Winemaker Notes
#37 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2020
Dark black cherry in color, the 2018 Cumberland Reserve is perfumed with red roses, floral pastilles, dark cherry and black raspberry candies, savory garden herbs, sweet mushrooms, and meaty bouillon. This vintage is fresh and light on its feet; with good floral perfume and a generous persistence of ripe, crunchy red and dark fruits with fine ripe tannins and a stony mineral structure.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple, the 2018 Pinot Noir Cumberland Reserve takes its time to unfold to notes of earth, tar and blue and black berries on the nose. The palate is medium-bodied, firm and seamlessly fresh with intense dark fruits and a peppery finish. It's youthfully coiled and will have more to show with another couple years in bottle.
Rating: 94+ -
Wine Spectator
Dynamic yet harmonious, with expressive raspberry and rose petal aromas, accented by flavors of orange peel and dusky spice. Builds richness toward polished tannins.
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Wine Enthusiast
This blended cuvée is the winery's most widely available Pinot Noir. A whiff of truffle introduces a medium-bodied wine with classic fruit flavors and structure. Pomegranate and pie-cherry fruits, along with cherry pit and palate-drying minerality, finish with touches of green tea.
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Wine & Spirits
Bergstrom's entry-level pinot feels ripe and heady when first poured, with a juicy red-cherry scent limned with a bit of red dust. The flavors are much more refined, delivered with lean elegance and with a mild tobacco savor to the tannins. Substantial enough for duck.
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.