Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Supple, round and graceful, this is impressive for its clarity, centering on gorgeous currant and plum fruit, framed with hints of spice and dried cherry. The finish sails on and on. Drink now through 2018. 428 cases made.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2008 Pinot Noir Nysa Vineyard, a Dundee Hills site planted on its own roots in 1990. Medium ruby red, it exhibits an expressive nose of cedar, spice box, rose petal, cherry, and raspberry. Densely packed with plenty of underlying structure, this intensely flavored, lengthy effort will benefit from 2-3 years of additional bottle age and drink well through 2020.
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Wine Enthusiast
Tart and speckled with pepper, this shows lean but polished fruit. It’s truly Burgundian in style, with well-defined highlights of leaf and bark, and just a hint of tomato. A chocolaty afterglow sets in long after the last swallow.
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.