Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A more herbal edge to the nose here with an array of ripe black cherries, as well as strong, oak-derived baking spices. The palate has a very smooth, supple and gently creamy edge and a very detailed array of grainy tannins to close.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium to deep ruby-purple, the 2016 Pinot Noir Bergstrom Vineyard has lovely notions of tar and scorched earth framing summer violet perfume and black cherries/berries on the nose with a touch of blue fruit appearing with aeration. Medium to full-bodied, it’s got a wonderful silky texture in the mouth, with layers of blue and black fruit preserves and perfumed earth, very fine-grained tannins and wonderful freshness, finishing long and minerally.
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Vinous
The 2016 Pinot Noir Bergström Vineyard is spicy to the core, mixing a hint of sour citrus with rosemary and nuances of animal musk. It is seamless and silken in character, with a slight saline mineral tinge up front that balances depths of ripe red and blue fruits. The 2016 finishes long and still gently tannic, leaving a minty freshness and a note of wild blueberry. This still has many years of evolution ahead.
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Wine Enthusiast
The winery's top cuvée is sourced from the original 1999 plantings. Intensely aromatic with complex suggestions of toast, spice and sandalwood, this is a wine to explore at length. The red and blue berry fruit flavors are framed with citrusy acidity, and the extended finish somehow conjures up salted caramel. It's a bit lighter and lower in alcohol than the 2015, but in terms of complexity and stylish detail, it's its equal.
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Wine Spectator
Expressive and generous, with lively black raspberry, spice box and orange peel flavors that build rich and elegant layers toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2025.
Bergstrom Wines is a family-owned and operated artisan producer of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay which was started in 1999 by Dr. John and Karen Bergstrom, with the help of their son Josh Bergstrom and his wife Caroline. Josh is general manager, vineyard manager and winemaker and pulls his expertise from his education in Burgundy, France and his 14 years experience making wines in Oregon's Northern Willamette Valley. Bergstrom focuses on hand-crafting small lots of wines from their fice estate vineyards carefully chosen from fice of Oregon's six wine-growing appellations. All estate acreage is farmed biodynamically and all wines express the wonderful diversity of Oregon's many great terroirs.
Bergström Wines consists of five estate vineyards totaling 84 acres that span across four of the Willamette Valley’s best appellations: The Bergström Vineyard, Silice Vineyard, Winery Block, Gregory Ranch and Le Pré du Col. Each estate vineyard is farmed without the use of harsh chemicals, systemic or fertilizers, and the winery produces approximately 10,000 cases of ultra-premium and extremely sought-after wine each year, including two Chardonnays and nine different Pinot Noirs.
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.”
Home of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.