Winemaker Notes
Characteristic of wines from the McMinnville AVA, Portlandia Momtazi is highly pigmented in color with strong backbones of tannin and acidity along with a massive palate of black fruit, spice and earthy flavors. Produced entirely from clone 114, one of the highest quality clones known for long-aging wines with rich color, solid structure and complex tannins, Momtazi Pinot Noir is no wallflower. It’s downright big, chewy and awesome.
100% sourced from Oregon’s Momtazi Vineyard in the McMinnville AVA, Portlandia Momtazi Pinot Noir is our signature single-vineyard wine.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
The fruit from this biodynamic vineyard has a grippy, earthy character that underscores the complexity in this wine. It's tannic and muscular, with black cherry fruit and subtle tanned leather, licorice, black pepper, coffee grounds and dark chocolate highlights that persist through its long, captivating finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple in color, the 2015 Pinot Noir Momtazi Vineyard, aged in 50% new French oak using 20% whole cluster fermentation, gives aromas of red cherry preserves, baked raspberries, cranberry sauce and pomegranate liqueur with earthy accents and a touch of dried coconut. It’s medium to full-bodied with good concentration of warm juicy red and black fruits, firm, grainy tannins and juicy acidity carrying the long finish.
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.”
Stretching southwest from the city of McMinnville, the AVA with the same name covers about 40,000 acres across 20 miles until it meets the Van Duzer Corridor. This corridor is the only break in the Coast Range whose gap allows the cool Pacific Ocean air to flow eastward into the Willamette Valley.
The Pacific's moderating winds hit McMinnville’s south and southeast facing slopes where cool-climate varieties—namely Pinot noir and Pinot blanc thrive on ridges at between 200 to 1,000 feet in elevation.
Soils here are primarily uplifted marine sedimentary loam and silt, with alluvial formations; McMinnville receives less rainfall than its neighbors to the east because it is situated in the rain shadow of the Coast Range.