Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This spent 20 months in 30% new French oak, and incorporates fruit from Ponzi's Aurora, Abetina and Madrona vineyards, among others. Aromatic, dense and toasty, it deftly blends aromas and flavors of toast, cigar box, blackberry, black cherry, coffee and graphite. Tannins are polished to a fine sheen, and frame a finish loaded with dark chocolate and espresso. Drink now through 2032.
Cellar Selection -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby-purple, the 2014 Pinot Noir Reserve presents complex black fruit and earth notes of black raspberries, plums, charcoal, dusty earth and moss-covered logs with hints of chocolate box, meat and Marmite toast. Medium to full-bodied, the palate delivers a wonderful concentration of gregarious red and black fruits with loads of earthy layers and a velvety texture, finishing long and harmonious.
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Tasting Panel
Blackberry, sweet black beans and sage seem to be born out of the earth on the nose of this unique red. It’s a distinguished palate that follows, juicy and elegant, flowering with dark chocolate, rooibos tea, mocha-dusted black raspberry and a toffee-cedar finish. The fruit is a blend of LIVE Certified Sustainable fruit from Ponzi’s oldest and most prized sites.
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Wine Spectator
Focused and well-built, with savory raspberry and floral tea aromas and layered plum, smoky cinnamon and clove flavors that finish with refined tannins. Drink now through 2024.
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.”
The Chehalem Mountains is a northwest-southeast span of several distinct mountains, ridges and peaks in the northern part of the Willamette Valley. Of all of Willamette Valley's smaller AVAs, it is closest to the city of Portland. Its highest summit, Bald Peak at an elevation of 1,633 feet, serves to generate cooler air for the rest of the AVA and its hillside vineyards. The region covers 70,000 acres but only 1,600 acres are planted to vines; soils of the Chehalem Mountains are a mix of basalt, ocean sediment and loess.