Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Beautiful cherries and redcurrants lead the way, showcasing a classic Dundee profile, with hints of red flowers and citrus peel. Bright and crunchy with a vibrant character. The texture is refined, with medium body and a compact tannin core. Succulent fruit and a mineral backbone lead to a precise and harmonious, bone-dry finish. Drink or hold.
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Vinous
The 2023 Pinot Noir Dundee Hills Old Vines blossoms in the glass, where balsamic-tinged black cherries mingle with dried roses, nuances of gravel dust and a hint of clove. This wine is seamless and elegant, silken in texture, with a solid core of minerals to balance citrus-infused wild berry fruits that slowly saturate the palate. It tapers off chewy and extremely long, leaving the palate watering for more, all framed by regal tannins.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Pinot Noir Old Vines comes from vines averaging around 50 years in age in the Maresh and Weber vineyards. The nose is a deep well of bramble berry, plum, amaro, mossy bark and earth. Medium-bodied, it floods the mouth with supple layers of ripe, spicy fruit. It’s balanced by bright, mouthwatering acidity and has a long, flavorful finish.
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Wine Spectator
Elegant and attractively structured, with tiers of bright cherry and cranberry flavors highlighted by rose petal and orange blossoms, plus hints of forest floor.
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.