Winemaker Notes
#52 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2024
Purple-tinged ruby color. Floral notes of crushed rose petals and violets mingle with cocoa and wet forest floor. Tart red fruits dominate the palate, led by pomegranate and sour cherry. The sleek entry travels the length of the wine, and reveals a youthfully soft texture. The long palate impression and finish dances between primary fruits and earthiness with lingering mineral notes.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Spectator
Dynamic and deeply structured, this red retains a sense of grace. Multilayered flavors of cherry and cranberry are laced with fresh violet and forest floor accents that persist toward steely tannins. Drink now through 2032.
-
Jeb Dunnuck
A jeweled ruby/magenta color, the 2022 Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills shows a beautifully elegant and pure profile, with notes of cherry liqueur, candied roses, sweet herbs, and dusty earth. Medium-bodied, it has a delicate, weightless, sunny feel, with ripe tannins, good length, and a long, clean finish. It is very well-styled.
-
Decanter
An Eola-Amity AVA blend from Lavinea which is developing a reputation for its single-vineyard designate wines. Red florals and crushed stones meld with notes of turned earth and white pepper aromas. The palate is a melange of red fruit, tart cranberries, blood oranges, and savoury framing of chicory root and raspberry leaf, which bring in the finish.
-
Vinous
A dark magenta, the 2022 Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills smolders up with a dark mix of crushed black raspberries and wet stone complicated by hints of grilled sage and cloves. This is racy and energetic, with bright red berries and zesty acidity maintaining a vibrant personality. The 2022 tapers off with a staining of primary concentration and gritty tannins while retaining a lovely freshness despite its youthful structure. It punches well above its price point.
-
James Suckling
Berries, smoke and sweet spices dominate on the nose, followed by a medium body. Broad and creamy with plenty of generous fruit. Mellow and inviting with a juicy finish.
-
Wine Enthusiast
The sweetest red raspberries you ever did sniff are contrasted by the fresh aromas of recently cut grass and lemon peel. The palate showcases a wall of cherries, more citrus and a dazzling one-two punch of brisk acidity and chewy tannins.
Cellar Selection
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.