Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Loosen Bros. and J. Christopher Wines just released the Fortissimo and it is showing great acidity and fine-grained tannins. Its aromas and flavors of sweet red cherries, roasted pork shoulder and orange-pekoe tea are alive and kicking. Enjoy 2023–2032.
Cellar Selection -
Jeb Dunnuck
Only released with a minimum of ten years of age, the 2012 Pinot Noir Fortissimo pours a deep red hue and unfolds to reveal layers of autumnal aromas of wild cherries, licorice, forest floor, and sweet baking spices. Medium-bodied with good concentration, it is long on the palate, with ripe tannins, a silky mouthfeel, a balanced structure, and remarkable purity of fruit.
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Wine Spectator
Supple, detailed and surprisingly fresh and youthful for its age, offering fragrant cherry blossom and raspberry flavors layered with black tea and cinnamon. Finishes with refined tannins.
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James Suckling
Porcini mushrooms, currants, cranberries, rosemary, cloves and citrus zest. Bright and intense, with fine and tight tannins. So much energy and tension still. Drink or hold.
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.”
Home of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.