Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Also entirely from the Pommard clone, the 2021 Pinot Noir Latchkey Vineyard saw 40% new French oak, with the remainder raised in neutral barrels. Medium ruby-colored with a light haze, it’s layered with a spicy, floral, pretty perfume that’s generous with aromas of fresh violets, mixed berries, and mossy earth. Medium-bodied, it brings forward sweet tannins, even-keeled acidity, and a long finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir Latchkey Vineyard has very pretty scents of cranberry and raspberry preserves, cola, lavender, Earl Grey tea leaves and aniseed. The light-bodied palate has notably concentrated berry flavors, a pleasing touch of astringency, fireworks of fresh acidity and a long, perfumed finish.
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James Suckling
This has aromas of dried cranberries, blueberries, tea leaves, slate, sweet spices and lemon rind. Sleek, well-integrated tannins, with tight, savory layers. Cool and mineral at the end. Delicious already, but better from 2023.
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Wine Spectator
Fresh and vibrant, with elegantly layered raspberry, violet and spiced cinnamon flavors that glide agilely toward polished tannins.
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Wine Enthusiast
The wine’s blackberry tea aroma blends seamlessly with perfumed notes of violets, bergamot and cedar. Tart blackcap raspberry and espresso flavors are backed by just enough acidity and velvety tannins. The wine’s texture is smooth and soft, with a spicy note on the finish similar to Old Bay seasoning.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2021 Purple Hands Winery Latchkey Vineyard Pinot Noir is lovely, upfront, and layered. TASTING NOTES: This wine offers aromas and flavors of blueberries, red berries, and dried spices. Enjoy it with grilled chicken thighs. (Tasted: December 7, 2022, San Francisco, CA)
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.