Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This is sharp and spicy, with a streak of wintergreen and licorice somewhat muting the wild-berry fruit. Fermented entirely with whole clusters and native yeast, this is a strongly flavored wine, with tart berry and cherry fruit. Aging four months in 100% new French oak brings up baking spices such as cinnamon, allspice and ginger through the finish.
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Wine Spectator
Expressive and impressively structured, with rose petal and river stone aromas that open to tightly focused but dynamic raspberry, blueberry and savory spice flavors, finishing with refined tannins. Drink now through 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Pinot Noir Anden Seven Springs Vineyard is pale to medium ruby-purple and opens with herbal raspberry leaf notes with touches of cracked black pepper, sliced prosciutto and bramble berry. Medium to full-bodied, it gives crisp black fruits in the mouth with a good frame of grainy tannins and plenty of freshness, finishing with peppery/herbal accents.
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.”
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.