Winemaker Notes
2019 was a return to familiar Oregon vintages as we dodged rainstorms to pick in late September. By keeping yields low, full ripeness was achieved. Fruit was divided into two native yeast fermentations: one destemmed and one 33% whole cluster. Floral aromatics mix with pops of refreshing cherry and raspberry, carried by undertones of spice. Bottled unfined and unfiltered.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Pinot Noir Shea Vineyard will be the last iteration of this single vineyard for Hundred Suns, which is bittersweet because this iteration is magical. It boasts pure spice and earth aromatics, with intense cranberry and blueberry and wafts of tobacco leaves. Grainy, fresh and seamless, it's über detailed, with a flourish of Angostura-like spices on the long finish.
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James Suckling
Aromas of raspberries, crushed strawberries, toffee and sweet spices. It’s medium-bodied with fine tannins and lively acidity. Vibrant and creamy with a bright core of fruit and a long, flavorful finish. Drink or hold.
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.