Winemaker Notes
The charming, expressive 2016 Nysa begins on the nose with ripe strawberry and candied cherry and displays loamy characteristics with time in the glass. The palate is quintessential for Nysa and the greater Dundee Hills: silky weight undergirded by fine tannin and acid, with concentrated red fruits on the midpalate. The finish displays sassafras and mushroom notes that should develop further in bottle over the next 15 years.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From own-rooted vines planted in 1990, the 2016 Pinot Noir Nysa Vineyard is pale to medium ruby-purple with an open nose of warm red and black cherries and cranberries with notes of dried red rose petals, peppercorn, sliced meats, potpourri and warm earth. Light to medium-bodied, it gives good concentration of cherries and berries flavors in the mouth with meaty/earthy touches and lots of pretty floral perfume, with a good frame of firm, grainy tannins and juicy acidity, finishing long.
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Wine Enthusiast
A glass of this young wine is like a hike up a mountain trail, starting with brambly, wild berries, and leading through underbrush and Mediterranean herbs. It thins out gracefully into suggestions of upland grasses, underscored with a layer of basalt.
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.