Winemaker Notes
The 2022 Amity Eola-Amity Hills Pinot Noir offers notes of raspberry, lilac, and thyme.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Spiced cherries and raspberries with dried herbs, rose hips and licorice. Medium-bodied, crunchy and fresh, with savory orange peel character and saline undertones. Flavorful finish.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2022 Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills has a medium red color and is expressive and lifted with notes of cinnamon, pomegranate, fresh herbs, and dusty earth. It keeps a refreshing and nicely detailed medium-bodied frame, with an even spine of acidity, a chalky texture, fine tannins, and a pleasing snappy lift on the finish.
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.”
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.