Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From an especially rocky, thin-soiled, basaltic ridge through this vineyard, the Evening Land 2011 Pinot Noir Seven Springs Vineyard La Source – of which there are 1,488 cases – offers a more texturally tender, buoyant, and ultimately elegant performance than its “regular” Seven Springs counterpart. Fresh cassis and elderberry are garlanded with bittersweetly perfumed gentian, lavender and iris, the fruit and flowers being beautifully set off on a silken palate against the sort of wet stone and forest floor backdrop already familiar from that “little sibling” bottling. The energy here comes out as luminosity and exhilarating vibrancy, and as this beauty matures it should acquire additional richness and complexity without that energy dimming. I suspect it will merit re-visiting through at least 2025.
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Wine & Spirits
Coming off polished and suave, this well-built pinot needs several days to unfurl, to reveal the layers beneath its impressive veneer. After two days, the wine relaxes and opens, its black cherry core gaining a spicy filigree; after three, its graceful evolution feels like a great performance. Built to cellar, then to serve with duck breast.
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Wine Enthusiast
Estate-grown and farmed organically and biodynamically, this wine spent 16 months in 30% new French oak barrels. Tart cranberry and raspberry flavors lead into bold tannins, with finishing with notes of earth and green tea.
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.