Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2008 Pinot Noir McCrone Vineyard comes from a densely spaced site planted in 1992. It offers up fragrant black fruit aromas verging into blueberry and plum. Mouth-coating on the palate with plenty of structure and intense flavors, it has outstanding volume, focus, and length. Give it 3-4 years of cellaring and drink it through 2023.
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Wine Spectator
Silky, supple and distinctive for the deep mineral flavors that weave through dark berry, cherry and currant fruit, sailing easily into a cloud of fine tannins on the long, expressive finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Still quite young, but showing real depth and layering, the McCrone vineyard designate offers pomegranate and raspberry fruit, dusted with baking spices, and finished with a tasty vein of mocha. This is a wine to enjoy in the full bloom of its youth.
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.