Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This dramatically steep site delivers a wine of real personality and distinctiveness. The nose has a very layered mix of red cherries and berries with some plums, leaves, dry stones, forest wood and a wealth of sweetly fragrant spices. The palate holds such intensity and concentrated flavor with striking focus and drive. Mouthwateringly fresh red-cherry flavors are delivered in essence-like mode and hold long, on a super vibrant, explosive finish. The star of 2018 at Cristom and indeed for Willamette Valley pinot per se. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Pinot Noir Jessie Vineyard was made with 46% whole clusters and aged 17 months in 51% new French oak. Medium ruby, it has an incredible perfume of broody earth, licorice and lilac with concentrated blueberry and cranberry fruit. The medium-bodied palate is silky and expansive, offering loads of perfume and powerful fruit in a seamless, feathery frame, finishing very long. What a beauty!
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Wine & Spirits
Named for Paul Gerrie's grandmother, Jessie is an 11-acre vineyard that's among the Willamette's steepest. In 2018, the wine leads with smoky, austere expression of those shallow soils, viewed through a lens of cluster spice. But bright, warm cherry flavor comes bursting through the austere frame, mouth filling and delicious. This is still far from peak expression; cellar it.
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Wine Spectator
Refined and deeply structured, displaying appealingly brooding blueberry flavors that are accented by stony mineral, clove and dusky spices that build toward medium-grained tannins. Drink now.
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.