Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Pinot Noir has a delightfully fresh and vibrant bouquet with raspberry and wild strawberry scents accompanied by a lovely floral note. The palate is medium-bodied with raspberry and blueberry, and displays a fine line of acidity. It is one of the juicier 2013s that I have encountered with a dash of spice towards the finish. It might lack a little substance and persistence, but it is well balanced with impressive mineralité and personality.
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Wine & Spirits
A darkness of flavor and texture—a Willakenzie sedimentary soil spice—carries through this supple pinot, with its scents of plum and espresso, its flavors taking on a mild amaro bitterness. With air, the red spectrum of fruit emerges, piercing the darkness, while supple tannins lead to the close. This is still evolving; for the cellar.
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Wine Enthusiast
Pretty aromas of strawberry and raspberry fruit push those flavors forward, with supporting acidity. A light vein of pine needle and herb underscores the tart fruit. It's all in sync with lovely definition.
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.”
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.