Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
A brilliant garnet hue, this intensely aromatic, lush and sexy wine mixes black-cherry fruit with scents and seams of sandalwood and cedar. Though still a bit stiffly tannic, it should benefit from additional bottle age, as a second day taste shows. The best drinking window will open during the 2020s.
-
Wine Spectator
Broad and well-built, with expressive raspberry and pomegranate flavors accented by savory anise and orange zest notes, lingering toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2024.
Home of some of the planet’s most amazingly elegant and expressive Pinot noir, the Willamette Valley is a pastoral, mixed landscape of green, bucolic rolling hills, dramatic forestlands and small, independent, friendly wine growers. As a leader in environmental stewardship, the valley has some of the nation’s most protective land use policies, with two-thirds of its vineyards farmed sustainably and over half, organically. While the valley claims a cool, continental climate, and is heavily influenced by the cold, moist winds of the Pacific Ocean, its warm and dry summers allow for the steady, even ripening of Pinot noir.
The potential of Willamette Valley Pinot noir continues to attract the investment of serious growers and winemakers both locally and from abroad, as naturally the finished wines bring accolades from professionals and enthusiasts. With a range of styles from delicate dried cherry, raspberry and hibiscus to stronger notes of truffle, mocha, plum and spice, a fine Willamette Valley Pinot noir is a perfect expression of both character and grace.