Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Tightly packed with tart berry fruit, highlighted with sharp tangy acidity, there's some bite to this young wine which should profit from further bottle age. Black cherry and blood orange, along with hints of pepper and mushroom, display the range and depth of flavor here. Drink from 2022 on.
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Wine Spectator
Expressive and refined, with violet and savory black tea aromas that open to sleekly layered cherry, river stone and spice flavors. Drink now through 2025. 308 cases made.
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.”
Home of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.