Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Pinot Noir Dundee Hills is defined, expressive and layered, with pure lavender, peppercorn and wild berry aromas and a velvety texture with bursts of freshness that highlight floral perfume and an array of spicy accents on the extended finish.
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James Suckling
A very pretty combination of dried berries, smoke and cedar with some dried flowers, following through to a medium body, a solid core of fruit and a round yet firm, tannic finish. Young, but so attractive. Give it two or three years to open. Try after 2023.
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Wine Spectator
Sleek and elegantly layered, with bright cherry and raspberry flavors accented by black tea and stony mineral notes that glide toward the long, vibrant finish. Drink now through 2030.
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Wine Enthusiast
This young wine remains stiff and herbal, with brambly berry fruit in the background. The tannins are still a bit abrasive and will need further bottle age to smooth out. The overall mix of raspberry fruit, tart acidity and pungent herb suggests that with time this will evolve into a most complex and interesting bottle.
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.