Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Named after the mother of owner Tom Gerrie, the Eileen vineyard comprising 6.67ha has a higher elevation at up to 230 metres in the Eola-Amity Hills. It shows good freshness and lots of cool fruit-focussed clarity. It's deliciously delicate, with persistent raspberry fruit, spice and sweetness that dominates the luminous palate, but there’s no lack of structure here with good flesh and firmness to the tannin profile. This is still very primary and will age well
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby-purple, the 2015 Pinot Noir Eileen gives bold raspberry preserves and red currant jelly notes with suggestions of chargrill meat, truffles, forest floor and cedar. Medium-bodied, the palate delivers a solid backbone of grainy tannins and loads of freshness supporting the generous, muscular fruit, finishing with great persistence.
Rating: 94+
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.”
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.