Winemaker Notes
A fantastic showcase of the winery’s “home property,” the Iron Filbert Vineyard. Aromatically complex, showcasing ripe plums alongside baking spices and sage. The palate is lengthy and rounded from its structured silky tannins and minerality, tasting of candied cherries, toasted chestnuts and slate.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
A youthful magenta color, the 2022 Pinot Noir Iron Filbert Vineyard offers a more savory side, with notes of iron-rich earth, orange peel, fresh redcurrant, and fresh herbs. It is refined and linear, with ultra-fine tannins, a weightless feel, and mouthwatering, fresh acidity. Clean and inviting, it’s going to have a wide range for drinking over the next 10-12 years.
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Vinous
Earthy in the best possible way, the 2024 Pinot Noir Iron Filbert Vineyard evolves in the glass with notes of sour cherry and blackberry, giving way to a hint of animal musk and crushed navel orange. Elegant textures and a supple feel soothe, as nuances of cola and sweet spice elevate the ripe red fruits. Gently tannic and with outstanding length, the 2024 leaves the senses reeling as a twang of citrus swirls and a bump of residual acidity forces the palate to salivate. While quite giving today, the 2024 also possesses a balance that will carry it for years in the cellar
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.