Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Glazed cherries, strawberry compote, spice box and vanilla come through on the nose. Medium- to full-bodied with lots of spices and blue fruit, dense tannins and a chewy finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby-purple colored, the 2015 Pinot Noir Meyer Vineyard has aromas of raspberry preserves, spice box and incense with a hint of potpourri. Full-bodied, rich and generously fruited in the mouth, it has plush, velvety tannins and excellent persistence.
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant and pretty, with expressive raspberry and rose petal aromas and precise cherry and spiced tea flavors that finish with crisp tannins.
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.