Winemaker Notes
#38 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2022
A blend of all Alloro Vineyard's older Pinot noir blocks, crafted to represent a complete expression of their estate and showcase its distinctive personality.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Alluring for the silky texture and elegantly layered raspberry, toasty spice and orange peel flavors, which gather richness and polish on the lingering finish. Drink now through 2028.
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James Suckling
Some brambly, herbal accents, across red berries and cherries here. The palate has a smooth, juicy core of fresh and pure red cherries with a late, spicy build. Drink or hold.
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Wine & Spirits
This starts out spicy and dark, with scents of clove, turf and black cherries. Just from the scent it feels like it’s going to be rich—overly so; but, instead, the flavors are deep and focused, with pronounced linear movement that comes off as vibrant and lively.
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.