Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This balanced wine has one of my favorite aromas of all time—the caramel and brioche-like cookie scents of a Stroopwafel cookie. These divine scents are joined by red cherries and chalkboard dust. Raspberry, dark chocolate and espresso flavors are supported by velvety tannins and slightly elevated acidity
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Decanter
A wine from the iconic Shea Vineyard, long a stalwart of excellence sourced by many of the Valley's top talents. Aromatically, this wine opens with faint hints of Montmorency cherries, tayberries, and topsoil. The palate is very forward. Fleshy and fruit-driven, it is wound a bit tight. It still offers compelling blue and black fruits, savoury rosemary and plenty of spice with a touch of fresh mint to finish.
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.
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.