Winemaker Notes
The most delicate and floral of all of the single vineyard Pinot Noirs with finesse and earth tones.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir Outcrop has complex aromas of strawberries, blackberries, tobacco leaves, citrus peel, bitters and foresty tones. The medium-bodied palate is detailed and expressive with layers of wild fruit and spice. It combines superfine tannins with vibrant acidity, and its addicting, negroni-like bite and flourish of autumnal accents calls you back to the glass. Rating: 94+
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant and delicately complex, with refined cherry and cranberry flavors that layer on accents of green tea and fresh forest floor, finishing with fine-grained tannins. Drink now through 2031. 197 cases made.
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.