Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple, the 2016 Pinot Noir Adriane has a nose of wild blackberries and black cherries with accents of Earl Grey tea leaves, fragrant earth, dust and floral tinges. It's medium-bodied with a silky texture, grainy tannins and great freshness, finishing long and flavorful.
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Wine Spectator
This wine is all about structure, with accents of pretty cranberry, pomegranate and stony mineral. Muscular tannins emerge on the firm finish. Best from 2021 through 2025.
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.