Winemaker Notes
One of five cuvées that are produced identically, with the same fermentation regimes of wild yeast and small fermentation vessels, followed by aging in blends of cooperage with 12% new oak in each. The result is a fascinating journey up the Dundee Hills, from their lowest elevation Sisters vineyard at 220’ up to their highest elevation Daphne vineyard at 860’. Each wine reflects facets of soil, site, exposure, and vine age that together capture a precise portrait of how variations in place can influence Pinot Noir.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
A personal favorite at this tasting, the 2021 Pinot Noir Daphne is pure and vibrant and pours a jeweled ruby hue. Fresh with notes of cranberry cocktail, spiced orange, and saline, it’s medium-bodied and persistent on the palate. It brings great, balanced tension and ripe fruit, with a citrus-driven feel while remaining ripe, and has fine tannins and a long, mouthwatering finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir Daphne offers a plethora of fruit: strawberry pie, red plums and Cara Cara orange define the nose until, with air, it reveals accents of forest floor and dried flowers. The medium-bodied palate is impressively concentrated, sweeping through the mouth with perfumed flavor layers. It has a firm frame of chalky tannins, fireworks of fresh acidity and a tremendously long finish. It's the most powerful and expressive of the 2021 single vineyards at this stage, and it will reward cellaring.
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James Suckling
Fantastic purity of fruit here, with beautiful aromas of lavender, rosemary, cranberries, wild strawberries, oranges and pomegranates. So concentrated and flavorful, with a medium body and sleek, silky tannins. Fantastic persistency of wild spice and berry fruit. From organically grown grapes. 151 cases. Delicious already, but better after 2024.
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Wine Spectator
Elegant and seductive, offering expressive plum, raspberry, green tea and forest floor accents that build richness toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2032.
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.”
Home of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.