Winemaker Notes
Deep and beautiful Bing cherry color, with a softer edge, the initial aromas of bright cherries, passionfruit and floral notes of lavender open to sweet cherries, nutmeg and mace surrounding the flinty notes. The initial palate impression is bright and nervous, with a youthful mid-palate that displays freshly baked cherry pie with cinnamon and a firm mineral core that tightens through the finish with finely textured and coating tannins. Overall, a very composed wine fit for a great life in bottle.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Clear and resonant Bing cherry fruit is highlighted with rather delicate aromas of lavender and moist earth. The use of native yeast and a pleasingly light application of new French oak (22%) keep all the details in view, and the wine persists with a firm spine of steely minerality through a lingering, yet restrained, finish.
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Wine Spectator
Polished and detailed, with delicately layered cherry, smoky sage and black tea flavors that dance on a silky finish.
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James Suckling
This is savory, with notes of blue fruit, dried tangerine peel and cherry-drops. Some dry leaves, too. Medium-bodied with chalky tannins and mellow red and blue berries in the middle. Supple and velvety finish.
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.