Winemaker Notes
This Freedom Hill Pinot Noir has the deep pigmentation, floral aromatics, intense mid-palate sweetness and structured finishing tannins that provide the wine with enough fortitude to hold the fruit sweetness well in check. This balances at a very high level. For all the dry extract-laden fruit here there is a wealth of acidity and tannin that are actually the dominant forces in the wine and ensure that this is a focused, smart and incredibly delicious Pinot Noir. This has so much to it that it will drink well almost immediately but has an upside that is clearly well more than a decade away.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Deeply structured, revealing an appealing savory, earthy edge, offering expressive raspberry and dark plum flavors, accented by rose petal, tarragon and black tea hints. Drink now through 2025.
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.