Winemaker Notes
Purple Hands Haakon/Lenai Vineyard Pinot Noir offers notes bourbon, coffee, clove, cardamon, barnyard, cherry liquor, salted caramel, red licorice, raspberry tart, anise, and white peach.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
A hazy and youthful ruby, the 2021 Pinot Noir Haakon Lenai Vineyard is forward with mineral accents in its aromas of crushed stones, spice box, and cherry liqueur as well as a hint of rustic notes that are very well-balanced. Medium to full-bodied, it takes on more intensity and drive on the palate, with ripe tannins and a refreshing spine of acidity that propels the wine forward through the mouthwatering finish. This is another wine that will offer a ton of pleasure now or over the next 10-12 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir Haakon Lenai Vineyard has compelling aromatic complexity, offering singular scents of pomegranate, iron, licorice, desiccated roses, pipe tobacco and charcuterie. The medium-bodied palate is bursting with concentrated, kaleidoscopic fruit, spice and floral flavors, and its 45% new French oak is well integrated. It’s structured by finely chalky tannins and fireworks of fresh acidity and has a very long, opulent finish. Rating: 95+
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James Suckling
This has aromas of wild raspberries, lemons, cranberries, cardamom and tulips. Some sweet paprika. Creamy and elegant with silky tannins, a medium body and gently spicy finish. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
First it's an earthy aroma similar to potatoes just plucked from the ground. Then the wave of blackberries hits, followed by aromas of chamomile and roasted meat. It's all très sauvage. The wine's blackberry flavors are equally intense as they mix with black tea and a saline note. Firm tannins, with modest acidity.
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Wine Spectator
Fresh yet brooding, with deep raspberry, espresso and savory anise flavors that take on tension and intensity toward medium-grained tannins. Drink now through 2031
Purple Hands Vineyards celebrates site-specific pinot noir and chardonnay that unearth the Willamette Valley’s long evolutionary history. Using traditional winemaking techniques, they strive to produce wines that convey an honest expression of each of their vineyards—its grapevines and cultivation, soil and stone, sunshine and rain. All of their wines undergo native fermentation and remain unfined and unfiltered at bottling to preserve their natural, wild character. Achieving elegance in this pursuit is the passion and art of their craft.
Over the past 40 years, Cody’s family has created a legacy of quality in the Oregon wine industry. Their winemaking styles and techniques helped Oregon’s Willamette Valley become the premium Pinot noir producing region in the world. At Purple Hands, Cody continues to build on the standard of excellence initiated by the previous generation.
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.