Winemaker Notes
2017 marked their 30th Anniversary in Oregon, and the 2017 Laurène marks the 26th release of this cuvée named for their daughter. The wine has charm and character—vibrant, yet restrained, which allows the vintage’s detail to be expressed. On the nose, the 2017 Laurène carries notes of pure, sweet cherry, pomegranate, baking spice, ripe blackberries, wild herbs, and fresh sage. While intensely woven now, a few years of cellaring will reveal silk, elegance, and expressive depth of texture. I trust this wine will age for 8-10 years effortlessly.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A selection of around 100 barrels from the Dundee Hills estate pinot, this has a deeply grounded and confidently defined feel on the palate with density of tannin and a strong, noble core that carries long and builds so convincingly. Long, sustained, seamless quality to the finish. Drink over the next decade.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Pinot Noir Laurene is a selection of the best barrels from Domaine Drouhin fruit. Pale to medium ruby, it has an open-knit nose of crushed blackberries, spiced cranberry sauce, forest floor, allspice, citrus peel and tree bark. It’s medium bodied with intense, spicy fruits, a grainy frame and seamless freshness, finishing very long.
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Wine Enthusiast
Not to overgeneralize, but many if not most Willamette Valley Pinots were significantly bigger, bolder and richer in 2016 than in 2017. DDO's 2017s are one exception: just as good and in some instances even better this vintage. Ripe scents and flavors highlight blueberry compote, dappled with fresh herbs, notably rosemary and thyme. It's an elegant, nicely detailed wine, with the structure to improve over the next decade or longer.
Editors' Choice -
Wine Spectator
Sleek and elegantly complex, with detailed cherry, raspberry and green tea flavors that fan out and build richness on a long finish. Drink now through 2028.
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.