Winemaker Notes
Attractive dark crimson color, almost saturated to the edge. Complex aromas of dark wild berry fruit, lavender, and dusty earth and wild herbs on a warm day. Impactful entry with volume and weight, though not at all heavy. The concentrated and still dense medley of black, red, and dried blue berry flavors are intermingled with notes of earth and stones. Refined tannins are well-integrated, and the acidity provides super length. Chewy and ripe, with a very promising future.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is toned between red and blue fruit with cherry and blueberry, as well as a red-plum edge. Very pure, ripe and vivid nose. The palate has impressive depth and build with ripe dark-cherry and plum flavors driving a long, composed statement of quality pinot noir. This is impressive. Drink or hold.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2018 Pinot Noir Temperance is ripe with dried cherry, more dry extract, rocky earth, and dusty. It is a firmly structured wine with dried cranberry, baking spice, and tea leaf.
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Wine Spectator
Impeccably structured and savory, with black cherry and savory underbrush notes that show hints of smoked meat, building tension and richness on the way to medium-grained tannins. Drink now.
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Wine Enthusiast
Tart and acidity-driven, this is an unusual example of this vineyard, especially in this excellent vintage. Many Temperance Hill wines seem more generous with their fruit. Here there's a whiff of funk and plenty of citrus, along with mixed flavors of purple fruits leading into astringent, tea-like tannins. Give this ample aeration to help open it up.
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.