Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
From a cooler, higher elevation site within the Yamhill-Carlton AVA, the Gregory Ranch is more reserved and brooding than the Shea Vineyard bottling, revealing notes of wild berries and aromatic wood, followed by a deep, tensile wine with a firm chassis of fine-grained tannin. Planted in 2007, but already producing serious wine. Drinking Window 2018 - 2028
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple in color, the 2015 Pinot Noir Gregory Ranch Vineyard delivers expressive black raspberry, black cherry and warm red currant notes with hints of Sichuan pepper, bay leaves and anise plus a waft of chargrill. Medium-bodied and solidly constructed in the mouth, it has a solid backbone of chewy tannins and just enough freshness, finishing long and earthy.
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James Suckling
Aromas of strawberries, cherries and plums. Earth character, too. Medium to full body, polished and velvety tannins and a fruity finish. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine's peppery details act as counterpoint to its well-defined raspberry and cherry flavors. Streaks of toast and graphite add to the layers, suggesting further complexity will develop with another year or two in bottle.
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Wine Spectator
Broad and well-structured, showing black raspberry and geranium aromas that lead to precise blueberry, licorice and mineral flavors, with refined tannins. Drink now through 2021.
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.”
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.