Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby-purple in color, the 2015 Pinot Noir Laurene is intensely scented of cranberries, wild strawberries and raspberry leaves with nuances of underbrush, wild thyme and yeast extract. Medium-bodied, fine, fresh and tightly wound at this youthful stage, it delivers plenty of depth and expression and the long finish is beautifully framed with a commendable texture.
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Wine Enthusiast
Thick with ripe black fruits that are streaked with cola, this substantial vintage of the winery's middle-tier bottling also brings notes of toasted hazelnuts. The overall balance is spot-on, with ample acidity lending a suggestion of wet stone as the flavors resolve into the finish. Delicious already but quite ageworthy for a decade at least.
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Wine Spectator
Refined and expressive, with harmonious cherry, black tea and spiced cinnamon flavors that take on richness toward polished 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.”
Home of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.