Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
A more transparent medium ruby, the 2021 Pinot Noir The Upper Terrace takes on a more woodsy and dark profile while remaining graceful. In the glass, it reveals notes of pine, cherry liqueur, wet asphalt, and rosemary. Medium to full-bodied, with ripe tannins and more earth tones, it has the bones to last well over the coming 10-12 years.
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Wine Spectator
This seductive and compelling red is rich and full-bodied yet light on its feet. Dynamic raspberry and cherry flavors open to notes of rose petal and baking spices, with hints of forest floor, as this builds texture and complexity on the lingering finish. Drink now through 2034. 1,688 cases made.
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!