Winemaker Notes
The 2023 Les Dijonnais Pinot Noir is crafted from carefully tended thirty-year-old vines grown on the estate’s prime Biodynamic vineyards. One-third of the fruit was fermented on its stems to enhance freshness, aromatic complexity, and cellaring potential. Following a long, slow fermentation, the wine was aged for fifteen months in French oak barrels, 32% of which were new. For the final blend, only barrels exhibiting the greatest complexity and depth of flavor were selected.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2023 Pinot Noir Les Dijonnais boasts a bright, transparent red color, accompanied by an incredible perfume in its notes of fresh lavender, snappy black raspberry, fresh earth, wildflowers, and bright herbs. It’s long on the palate, with medium body and a long-lasting floral finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From vines planted in 1995, the 2023 Pinot Noir Les Dijonnais was fermented with 32% whole clusters and matured in 32% new French oak. The nose is bursting with raspberry, rhubarb, Earl Grey tea leaves, licorice and mushroom aromas. The full-bodied palate features ripe, concentrated, earth-laced flavors. It’s structured by velvety tannins and juicy acidity and has a long, spicy finish.
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Vinous
The 2023 Pinot Noir Les Dijonnais is darkly floral yet youthfully backward, showing nuances of Earl Grey, stone dust and dried black cherries. Juicy to the core, it sweeps across the palate with notes of ripe blackberry, a hint of citrus and sage. Grippy and long, the 2023 keeps the mouth watering for more, even as it finishes tense with edgy tannins that pinch at the cheeks. Patience will be required.
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant and fresh, with pretty cherry and cranberry flavors that are laced with green tea and forest floor. Gathers tension and detail on 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.”
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!