Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2023 Pinot Noir Freedom Hill Vineyard is a beautiful wine and the starting point for the range from Freedom Hill. It checks a lot of boxes with minerality, fruit, and just outstanding complexity and tension. Notes of cranberry, cherry, bright spices, orange zest, and dried earth are complemented by a chalky texture, refined tannins, and bright, mouthwatering acidity, culminating in a long finish. It’s one of the many outstanding values in the wide range of Patricia Green Cellars.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
ermented with around 14% whole clusters and matured in used oak, the 2023 Pinot Noir Freedom Hill Vineyard has inviting aromas of red cherry, cranberry, tangerine peel, tea leaves and thyme. The medium-bodied palate is bursting with juicy red fruit. It’s framed by silky tannins and has a long, perfumed finish.
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.