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 12% new oak in each. The result is a fascinating journey up the Dundee Hills, from their lowest elevation Sisters vineyard at 220’ up to our 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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Wine Enthusiast
This glorious wine is made with fruit from the Willamette Valley's orginal Pinot Noir planting. A perfume should be bottled of these potent aromas of marionberries, violets and loamy soil. The wine's marionberry tart, orange zest and cedar flavors coat the palate while still feeling nimble. Nureyev should have bee so balanced. Enjoy now until 2045.
Cellar Selection -
Jeb Dunnuck
From 57-year-old vines, the 2022 Pinot Noir The Eyrie is a transparent ruby color and reveals more cherry-noted fruit, with crushed flowers, crushed pine needles, dark minerals, and fresh spice. Medium-bodied, it has broader shoulders and a chiseled structure, with a long, long finish. It has really depth and intensity, with a lightly savory, gamey feel, ripe tannins, and clean lift on the finish. Drink 2024-2040.
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James Suckling
A full-flavored, complex and composed wine made from the oldest vines in one of Willamette Valley’s oldest vineyards. Beautiful floral, cherry and red tea aromas, then complex pine, raspberry, black tea and rhubarb flavors that build on the palate and linger in the finish. So well balanced, harmonious and alive. From organically grown grapes. Drink now or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Pinot Noir The Eyrie comes from vines planted between 1966 and 1974 at 260 to 410 feet in elevation. Matured in used oak, it has intense aromas of wild cherry, red plum, rooibos tea, pipe tobacco, mossy bark and bitters. The medium-bodied palate is concentrated and pure with layers of fruit, earth and spice. It’s framed by soft, dusty tannins and fireworks of fresh acidity and has a long, complex finish.
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Vinous
Rich black raspberry, shavings of cedar, undergrowth, worn leather and rose waft up to form a beguiling bouquet as the 2022 Pinot Noir Eyrie Vineyard slowly evolves in the glass. Harmonious to the core, this floods the palate with textures of pure silk, displaying vividly ripe wild berry fruits enhanced by hints of sour citrus and spice. A web of crunchy tannins lingers as tart cranberry mixes with inner violet florals and a sensation of liquid stone through the long and lightly structured finale. The mix of energy and complexity here is something to behold
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Wine Spectator
Attractive and elegantly refined, with expressive flavors of raspberry and cherry accented with cinnamon, black tea and spice notes that end with fine-grained tannins. Drink now through 2034.
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.