Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Bright and juicy, with lively acidity and a streak of distinctive minerality running through the raspberry and floral flavors, lingering on the refined finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2007 Pinot Noir Estate Seven Springs Vineyard spent 14 months in 33% new French oak. Dark ruby-colored, it sports an enticing perfume of smoke, cinnamon, allspice, black cherry, and black raspberry. Medium-bodied and silky textured, it has plenty of savory fruit, an elegant personality, and excellent length.
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Wine Enthusiast
Powerful vanilla scents rise from the glass, but the fruit, even in this difficult vintage, comes out immediately. It's tart and sharp, with a strong herbal component, and the wine snaps into focus quickly with fruit, acid, tannin, herb and vanilla in equal proportion. Firm and tight, still quite young, this wine needs decanting and/or further bottle age to show its best.
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.