Winemaker Notes
The 2019 Chehalem Mountains Pinot Noir shows intense bright red fruit aromatics of strawberries, cranberries, and cherry pie that evolve with subtle notes of toasted almonds, toffee, and white pepper spice. The palate is dense but approachable with silky tannins and a mouthwatering juiciness. The red fruit aromatics follow through to the palate, giving this wine a vibrant energy. This wine is delicious now but has the bones to age elegantly.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas of raspberries, cherries, flowers and sweet spices. Medium-bodied with plush tannins and bright acidity. Crunchy and juicy with a succulent finish. Drink now.
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Wine & Spirits
Pleasingly reserved, even a bit slight, there’s a fine composure to the suite of red-cherry and red-plum flavors, all limned with a fine red earth expression. After a day, the fruit becomes more assertive and the wine will likely have much more to say after some cellar time.
Chehalem is considered a vineyard winery, aiming to reflect what the vineyard has produced, purely, with minimal processing and without compromising great fruit. Their name, Chehalem, translates to Valley of Flowers in the Native American language, Calapooia. It’s their goal to follow the example set centuries ago: to treat the land with great care and to continue the mission of creating a sustainable future.
Their story starts in 1990 with the inaugural Pinot Noir harvest at Ridgecrest Vineyard. As those wines were releasing in 1993, Bill Stoller joined as co-owner. He subsequently purchased his family farmlands at the southern tip of the Dundee with the vision of planting it as our second estate vineyard.
In 1995, they purchased Corral Creek, the vineyard surrounding the winery. It became the third estate vineyard.
In early 2018, Bill became the sole owner of Chehalem, and by July, they had become the sixth Oregon winery to achieve B Corp status. This rigorous certification assesses companies to ensure they meet the highest standard of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability.
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.”
The Chehalem Mountains is a northwest-southeast span of several distinct mountains, ridges and peaks in the northern part of the Willamette Valley. Of all of Willamette Valley's smaller AVAs, it is closest to the city of Portland. Its highest summit, Bald Peak at an elevation of 1,633 feet, serves to generate cooler air for the rest of the AVA and its hillside vineyards. The region covers 70,000 acres but only 1,600 acres are planted to vines; soils of the Chehalem Mountains are a mix of basalt, ocean sediment and loess.