Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
So concentrated, layered and firmly structured, it’s fragrant in new-oak aromatics and built for long aging. A full body and muscular tannins balance lush, posh and ripe red and black fruit flavors that flood the palate and echo in the finish. This is complex, powerful and detailed. Drinkable now, but best from 2029.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Pinot Noir Evenstad Reserve has nuanced aromas of black cherry, lavender, mossy bark, earth and spice. The full-bodied palate is powerful and perfumed with a velvety texture. Its concentrated flavors are balanced by vibrant acidity, and it has a long, layered finish.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2022 Pinot Noir Evenstad Reserve is a saturated red color and is a touch shy initially as well, offering notes of red cherries, lightly iron-rich earth, leather, pressed flowers, and mushrooms. It fills the palate with medium-bodied richness, ripe tannins, and an even, balanced finish, with even ripeness throughout. It’s a very well-styled Pinot to enjoy over the coming 10-12 years.
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Wine Spectator
Rich and graceful, with fragrant raspberry and cherry fla- vors accented with cinnamon, orange peel and toasty spices as this finishes with refined tannins.
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Decanter
The wine was 25% from Jerusalem Hill in the Eola-Amity Hills, with the rest from the Dundee Hills estate sites. Showing tertiary earth notes of sous bois, mushroom and freshly tilled soils, acidity lifts toward the finish, with peeks of red currant and cranberry with a raspberry leaf finish. The 2013 vintage was called a vintage in three parts, a very warm beginning with a cool summer and lots of rain nearer to harvest time. This wine shows fruit and freshness despite its 12 years of age.
Ken and Grace Evenstad founded Domaine Serene Vineyards and Winery in 1989 when they purchased 42 acres of just-logged land in the Dundee Hills of Oregon and built a five-level, gravity flow winery to produce ultra-premium Pinot Noir. Today, Domaine Serene produces wines from six individual vineyard estates in the Willamette Valley planted exclusively to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Each estate offers a diversity of soils, clones, rootstocks, microclimates, slopes, and elevations that add distinguishing complexity and elegance to the wines.
The Evenstads now own over 1,000 acres, more than 360 of which are planted to vine in three AVAs of the Willamette Valley and are actively preserving Oregon White Oak trees and the biodiversity of the region. They have achieved LIVE certification, the highest certification in the world for sustainable viticulture. Domaine Serene’s wines have won many accolades and awards, including 200 wines scoring 90 points or higher by Wine Spectator. Their 2013 Evenstad Reserve Pinot Noir was recognized as #3 Wine in the World, while the 2014 Evenstad Reserve Chardonnay received 95 points and was ranked the #2 Wine in the World according to Wine Spectator. Over the years, Domaine Serene has opened three Oregon Wine Lounges in Portland, Bend, and Lake Oswego that offer wine club members, locals, and visitors an elevated wine experience.
Home of some of the planet’s most amazingly elegant and expressive Pinot noir, the Willamette Valley is a pastoral, mixed landscape of green, bucolic rolling hills, dramatic forestlands and small, independent, friendly wine growers. As a leader in environmental stewardship, the valley has some of the nation’s most protective land use policies, with two-thirds of its vineyards farmed sustainably and over half, organically. While the valley claims a cool, continental climate, and is heavily influenced by the cold, moist winds of the Pacific Ocean, its warm and dry summers allow for the steady, even ripening of Pinot noir.
The potential of Willamette Valley Pinot noir continues to attract the investment of serious growers and winemakers both locally and from abroad, as naturally the finished wines bring accolades from professionals and enthusiasts. With a range of styles from delicate dried cherry, raspberry and hibiscus to stronger notes of truffle, mocha, plum and spice, a fine Willamette Valley Pinot noir is a perfect expression of both character and grace.