Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
An elegant, ethereal and transparent pinot with fresh raspberries, cranberries, red tea, licorice, cardamom and persimmons on the nose. All about the vibrant red fruit, with so much energy and life. Fine, seamless tannins. Unfined and unfiltered. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir The Belles Soeurs opens from bright orange peel to a deeper core of pomegranate, raspberry, dried earth and botanicals, really blossoming as it spends time in the glass and from day to day after the bottle is opened. The medium-bodied palate balances concentrated, floral flavors, chalky tannins and juicy acidity, and it offers a long, spicy finish with a fan of amaro-like spices.
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Wine Spectator
Spirited and precise, with expressive raspberry, garrigue and hibiscus tea tones that build richness and multilayered flavors toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2032.
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!