Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant and sleek, bursting with blackberry and currant fruit. A zippy stream of acidity gives this lift, while a long tail of coffee and spice notes adds depth as the finish lingers. Drink now through 2022.
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Wine & Spirits
Josh Bergstrom is the valley’s largest customer for Yamhill–Carlton's flagship vineyard, and it’s clear he has a penchant for the place. The aromas and textures of this wine are classic Shea: saturated, dark and plummy, with a granular mineral texture complementing some of the darkest fruit expression in Willamette Valley. Give it time to evolve, then serve with smoked pork loin.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Pinot Noir Shea Vineyard, which Josh referred to as the "Clos Vougeot" vineyard of Oregon, comes from six vineyard blocks and sees around 30 to 35% new oak in the final blend. It has a fine floral bouquet with violets and rose petals infusing the slightly "pillowy" bouquet. The palate is medium-bodied with supple, quite lithe red berry fruit tinctured with sea salt. There is a slight ferrous note toward the finish that shows admirable elegance and restraint without compensating on intensity. There is something a little foursquare here at the moment, so I would afford this 12-18 months in bottle. 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.”
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.