Winemaker Notes
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.
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Wine & Spirits
The 2016 vintage defies Veronique Drouhin’s customary restraint: It’s heady with aromas of cherry and strawberry, the forward fruit feeling almost pulpy on the palate. Yet notes of tanbark and firm, spicy tannins rein it in so that the wine maintains a kind of opulent grace, rich and sleek at once.
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Wine Spectator
Precise and polished, with slightly brooding black cherry and green tea flavors that fan out and build structure toward fine-grained tannins. Drink now through 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir is pale to medium ruby-purple with a nose of warm red cherries, dried cranberries and crushed blueberries with accents of Earl Grey tea, dried leaves and earth. Light to medium-bodied, it has good concentration of red and blue fruits in the mouth with forest/earthy touches and cinnamon suggestions, with a good frame of fine-grained tannins and lovely juicy acidity, finishing long and spicy.
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Wine Enthusiast
This lovely and seductive wine from a top producer delivers a supple, smooth and silky mix of orange peel, strawberry compote and chocolate bonbon flavors. At its relatively modest price, you can't hope for a better value for iconic Dundee Hills Pinot Noir.
Editors' Choice
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.