Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby colored, the 2016 Pinot Noir Jessie Vineyard is a touch reticent on the nose, opening to broody scents of black cherries and licorice with notes of herbs, Bergamot and grated baking spice with earthy touches of soil and wet leaves. Medium to full-bodied and wonderfully silky in the mouth, it's packed with layers of ripe fruit, spice and earth. It gives fine, firm tannins and mouthwatering acidity, finishing very long and very layered. This is wonderfully complex with loads of layers—give it some time in bottle to show its best.
Rating: 95+ -
James Suckling
There’s a sense of resolve from the get-go here with very pure red and darker cherries making a youthful impression. The palate has a succulent and finely detailed array of well-judged tannins that frame the finish very neatly. Good depth and detail here. Drink or hold.
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Wine & Spirits
The 2016 Jessie comes from Cristom’s steepest vineyard, an east-facing slope planted in 1994. It’s so attractive that, at first, you may miss its complexity. Sure, it has the Earl Grey tea character that’s typical of Steve Doerner’s whole-cluster style, but it’s surrounded by a bright dark-berry flavor, gentle and clean, lightly propelled by savory spice.
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Wine Spectator
Deeply structured, yet elegant, with dark berry, stony mineral and black tea flavors that build richness and torque toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2025.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is an excellent year for this east-facing block, with bright blackberry and cherry fruit anchored in firm tannins. There's a scent and flavor of chicken stock. Half was whole cluster fermented, and the wine spent 18 months in three-fifths new French oak.
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Decanter
Enticing black fruits, roasted nuts, sweet cherry compote, dried plums and a wonderful finish of smoke, toffee and rose. Tannin are ripe, grippy and well integrated.
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.