Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2023 Pinot Noir Paul Gerrie Vineyard is a more saturated ruby color and is a much more introspective and layered wine, with notes of black cherries, crushed flowers, violets, anise, leather, and dark stones, The palate is building, and while it has fruit upfront that never dissipates, the structure builds and unfold s to salty, mineral-rich earth and keeps going and going for ages. with rich tannins. It’s relatively full-bodied and also has a sanguine mineral depth that lasts on the finish. Drink 2025-2045.
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James Suckling
This medium-bodied wine has a firm backbone, juicy red fruit and aromas of flowers, oranges, moss and pine resin. It feels tense yet lifted and vibrant.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Pinot Noir Paul Gerrie Vineyard was fermented with 42% whole clusters and matured for 18 months in 35% new French oak. It has slowly unfurling scents of strawberry, raspberry, orange peel, black tea leaves, mossy bark and incense. The medium-bodied palate offers concentrated, expansive flavors and Goldilocks ripeness. It’s framed by silky tannins and vibrant acidity and has a long, fragrant finish.
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Vinous
The 2023 Pinot Noir Paul Gerrie Vineyard offers a spice box nose, blending cedar shavings, cloves, dried black cherries and a subtle whiff of balsam herbs. Lifted and pure on the palate, it shows silken textures and tart wild berry fruits propelled by zesty acidity. The finish is exceptionally long and nearly salty, with crisp mineral tones as tart blackberry saturation echoes over a bed of fine-grained tannins.
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Wine Spectator
Rich yet structured, with refined flavors of cherry and raspberry laced with dusky spice, clove and mushroom tones as this gathers tension toward fine-grained tannins. Drink now through 2033.
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.