Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
This 100% stainless steel-fermented Pinot Noir is as fresh and crisp as snow melt flooding a mountain stream. Prickly boysenberry and smoked salmon aromas blend into flavors like raspberry lemonade laced with black tea. Citrusy acidity meets silky tannins on Pike Road
-
Wine & Spirits
This is a bit blowsy at first with a weighty red-cherry scent adorned by black pepper. After a day the wine’s flavors, and especially its texture, become tart, delineated and pure; well-priced for smoked salmon.
We named this wine project Pike Road after the winding road that runs adjacent to our vineyards at the foothills of Oregon's Coast Range Mountains.
Pike Road is made from estate grown grapes and a smaller amount of fruit we purchase. We are committed to preserving small family farms here in the Willamette Valley through our relationships with partner growers, some of whom we have worked with for decades. This is the best place in the New World to grow Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, and we are so pleased to be here at Pike Road.
Home of some of the planet’s most amazingly elegant and expressive Pinot noir, the Willamette Valley is a pastoral, mixed landscape of green, bucolic rolling hills, dramatic forestlands and small, independent, friendly wine growers. As a leader in environmental stewardship, the valley has some of the nation’s most protective land use policies, with two-thirds of its vineyards farmed sustainably and over half, organically. While the valley claims a cool, continental climate, and is heavily influenced by the cold, moist winds of the Pacific Ocean, its warm and dry summers allow for the steady, even ripening of Pinot noir.
The potential of Willamette Valley Pinot noir continues to attract the investment of serious growers and winemakers both locally and from abroad, as naturally the finished wines bring accolades from professionals and enthusiasts. With a range of styles from delicate dried cherry, raspberry and hibiscus to stronger notes of truffle, mocha, plum and spice, a fine Willamette Valley Pinot noir is a perfect expression of both character and grace.