Winemaker Notes
All of Elk Cove’s delicate Pinot Noir fruit undergoes the same gentle handling through their gravity flow system. This allows the winery to achieve the elegance, texture and luscious quality that are the hallmarks of exquisite Pinot Noir. Fruit from the La Bohème vineyard 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 selects the very best barrels to represent the silky, lush flavor profile that exemplifies La Bohème Pinot Noir.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Fragrant and lilting, this vibrant Pinot offers raspberry and pomegranate flavors highlighted by rose petal, cinnamon, nutmeg and other dusky spices. Takes on richness and detail toward refined tannins.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Pinot Noir La Bohème, from grapes planted in 1985, has pure, alluring aromas of pomegranate, blueberry, mushroom powder, iron and desiccated flowers. The light-bodied palate is chalky and refreshing with understated yet complex flavors and a long, perfumed 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.”
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.