Winemaker Notes
This delicious dry rendition lightly carries the texture of extended lees contact while remaining crisp, fruity, and complex on the palate.
Pairs well with oysters and raw foods.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Pinot Blanc Estate comes from vines in the Sisters Vineyard, planted in 1991. Tank-fermented and matured for 11 months sur lie, it has slowly unfolding scents of quince, pear, chamomile, marshmallow and cashew. The light-bodied palate is rounded and creamy with ripe white fruit and streaks of flint. It’s balanced by tangy acidity and has a long, layered finish.
-
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2023 Oregon Pinot Blanc is a brilliant straw/platinum color and has notes of hay, fresh hazelnuts, golden melon, and fresh flowers. Medium to full-bodied, it’s rounded and juicy upfront, with its more salty and delicate, savory feel delivering mouthwatering refreshment without racing acidity.
-
James Suckling
A lively, textured and well-balanced wine that offers chalky mineral aromas and zesty citrus flavors. It has subtle creaminess from aging on the lees for a year in stainless steel tanks. Very balanced, fresh and rather complex.
Approachable, aromatic and pleasantly plush on the palate, Pinot Blanc is a white grape variety most associated with the Alsace region of France. Although its heritage is Burgundian, today it is rarely found there and instead thrives throughout central Europe, namely Germany and Austria, where it is known as Weissburgunder and Alto Adige where it is called Pinot Bianco. Interestingly, Pinot Blanc was born out of a mutation of the pink-skinned Pinot Gris. Somm Secret—Chardonnay fans looking to try something new would benefit from giving Pinot Blanc a try.
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.