Winemaker Notes
Due to its structure Mimi’s Mind starts off more tannic than the other cuvées in its youth, with stunning lift and slowly unveiling layers of flavor. It has a a depth of flavor that can evolve with time, and in its youth is expressed as power. As it ages, it reveals a complex of herbs, such as fresh thyme, oregano, floral notes of rose petal and violet, rich mulberry, red cherry, raspberry fruit, and overtones of aromatic spices, cinnamon, vanilla and anise. The finish is quite long and becomes longer with age. It has been celebrated from its debut vintage to now.
Its structure in youth makes it a prime candidate for pan-roasted duck breast, Lamb Provençale, Filet Mignon and hard cow’s milk cheeses like 18 month aged Gouda, Comté, Cantal, Parmesan, Abondance, Beaufort or other Alpine cheeses except Apenzell type. As it ages and reveals the deep fruit, spice and mineral qualities underlying a brighter fruit profile, it becomes more suited to roast chicken with morel mushrooms, braised rabbit with thyme, sous vide pork loin with thyme (6 hours at 133 degrees Fahrenheit is what Larry recommends).
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Very floral with dried lavender and roses on the nose, as well as ripe strawberries. Full-bodied with layers of fine tannins and a very, very long finish. This is a young pinot with depth and verve.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Pinot Noir Mimi's Mind has pure scents of bitter orange, raspberries, cracked pepper and dried lavender with wafts of fragrant earth and dark tea leaves. The medium-bodied palate is powerful and expressive with layered, earthy fruit, a pleasing astringency to the texture and a long, floral finish.
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Wine & Spirits
From Mimi Casteel’s Hope Well Vineyard, this is both impressively structured and sensual. The wine’s aromas teem with garrigue herbs, chaparral, pine tips, underbrush, but the fruit within feels at once light in tone and concentrated in flavor, with a mineral firmness to the texture that hints at a long life.
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Wine Enthusiast
Mimi Casteel's Hopewell vineyard (just down the road from Lingua Franca) is farmed to the highest standards of regenerative agriculture. It was recently sold, so any future Lingua Franca bottlings of this wine are uncertain. The texture, balance, depth and detail here are notable, and a hint of barrel toast (22% of the barrels were new) nicely accents the finish. Light flavors of wild raspberries, toasted hazelnuts and fresh thyme are in the mix with quite-astringent 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.”
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.