Winemaker Notes
Critical Acclaim
All Vintages
Angela Vineyards is a team of people from many different walks of life bringing together a wide range of passions: sustainable farming, the artistry of winemaking, beautiful and intentional design, the language of music, keeping our earth alive and well, and creating relationships that strengthen our community.
What Angela Vineyards produces comes from the relationships they build—between land and weather, vines and soil, people and places, ideas and experiences. They collectively are drawn to bringing the unexpected together, of contrasts and a lot of surprises.
Winemaker Alban Debeaulieu creates wines that showcase their individualities and the beautiful characteristics that come from fruit farmed sustainably in a responsible, detailed manner. In the cellar they use old world methods of craft with minimal intervention in the winemaking and rely on the art of tasting to guide the way in building wines that are reflective of their vintage and a discovery of Angela Vineyards' wine world to those who drink them.
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.
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.”