Winemaker Notes
Pinot Noir is well-suited to pair with poultry, beef, fish, ham, lamb and pork. It will play well with creamy sauces, spicy seasonings and may just be one of the world's most versatile food wines.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Bright and sleek, offering pretty blackberry and red plum flavors that stay intense as the finish lingers effortlessly, with chocolate complexity, against refined tannins.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Domaine Drouhin 2009 Pinot Noir Laurene delivers rich dark cherry and plum fruit, its persistent but in no way superficial sweetness wreathed in bitter-sweet floral perfume and allied to a vaguely stony undertone. Almost velvety in texture, this nonetheless finishes with a grip that implies abundant if fine tannins. It doesn't – indeed, given its vintage, almost surely couldn't – approach the infectious sheer primary juiciness of the corresponding 2010; nor does it strike me for now as being any more complex than the highly impressive (and much less expensive) 'classique' (i.e. Drouhin's principal bottling). But it's surely worth following for at least half a dozen years, during which time it might well reveal its superiority. 'You had to be really cautious with extraction in this vintage,' notes Bell of 2009, 'because there was a lot of dry skin material in the cap.'
Home of some of the planet’s most amazingly elegant and expressive Pinot noir, the Willamette Valley is a pastoral, mixed landscape of green, bucolic rolling hills, dramatic forestlands and small, independent, friendly wine growers. As a leader in environmental stewardship, the valley has some of the nation’s most protective land use policies, with two-thirds of its vineyards farmed sustainably and over half, organically. While the valley claims a cool, continental climate, and is heavily influenced by the cold, moist winds of the Pacific Ocean, its warm and dry summers allow for the steady, even ripening of Pinot noir.
The potential of Willamette Valley Pinot noir continues to attract the investment of serious growers and winemakers both locally and from abroad, as naturally the finished wines bring accolades from professionals and enthusiasts. With a range of styles from delicate dried cherry, raspberry and hibiscus to stronger notes of truffle, mocha, plum and spice, a fine Willamette Valley Pinot noir is a perfect expression of both character and grace.