Winemaker Notes
Dopp Creek represents the broadest combined expression of our Estate, and embodies our most approachable and versatile wine. The 2021 Dopp Creek opens with pretty aromas of rich red fruit and savory herbs, which carry through on the palate. The wine is clean, balanced, and well-structured with a core of bright fruit and a round, supple mouthfeel. It finishes with a hint of pomegranate, rosemary, and warm spice.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This expressive red is dynamic, yet retains a sense of elegance and refinement, showing pomegranate and blueberry flavors underscored by river stone and dusky spice accents. Builds tension toward lively tannins.
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James Suckling
A juicy and tasty pinot with aromas of dark cherries, sliced mushrooms, chocolate strawberries, cardamom and nutmeg. Medium-bodied, creamy and well-balanced, with fine-grained tannins and a bright finish. Drink now or hold.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2021 Pinot Noir Dopp Creek takes on a deep transparent ruby color and offers aromas of toasted baking spices, ripe red and black raspberry, cardamom, and fresh pine. Medium-bodied, with juicy fruit up front, it fills the palate with fine tannins, and its more serious structure shows itself after the more primary fruit subsides on the palate. It will do well with another 6-12 months in bottle. Drink it over the coming 6-8 years.
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.