Winemaker Notes
It can be enjoyed with sausages, roast chicken, pork loin and other lighter meats, and its freshness allows for pairing with oily fish, like black cod, grilled salmon and with tuna.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Avni is built around Larry Stone’s estate vineyard in the Eola Hills, and supplemented by similar sites. Even though it’s Stone’s entrylevel wine, it’s not simple; instead it reflects the shallow soils of the Eola–Amity Hills in all their mineral tension: The wine is bright and tightly packed, weaving rose-petal notes and whole-cluster spice with dark plum-skin flavors. It sustains a lovely vibrancy of flavor, grounded and direct.
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine opens with lovely scents of cranberry and raspberry. Those juicy, fresh flavors follow to a lightly spicy, medium-bodied palate with a gentle hint of cholocate. It was fermented with one-quarter whole clusters and aged in 20% new French.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby, the 2017 Pinot Noir Avni has a nose of warm cranberries, red currants and blackberries with accents of cinnamon, dried leaves, citrus peel and potpourri. The light to medium-bodied palate is bright and crunchy with a good interplay of ripe fruit, earth, amaro and spice character, finely framed and finishing long, fresh and bright.
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Wine Spectator
Brooding and youthful, with a compact core of lively acidity and tannins framed by nuanced raspberry, river stone and savory spice accents that persist on the finish. Best from 2020 through 2026.
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.