Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Bright and energetic aromas of red cherries, raspberry coulis, violets and spice. The palate is medium-bodied with crunchy tannins and balanced acidity. Still quite restrained and tightly wound, this will open up in the coming years. Drink or hold.
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Vinous
The 2023 Pinot Noir Iron Filbert Vineyard is dusty and floral, with a mix of rose petals and crushed violets complementing dried black cherries. It feels silken, revealing depths of mineral-inflected red and blue fruits that take on a more serious character as a cascade of inner florals arches across the senses. Fine-grained tannins wrap the palate with youthful poise. Structured and long, the finish is surprisingly fresh.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2023 Pinot Noir Iron Filbert is from the Dundee Hills and has a nearly opaque magenta color. It’s more savory, leading with notes of medicinal herbs, plum, mint, and dried earth. The palate boasts a bright and snappy lift of acidity, complemented by savory accents, coiled tannins, and a stony finish.
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Wine Spectator
Sleek and full of tension, with tightly focused flavors of cherry and raspberry accented by crushed stone, forest floor and toasty spice elements that end with fine-grained tannins.
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.