Winemaker Notes
Fresh raspberries and sour cherries on the nose, and spices such as black pepper and cardamom in the back, mingle with hints of earthiness and herbs redolent of dried thyme and fresh pennyroyal. Medium bodied with a vibrant, textured midpalate. Marked by elegant tannins and balanced acidity, this is a complex, nuanced wine with a long finish.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
A challenging wine to make, says winemaker Amael Orrego, who crafts the blend of this wine across 82 Pinot Noir blocks. The wine captures the freshness of the Willamette Valley and its bright red berry aromatics that combine with savoury herbal notes of mint and pennyroyal. The palate offers red fruited complexity. Ripe wild strawberries, cranberries and mint rise up from elements of earth and forest floor for an impressive wine, capturing the fresh, lively character of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir with broad distribution.
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James Suckling
An open, expressive wine with floral, mineral and cherry notes. Grapes grown at the more elevated end of the property on iron-rich, volcanic soil give it just-ripe red and black cherries and moderate tannins on a medium body. Generous in flavor but still nervy and structured in texture.
After countless months of looking at possible properties, Carol and Steve discovered an old sheep ranch called "Sunnymount" in the southern Willamette Valley. It was immediately apparent Sunnymount held great potential as a vineyard site. The property is in the foothills of the costal mountain range on the west side of the valley with hillsides sloping east by southeast, a perfect orientation for planting Pinot Noir.
Sunnymount straddled the border between Benton and Lane counties with some of the land being in each, and so the name Benton-Lane was born. Carol and Steve purchased the property in 1988 and planting of Pinot Noir commenced in 1989. Benton-Lane’s first vintage was 1992 which was custom produced at another local winery. This process continued until 1997 when the Benton-Lane winery was constructed.
Benton-Lane produced Pinot Noir exclusively until 2003. In 2004, the winery began full-scale commercial production of Pinot Gris from grapes purchased from carefully selected Willamette Valley growers.
Home of some of the planet’s most amazingly elegant and expressive Pinot noir, the Willamette Valley is a pastoral, mixed landscape of green, bucolic rolling hills, dramatic forestlands and small, independent, friendly wine growers. As a leader in environmental stewardship, the valley has some of the nation’s most protective land use policies, with two-thirds of its vineyards farmed sustainably and over half, organically. While the valley claims a cool, continental climate, and is heavily influenced by the cold, moist winds of the Pacific Ocean, its warm and dry summers allow for the steady, even ripening of Pinot noir.
The potential of Willamette Valley Pinot noir continues to attract the investment of serious growers and winemakers both locally and from abroad, as naturally the finished wines bring accolades from professionals and enthusiasts. With a range of styles from delicate dried cherry, raspberry and hibiscus to stronger notes of truffle, mocha, plum and spice, a fine Willamette Valley Pinot noir is a perfect expression of both character and grace.