Winemaker Notes
The 2018 Meyer is composed of fruit picked at the very beginning of harvest to produce fresh, aromatic wine that combines red cherry and raspberry with rose petal, potpourri, and graham cracker. The palate is fresh and juicy, with savory spice carried by loads of red fruit to a long, delicately balanced finish.
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
A tight and solid pinot with strawberry, cedar and hints of orange peel. Medium to full body, fine tannins and a long, solid finish. Nice acidity in the center. This is very structured and well done. Give it time.
-
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2018 Pinot Noir Meyer Vineyard is lifted with cranberry, Christmas spice, and orange zest. The fruit on the palate is open, with fine tannins, fresh strawberry, and mossy earth.
-
Wine Spectator
Polished and sleekly built, with pretty violet and raspberry flavors accented by baking spice and orange peel. Drink now.
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.