Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very unique and perfumed nose here with rhubarb fool, cranberry crumble, mint, cherry blossom, slate, jasmine, lilacs, rose petals and nutmeg. By the contrast, the palate is very linear and precise with lots of grainy, fine tannins, bright fruit and a fresh, uplifted finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Pinot Noir Shea Vineyard is pale to medium ruby-purple in color and youthfully shy on the nose, giving way to garrigue and pepper over a core of macerated black cherries, black licorice and bramble berry with floral perfume in the background. Light to medium-bodied, the palate sings with dark fruits, warm earth, wet leaves and floral perfume with notes of baking spice. It's held together with plush, grainy tannins and juicy acidity carrying the long, dense finish. This is young and tight but has the stuffing to blossom beautifully.
Rating: 93+
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.”
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.