Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From 2005 to 2011, “I was making wine fairly the same,” Jim Maresh says. “Around 2012 is when I was really in experimental mode, trying to learn new things, trying to reinvent the wheel.” Although it was a warm, relatively untroubled growing season, “I felt I could have done a better job on my pick dates,” Jim says. “I would have liked to have picked a little bit earlier.” He also experimented with using stems starting in 2012. “I was trying to wrap my mind around it. But I ended up completely abandoning stems, and I’ve been real happy about it ever since.” Rating: 93+
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.