Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Dynamic, with a stately elegance, offering refined dark cherry, savory black tea and clove flavors that take on dimension and tension toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2025. 263 cases made.
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James Suckling
Fresh red flowers and earthy notes are played neatly across ripe red-cherry aromas to good effect. The palate has a toasty and juicy array of fresh, attractive red cherries and makes for an excellent, drink-now style.
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Wine Enthusiast
A smooth, supple, yet muscular wine, this brings blackberry and black-cherry fruit, a vein of cola and a dusting of chocolate powder. It's already drinking quite nicely, with well-integrated fruit and barrel flavors, while a nice lemony acidity underscores the finish.
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Wine & Spirits
From an old-vine site near Hopewell, in the eastern slopes of the Eola–Amity Hills, this wine is exceedingly well built, to the point of feeling a bit distant when first poured. It takes a day and a decant to unfurl and, when it does, it’s a model of composure: mildly smoky aromas, scents of roses, sweet cherry flavors—a quiet, calm projection of pinot character. (263 cases)
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.”
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.