Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple, the 2019 Pinot Noir The Belles Soeurs has alluring wild red and black berry fruits with wafts of garrigue, Earl Grey tea leaves and Angostura bitters. The palate is silky and intense with layered, graphite-tinged fruit and a very long finish that's notable for its purity and persistent perfume.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2019 Pinot Noir The Belles Soeurs is elegant with the perfume of raspberry, cherry pie, dried roses, and cinnamon. The palate is vibrant and tension-driven with rose hip, hibiscus, and orange zest. I love this for its focused and direct nature, which will warrant some time in cellar to unfold.
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Decanter
From its origin as a Shea Vineyard bottling, Belle Soeur has transitioned to a blend fruit from the Beaux Freres, Upper Terrace, and Sequitur, all farmed by Mike Etzel. Today the grapes are picked earlier, and the extraction managed more gently to give a classic red fruit nose with spice on the attack and plenty of freshness and grippy tannins on the palate. There is still plenty of extract, though, and this lingers persistently on the finish.
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James Suckling
Aromas of dark cherry, plum, violet, smoke and cigar box. Medium-bodied with finely grained tannins and bright acidity. Balanced and refined. Harmonious, savory and silky with a succulent, long finish. A little tight now. Unfiltered. Try after 2023.
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Wine Spectator
A wine that uncoils patiently, with cherry and blueberry flavors laced with dusky spice, gathering speed and tension toward stony yet polished tannins. Drink now through 2030.
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.”
Ribbon Ridge is a regular span of uplifted, marine, sedimentary soils (called Willakenzie), whose highest ridge elevations twist like a ribbon. An early settler from Missouri named Colby Carter noticed this unique topography and gave the region its name in 1865—though it wasn’t declared its own AVA until 140 years later, in 2005. The AVA is enclosed by mountains on all sides between Yamhill-Carlton and the Chehalem Mountains, and is actually part of the larger Chehalem Mountains AVA. Its soils have a finer texture than its neighbors with parent materials composed of sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone. Given its presence of natural aquifers in this five square mile area, most vineyards are actually easily dry farmed!