Winemaker Notes
All of Elk Cove's delicate Pinot Noir fruit undergoes the same gentle handling through their gravity flow system. This allows them to achieve the elegance, texture and luscious quality that are the hallmarks of exquisite Pinot Noir.
Clay Court Pinot Noir fruit is fermented in small, temperature controlled steel tanks, hand punched down twice daily then aged for ten months in French oak. The winemaking team then carefully blends the barrels most representative of the spicy flavors and concentrated red cherry fruit that characterizes this vineyard.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
From a hillside vineyard, Clay Court is on top of Parrett Mountain comes a beautifully balanced Pinot Noir. Ruby red-hued with great floral elegance, showy notes of dusty red berries, and a gravelly minerality. The palate is fleshy, red-fruited and delicious; a squeeze of blood orange brightens the affair; it’s followed on by tart cranberries, green tea leaves and an array of savoury dried herbs, finishing with tart cherries and a hint of minerality.
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Wine Spectator
Silky and richly structured, with detailed flavors of raspberry and cherry accented by orange peel, cinnamon and toasty spice tones that linger toward supple tannins.
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Wine Enthusiast
Elk Cove is a Clay Court master the equal of Rafael Nadal. Each vintage of this wine is excellent, and the 2022 is as nimble and light on its feet as Nadal in his best year. Blueberries, raspberries, orange blossoms and buckwheat pancakes are this wine’s opening aromatic volley. Raspberries take over on the palate, backhanded by explosions of oregano, nutmeg and black tea.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Pinot Noir Clay Court, grown on volcanic Jory soils, has wonderfully spicy aromas of cinnamon, tea leaves, mossy bark and mushrooms complementing a core of raspberry and red cherry jam. The medium-bodied palate features concentrated, spicy fruit. It's structured by fine, grainy tannins and bright acidity and has a long, bitters-laced finish.
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.”
The Chehalem Mountains is a northwest-southeast span of several distinct mountains, ridges and peaks in the northern part of the Willamette Valley. Of all of Willamette Valley's smaller AVAs, it is closest to the city of Portland. Its highest summit, Bald Peak at an elevation of 1,633 feet, serves to generate cooler air for the rest of the AVA and its hillside vineyards. The region covers 70,000 acres but only 1,600 acres are planted to vines; soils of the Chehalem Mountains are a mix of basalt, ocean sediment and loess.