Winemaker Notes
Derived from all six clones growing in our estate vineyard, the 2022 Select offers a labyrinth of complex red fruit notes, Asian spices, dried cherries and cassis.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant and floral, with expressive raspberry and cranberry flavors that are laced with pretty notes of rose petal, forest floor and dusky spices as this glides toward refined tannins.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Pinot Noir Select is bursting with blueberry and pomegranate on the nose, plus accents of orange peel, tea leaves and forest floor. The medium-bodied palate is finely chalky and bright, and its long, flavorful finish calls you in for another sip.
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!