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 19% 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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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir Sisters has intense aromas of cranberries, blackberries, bergamot and mossy bark. As it spends time in the glass, it reveals an array of spicy, bitters-like accents that really add complexity to the nose. The medium-bodied palate is silky and vibrant with an understated yet layered core of detailed fruit, and it has a long, spicy finish.
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Vinous
The 2021 Pinot Noir Sisters blossoms in the glass with woodland berries and herbs complicated by allspice and clove. The palate is round and supple with cooling acidity and ripe wild berries cascading throughout, leaving a sweet spice tinge toward the close. This finishes with remarkable freshness, a gentle sour citrus twang, and slowly fading hints of red plum. The 2021 is already showing beautifully, but there’s the balance to excel over the next five to seven years of cellaring.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The translucent ruby 2021 Pinot Noir Sisters is delicately floral and spicy, with aromas of rose petal, fresh raspberry, and fresh baking spices. Medium-bodied and lifted, with fine tannins and fresh acidity, it’s long on the palate with a fresh. Lingering. rosy perfume and a clean lift off the finish. It’s attractive now and will continue to drink well over the coming 6-8 years.
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Wine Spectator
A pretty red, graceful and delicate in structure yet vibrant, with cherry and pomegranate flavors that take on forest floor, fresh dill and black tea accents. Concludes with refined tannins.
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.