Winemaker Notes
Our 2017 Dundee Hills offers a fragrant nose of bright black cherries, berry bramble, orange peel, golden brown spices and a touch of sweet oak. Layered behind are notes of red berries and rhubarb. Flavors of red plum, boysenberry and cassis mingle with a savory trio of white pepper, forest floor and sassafras. Elusive and elegant, this wine is wonderful now but I think will be in a perfect place with 5 – 12 years of cellaring.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby-purple, the 2017 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir has lovely, layered aromatics of crushed boysenberries, red currant jelly, cinnamon stick, autumn leaves, violets, orange peel and amaro. It’s light to medium-bodied with a silky texture, oodles of spice, a grainy frame and seamless freshness, finishing spicy.
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.