Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Arterberry Maresh 2011 Pinot Noir Maresh Vineyard pours forth an ethereally high-toned combination of red berry distillates, fresh berry scents, and nut extracts such as I associate with Pinots from this site and some of its Worden Hill Road neighbors, and found also in the extraordinary 2005 that Maresh’s father Jim Arterberry crafted from these vines, which I tasted nearly alongside. (See my note in this report). Ginseng tea and bittersweetly perfumed iris waft across generously juicy cherry and red currant, while mineral salts, meat broth, mushroom stock and crustacean shell reduction all open the doors to umami and liberate the salivary glands in an incandescent and ravishingly rejuvenating finish. Also reminiscent in this 2011 of a perfectly resolved, mature wine is the silken-smooth palate texture, along with an almost airy sense of levity and elegance, yet all the while allied though to penetrating fruit and mineral intensity. I can’t imagine it proving less than amazing through at least 2027. Happily, there are around 350 cases, as opposed to the mere 250 there were of 2010.
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.