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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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale ruby, the 2018 Pinot Noir Estate features pretty scents of dried cranberries and red cherries, tangerine peel, sage and earth, unfolding as it spends time in the glass. The medium-bodied palate is powerful and grainy with seamless acidity and a long, fragrant finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Eyrie now makes six single vineyard and reserve-level Pinots, along with this gorgeous estate blend. If you can put the word “classic” in front of any Oregon Pinot Noir, it would be this one. With perfect balance and authoritative tannins, it’s mouthfilling and aromatic—a complex wine that does not rely entirely on pretty fruit to make a statement. Plum, brambly blackberry and some chewy herbs give it length and strength. This can certainly age for a decade or more. Editors’ Choice.
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.