Patricia Green Volcanic Cuvee Pinot Noir 2018
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This wine is sourced from 20 barrels 18 of which were neutral so what comes forth is pure Dundee Hills goodness. Red fruits and spices combine on an incredible textural lattice making this wine incredibly easy to get your head and palate around. Come for the geology, stay for the incredible taste.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a blend designed to showcase the volcanic Jory soils of the Dundee Hills, an interesting companion to the winery’s Marine Sedimentary bottling. In this vintage the Volcanic is the more fruit-driven and broadly open of the two, with tart cherry fruit highlighted with citrusy acidity. The herbal side of the grape is also on full display, though the overall balance keeps everything in proportion.
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Wine Spectator
Brooding and densely layered, with simmering cherry, blueberry and stony mineral accents that build tension along the way to firm tannins. Hands off for now. Best from 2021 through 2028.
Other Vintages
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In the winery the philosophy of attention to the smallest details is further extended all the way from the fermenting must to the final bottling process. All of our wines at all of their points of evolution are handled and manipulated as little as possible while being smelled and tasted on a regular basis. Our selection of barrels has been limited to one cooper noted for producing some of the best made Pinot Noir barrels in the world. As we produce as many as 15-16 different bottlings of Pinot Noir under our own label each vintage the decisions we make about the quality of every single barrel is quite rigorous ensuring that each bottling represents the best possible wine from each vineyard with which we work.
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.