Winemaker Notes
The palate is expansive and expressive, showing a completeness and comfort within its own skin. The entry exposes juicy blackberry and black cherry with plush flavors of bramble and briary, supported by fine grained tannins that lead into a velvety finish with the essence of dark chocolate.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Pinot Noir Premier Cuvee offers a pale to medium ruby-purple color and notes of warm red cherries, dried roses and baking spices with hints of black pepper and tree bark. Medium to full-bodied and laden with perfumed red berry flavors, it has a silken texture and just enough freshness lifting the finish.
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Wine Spectator
Shows structure and tension, although the fruit is rather demure now, offering savory notes of black cherry, black tea and spice that finish with firm tannins. Best from 2019 through 2023.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The Archery Summit Premier Cuvée Pinot Noir is consistently one of the top New World efforts with this finicky grape variety. The 2015 vintage delivers on all fronts, from start to finish, this is a complete wine. TASTING NOTES: This wine shows bright red and black fruits, a hint of oak, and a subtle touch of earth. Its lively finish should pair it well with grilled salmon fillets. (Tasted: March 1, 2018, San Francisco, CA)
In 1993, Archery Summit set its sights on creating wines of real purpose in the Willamette Valley. Since then, the Dundee Hills winery has helped establish the region as the cradle of cooler-climate American wine. Winemaker Kim Abrahams and her team achieve bar-raising wines through hard-won instincts—the familiarity gained from many shared vintages and from tending vineyard sites they know intimately.
As responsible stewards of the land, Archery Summit engages in minimal-impact agriculture. Sustainability is a dynamic and vital part of growing wine—a practice that ensures both the industry’s future and the overall health of the trade. They practice sustainability wherever possible, from responsible farming in the vineyard to energy-sensitive approaches in the cellar.
Many of the vineyard sites are LIVE (Low Input Viticulture & Enology) certified, meaning they adhere to an internationally-acclaimed set of sustainability standards. These guidelines are site-specific and focus on strengthening the well-being of the vineyard through minimal spraying, careful clone selection, heightened biodiversity, and more. Archery Summit is committed to ensuring that the soils and biodiversity of each site remain as healthy and vibrant as when they first began cultivating them.
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.