Winemaker Notes
This is a bright red beauty with a subtle smokey aroma and deep, complex fruit notes. Taut and focused on the palate, a hint of red berry reminiscent of fresh strawberry jam is complicated with a lovely underlying spiciness and earth. With super-fine tannins and a satisfyingly long finish, this is a classic representation for the lover of age worthy Pinot Noir.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A blend of all five Eyrie sites, this gives a gauge on the 2017 harvest here, as one that delivered fresh and complex style. Red-cherry, raspberry, blueberry and leafy aromas with gently earthy and spicy tones in equal measure. The palate has a very smooth core of fleshy red-cherry flavors and carries a velvety tannin texture long and fresh. Seriously complex pinot. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale ruby, the 2017 Pinot Noir Estate is classically styled, with scents of red and black berry fruit and accents of forest floor, tobacco and aniseed. The light-bodied palate is juicy and soft, with intense, earth-laced fruits and a long, spicy finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Eyrie now makes five single-vineyard Pinots, along with this estate blend. There's a pretty potent whiff of leather, and the palate carries a funky note that will please some palates more than others. Other highlights of sassafras come around a core of classic Dundee Hills cherry fruit, but the palate seems a bit muted by the tack room notes.
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.