Winemaker Notes
#9 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2020
Stately and charismatic, this now 30-year-old flagship vineyard delivers once again with generosity and sophistication. A deep potpourri of candied cherry, Asian spices and incense lift gracefully from the glass. Silky, with notions of blue and red fruits, fresh fennel, and juicy cranberry, the wine is supported with a depth of composed tannins that deliver a remarkably grand, mouthwatering finish. There is a level of tension at its core, indicating nearly timeless potential for cellaring.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Layered with red cherry candy, the 2018 Pinot Noir The Beaux Freres Vineyard unfolds with crushed roses, cedar, and five-spice. The palate has wonderful concentration and energy, with cranberry, tea leaf, and spice. This is an incredible wine that delivers balance and purity.
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Wine Spectator
A wine of presence and expression, impeccably structured yet elegantly layered, with evocative raspberry, rose petal and brown baking spice notes that pick up richness and tension toward fine-grained tannins. Drink now through 2029.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The medium ruby-purple colored 2018 Pinot Noir The Beaux Frères Vineyard opens to lush rhubarb, cranberries and loamy earth with layers of blood orange, tea leaves, charcuterie and flowers. The medium-bodied palate offers broody, concentrated fruits with fine earth and spice accents, with a seamless, silky frame and lifted finish.
Rating: 94+
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!