Winemaker Notes
Complex and expressive on the nose, there are aromas of flower petals, candied dark cherry and plum, interwoven with savory notes, sandalwood and a touch of oak. The first taste presents dark fruit flavors and cherry, with pink peppercorn, rhubarb and five-spices. Ripe, well-integrated tannins are balanced by the graceful structure. While the wine is very pretty and approachable now, it has the charm and persistence to suggest it will effortlessly age over the next 10 years and more.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Incredible clarity and purity of dark red cherries on the nose here. This is a stunning young pinot. The palate has a very plush, fleshy and concentrated core of rich black cherries with toasty oak spice overlaid. Long, noble tannins. This is exceptional. Drink or hold.
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Wine & Spirits
Laurène, named for Veronique Drouhin’s daughter, leads with notes of sassafras and smoke before revealing a plummy core of cherry flavor. It’s lifted, the fruit guided on burnished tannins, the finish elegant and a bit backward, the wine needing years for peak expression.
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant and sleekly complex, with layered raspberry and cherry flavors, accented by orange-tinged tea, bay leaf and spice notes that build tension toward polished tannins. Drink now through 2025.
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.