Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Graceful and polished, with expressive raspberry, violet and delicate licorice accents that take on richness and depth toward the lingering finish. Drink now through 2025.
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Wine Enthusiast
As the name suggests, this wine comes off a rocky part of the estate vineyard, creating a sturdy platform for its rich array of blueberry and brambly cherry fruit. There's a whiff of chicken stock also, and it's still tight with youthful tension. Give it plenty of aeration or an extra year or two in bottle before popping the cork.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Pinot Noir Rocheux is pale to medium ruby-purple with black cherries, roasted blueberries and bramble berry preserves plus notions of bitter root and tree bark with touches of wood smoke and cola. Light to medium-bodied, it's packed with earthy fruit in the mouth framed by grainy tannins and just enough freshness, finishing long.
Home of some of the planet’s most amazingly elegant and expressive Pinot noir, the Willamette Valley is a pastoral, mixed landscape of green, bucolic rolling hills, dramatic forestlands and small, independent, friendly wine growers. As a leader in environmental stewardship, the valley has some of the nation’s most protective land use policies, with two-thirds of its vineyards farmed sustainably and over half, organically. While the valley claims a cool, continental climate, and is heavily influenced by the cold, moist winds of the Pacific Ocean, its warm and dry summers allow for the steady, even ripening of Pinot noir.
The potential of Willamette Valley Pinot noir continues to attract the investment of serious growers and winemakers both locally and from abroad, as naturally the finished wines bring accolades from professionals and enthusiasts. With a range of styles from delicate dried cherry, raspberry and hibiscus to stronger notes of truffle, mocha, plum and spice, a fine Willamette Valley Pinot noir is a perfect expression of both character and grace.