Winemaker Notes
Aromatically the wine has notes of red berry fruits, Chinese five-spice, dried flowers, and damp topsoil. On the palate, it is juicy with a combination of ripened of black and red fruits, warm spices, rose petals, and youthful tannins.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir Jessie Vineyard was fermented with 52% whole clusters. It features layered scents of raspberry, pomegranate, tea leaves, prosciutto and earth, offering additional nuances with each return to the glass. The medium-bodied palate offers complex layers of fruit, earth and spice. It has a seamless frame of dusty tannins and vibrant acidity and a long, fragrant finish.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Lush with notes of dusty earth, the deep ruby-colored 2021 Pinot Noir Jessie Vineyard is rosy and pure, with wild raspberry liqueur, anise, and orange. Medium-bodied with a focused feel, while retaining ripe red fruit, it offers fine tannins and fresh acidity throughout. It has a bit of texture that I think comes from stem tannins, but they’re ripe and well-integrated. It’s going to benefit from a few more years of bottle age.
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James Suckling
Scented nose with wild strawberries, spiced cherries, dried herbs, baking spices and a touch of leather. Medium-bodied with bright acidity. Vivid red currant and succulent sour cherry character on the mid-palate. Juicy and focused with harmonious structure and a long, intense finish.
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Vinous
The 2021 Pinot Noir Jessie Vineyard opens with a dusty bouquet of rich autumnal spices, hints of ginger and crushed raspberry. This sweeps across the palate with a wave of ripe wild berries guided by zesty acidity, taking on a distinct savoriness toward the close. Hints of blood orange and bitter dark chocolate linger long as the 2021 tapers off with youthful tension and a layer of grippy tannins that frame the experience beautifully. The Jessie is the most wildly appealing of the Cristom single vineyards, presenting a little of something for everyone.
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Wine Enthusiast
Aged 18 months on lees in French oak, 38% new, is yet another great, aciddriven wine from Cristom’s 2021 vintage. Black cherries and violets are the dominant aromas, with a trace of polished hardwood floors. Flavors like raspberry, saline and mint frolic on a crisp, taut texture.
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.