Winemaker Notes
Aromas of strawberry jam and hibiscus tea. The palate delights with the warm richness of a sweet berry reduction, combined with more savory notes of vanilla, tobacco and earth. Acidity and tannins are beautifully integrated for a soft and silky finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is a polished and complex young pinot that offers deeply spicy and ripe, darker cherries with attractive freshness. The palate delivers a suave, upbeat and very long, spice-laced array of rich, black-cherry and licorice flavor and carries deep into the fresh, even finish. Drink or hold.
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Wine Spectator
Elegant yet dynamic, with violet, raspberry and spiced cinnamon flavors that build richness and structure toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2026.
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.