Winemaker Notes
The famed Marjorie Vineyard boasts Cristom’s oldest estate plantings, predating the company back to 1982. Named in honor of winegrower-owner Tom Gerrie’s grandmother, Marjorie is distinctive at Cristom both for being own-rooted, and for its lower-density plantings, (605 vines/acre; 1,495 vines/hectacre), with 6 feet between vines and 12 feet between rows.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
An earthy thread here with more savory, herbal and gently spicy notes, as well as graphite. Latent red cherries, too. The palate has a very sleek and succulent feel with evenly cast, sturdy tannins that harness great length and depth. Powerful yet measured and all about the earth. Try from 2023.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Pinot Noir Marjorie Vineyard was made with 51% whole clusters and aged 18 months in 75% new French oak. Medium ruby, it has a very pretty nose: nuances of crushed stone, Campari, earth and blood orange mingle over a core of red and black cherries, rhubarb and cranberry. The medium-bodied palate has lovely, nuanced, amaro-laced flavor layers with a softly chalky frame and seamless freshness, finishing long and perfumed.
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Wine & Spirits
This wine starts out aromatically wild, with scents of crushed, dried violet petals and smoke. After a day it becomes elegant, with flavors of crushed plums infused with soft oak spice, lasting with a fine savor.
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Wine Enthusiast
This stands above the rest of the 2017 Cristom Pinots, helped a bit by aging in 75% new French oak barrels. It’s an elegant wine, with a complex mix of orange, raspberry, grapefruit, tea and tobacco flavors. It gains intensity through the finish and should age nicely over the next half-decade.
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Wine Spectator
Poised and well-knit, with violet, cherry and savory spice flavors that persist toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2024.
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.