Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Expressive and powerfully built, with vibrant black raspberry and orange peel aromas that open to a vibrant core of tannins and acidity, wrapped in dynamic cherry and spice flavors. Hands-off for now. Best from 2020 through 2025.
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Wine Enthusiast
Named to acknowledge the windy corridor that gives this estate's fruit its grip and concentration, this is a fine entry into an outstanding portfolio. Complex and supple, it's loaded with fruit flavors of blueberry, plum and cherry. Oak aging has added nuanced notes of cinnamon and cedar.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This wine is made using young vines, planted from 1994-2002. Pale to medium ruby-purple, the 2016 Pinot Noir AEolian has a nose of warm black cherries and black berries with notes of earth and sliced prosciutto plus touches of violets and peppercorn. Medium-bodied, it fills the mouth with warm, ripe black fruit notions, with a lovely frame of fine-grained tannins, juicy, mouthwatering acidity and perfumed earth carrying the very long finish.
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.”
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.