Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Pouring a dark ruby/magenta color, the 2023 Pinot Noir Dundee Hills is lush with ripe aromas of blackberries, candied violets, vanilla, and toasted cedar. Medium to full-bodied, it retains a concentrated, ripe feel, with a generous fruity nature and a charming finish. A hedonistic style that stays fresh, it’s quite appealing to enjoy over the coming 6-7 years.
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.”
Home of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.