Winemaker Notes
This wine definitely reflects the entire eco- system place-ness that the Jory soil in the Dundee Hills famously brings to wines. The 2022 vintage’s surprising brightness and high-toned nature meshes nicely with this wine’s inherent nature to be lushly fruited, silky in texture and delicious from the get go. There is a lot of history here, both of vineyards and geology.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2022 Pinot Noir Volcanic is a bright amalgamation of all the Dundee hills sites and is approachable and pure with a delicate, rosy perfume of juicy, ripe mixed berry fruit with refreshing mineral undertones. It’s elegant and charming, with ultra-fine tannins, even freshness, and a clean, savory finish. Drink it over the next 5-7 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Pinot Noir Volcanic comes from five vineyards on Jory soils in the Dundee Hills: Anderson Family (planted in 1992), Weber (planted in 1983), Durant (planted in 1973 and 2000) and Arcus and Balcombe (both planted in 1990). It was fermented with various proportions of whole clusters and matured only in used oak. It bursts from the glass with pure scents of raspberry, strawberry, orange peel, tobacco and aniseed. The light-bodied palate is silky and mouthwatering with understated, citrus-laced flavors and a delicate, floral finish.
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Vinous
The 2022 Pinot Noir Volcanic is delicate in the glass, with a finessed blend of wild strawberries, lavender and crushed stone. This is juicy and round with crisp wild berry fruits energized by a zesty sour citrus twang. It finishes spicy and long, leaving a tart raspberry tinge and crunchy mineral tones to linger.
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.