Hyland Estates Coury Pinot Noir 2010 Front Bottle Shot
Hyland Estates Coury Pinot Noir 2010 Front Bottle Shot Hyland Estates Coury Pinot Noir 2010 Front Label

Winemaker Notes

Planted in 1971 and spanning over forty acres, Hyland Vineyard's oldest plantings of Pinot Noir are from the famed "Coury" clone. Aptly named after Oregon wine pioneer, Charles Coury, and planted when very few vineyards existed in the Willamette Valley, the vineyard and clones have become an intriguing chapter in Oregon's wine history. In 1964, while studying viticulture and clonal adaptation in Alsace, Coury grew an affinity for a particular clonal selection of Pinot Noir. After smuggling the clone back into the United States in his suitcase, he promptly propagated it and began establishing a nursery stock. Several years later, the vines were purchased from Coury by the founders of Hyland Vineyard and planted in its Jory soils, located on a pristine, south-facing bench just north of the Van Duzer Corrisor in the McMinnville AVA. The resulting decades-old, gnarled vines have yielded fruit that has been sought after by many of Oregon's most prominent producers over the years and is now the proprietary source for this limited "Coury" selection. The tannins blend seamlessly with spice, black current, sweet cherry and flowers. Opulent mouth feel with layered fruit, notes of earth and vanilla char for a long vibrant finish.

Professional Ratings

  • 90
    Named for the Pinot selection of Willamette pioneer Charles Coury, Hyland Estates' 2010 Pinot Noir Coury features candied and confitured cherry tinged with vanilla, cinnamon, and Virginia blond tobacco. Like the best I tasted from among Laurent Montalieu’s current crop of Pinots, it’s plush and expansive, but despite its confectionary, confitured, and torrefied aspects preserves a welcome core of primary juiciness and harbors a saliva-liberating lick of salt. Piquancy of cherry pit and smoky suggestions of peat add counterpoint to a sustained, if still rather superficially sweet finish.
Hyland Estates

Hyland Estates

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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.”

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McMinnville

Willamette Valley, Oregon

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Stretching southwest from the city of McMinnville, the AVA with the same name covers about 40,000 acres across 20 miles until it meets the Van Duzer Corridor. This corridor is the only break in the Coast Range whose gap allows the cool Pacific Ocean air to flow eastward into the Willamette Valley.

The Pacific's moderating winds hit McMinnville’s south and southeast facing slopes where cool-climate varieties—namely Pinot noir and Pinot blanc thrive on ridges at between 200 to 1,000 feet in elevation.

Soils here are primarily uplifted marine sedimentary loam and silt, with alluvial formations; McMinnville receives less rainfall than its neighbors to the east because it is situated in the rain shadow of the Coast Range.

AUT10HEPNCC_2010 Item# 143336