Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2016 Pinot Noir Le Pré du Col is dark and pleasantly earthy in the glass, mixing grilled herbs with ashen stones, licorice and olive. Cool-toned, it offers silken textures and masses of ripe red and black fruits balanced by brisk acidity. Nuances of sour citrus and spice resonate as the 2016 finishes with extreme length. Only the slightest tinge of fine tannin pinches at the cheeks. A sultry beast and a total pleasure to taste.
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James Suckling
Very youthful with wild, sappy aromas and toasty, meaty oak influence. The palate delivers a smooth, velvety texture with abundant, rich oak impact and a core of ripe red cherries. Needs time to integrate. Try from 2021.
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Wine Spectator
Silky and elegantly complex, with cherry blossom and pomegranate aromas and well-structured flavors with spiced cinnamon and clove accents that build toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2025.
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Wine & Spirits
From a 16-acre biodynamically farmed vineyard, this has the depth of flavor that marks Ribbon Ridge sources. Give it time in the glass for the oak to recede; then the flavors of plum, turf and black cherry come up, juicy, suave and irresistible. It’s plush enough for pork shoulder.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby-purple in color, the 2016 Pinot Noir le Pre du Col Vineyard has some rubbery reduction on the nose giving way to violets/lilacs, wet forest floor and touches of charcuterie and pepper. Medium to full-bodied with a lively core of crisp black fruit, it has a firm frame of grainy tannins and juicy acidity carrying the long, earthy/spicy finish.
Rating: 90+?
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.”
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!