Winemaker Notes
The Casteel Pinot Noir is always intended to be the best expression of the Bethel Height estate in each vintage. The 2019 is graceful with gossamer structure underpinning peach, nectarine, and new strawberry.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Pinot Noir Casteel is powerful and expressive, with structure and perfume that promise a long life in the cellar. It explodes with aromas of black and blue berries, dried flowers and licorice, plus a singular streak of saline-like character. The medium-bodied palate is silty and seamless, with extraordinary floral perfume, layering and length.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is the barrel select reserve from this storied estate. Here you will find more concentration, impeccable balance and the characteristic dark, tannic, powerful composition of fruit, earth, tannin and barrel components. That said, this vintage is leaner and more acidic than the past few. Black cherry, stem, earth and toaste-nut flavors run through the 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.