Winemaker Notes
Yamhill Cuvée is named for the county where all of the Domaine Serene Estates are located. This signature blend includes grapes from the Dundee Hills, Eola-Amity Hills, and Yamhill-Carlton AVA's. It is consistent and approachable, with a textural profile that is vibrant, silky and persistent.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Sweet strawberry and cherry with some hibiscus. Medium-bodied with orange peel and fine tannins. Fresh finish. Juicy undertone. Extremely well done for 2019. Drinkable now, but better in a year or two.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Pinot Noir Yamhill Cuvee has a medium ruby color and is bursting with pure scents of pomegranate, rhubarb and cranberry with accents of woodsmoke, tobacco leaves, earth and mossy bark. The light-bodied palate offers restrained, earthy fruit, a soft, juicy structure and long, spicy finish. This is very easy to drink!
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Wine Spectator
Sleek and generous, with agile raspberry, dusky spice and black tea flavors that fan out toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2030. 8,777 cases made.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Expressive and sunny, the 2019 Pinot Noir Yamhill Cuvee takes on a dark red hue and is spiced with aromatics of cedar, black cherry, and forest floor. Full-bodied and approachable, with ripe tannins, a weightless feel, and balanced richness of fruit
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Wine Enthusiast
The wine’s nose is sweet and floral, with notes of Oriental lilies and sweet pea flowers to accompany blackcap raspberries and warm beeswax. Brisk acidity and velvety tannins escort flavors like blackberries, lemon shortbread and a touch of mocha. Try this cuvée with a turkey burger right off of the grill.
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.”
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.