founded their winery in the Dundee Hills of Oregon's northern Willamette Valley. The year 1987 marked the Langes' first vintage and consisted of the three varietals they embrace today: Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, and Chardonnay.
New-world pioneers in the production of Pinot Gris, Lange Estate was the first to release a barrel-fermented reserve–an effort Matt Kramer of the WINE SPECTATOR calls "a bench-mark bottling." Don Lange's work as a winemaker has been termed "brilliant "by Hugh Johnson, and the WINE ENTHUSIAST proclaimed Lange Estate to be "one of the great Pinot Noir producers in the United States."
Lange Estate is known for crafting beautifully balanced wines from fruit grown on the winery Estate, located in the heart of the prestigious Dundee Hills appellation. To further supplement our case production, the Langes purchase additional fruit from the best vineyards in the surrounding area. Long-standing relationships with these blue-ribbon sites have helped the winery establish a well-deserved reputation for consistency and complexity in the wines.
Home of some of the planet’s most amazingly elegant and expressive Pinot noir, the Willamette Valley is a pastoral, mixed landscape of green, bucolic rolling hills, dramatic forestlands and small, independent, friendly wine growers. As a leader in environmental stewardship, the valley has some of the nation’s most protective land use policies, with two-thirds of its vineyards farmed sustainably and over half, organically. While the valley claims a cool, continental climate, and is heavily influenced by the cold, moist winds of the Pacific Ocean, its warm and dry summers allow for the steady, even ripening of Pinot noir.
The potential of Willamette Valley Pinot noir continues to attract the investment of serious growers and winemakers both locally and from abroad, as naturally the finished wines bring accolades from professionals and enthusiasts. With a range of styles from delicate dried cherry, raspberry and hibiscus to stronger notes of truffle, mocha, plum and spice, a fine Willamette Valley Pinot noir is a perfect expression of both character and grace.