Winemaker Notes
Shea Vineyard drapes over 140 acres of rolling hills in the Willamette Valley's Yamhill-Carlton AVA. Dick Shea first planted the Back Block in 1989 and then replanted it in the mid-90s to eliminate the problem of phylloxera, a microscopic insect that feeds on grapevine roots. This fruit is some of the most coveted in the state. Cody sources from the highest elevation Shea block.
Blend: 100% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
From one of the highest elevations in this vineyard, the 2022 Pinot Noir Shea Vineyard is a transparent red hue and is aromatic of ripe cherries, spices, mossy earth, and a lightly gamey but clean earth note. It is an elegant and lifted expression of the Shea Vineyard, with bright acidity, fine tannins, and a more linear feel, and as it opens, it starts to show its broader shoulders and its deeper notes come through. Drink 2025-2040.
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James Suckling
Very aromatic with notes of cherries, raspberries, dried blood oranges and hints of cocoa and licorice. Juicy and bright with a medium body, offering fine, silky tannins and delicious fruit with notes of crushed stones. Refreshing and long.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Pinot Noir Shea Vineyard was fermented with around 25% whole clusters and matured in about 30% new oak. It has a very pale ruby color and alluring scents of cranberry, rhubarb, forest floor and Angostura bitters. The light-bodied palate is elegantly styled, offering concentrated yet detailed flavors and compelling spicy accents. It’s structured by silky tannins and juicy acidity and has a long, nuanced finish.
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Wine Spectator
Handsomely structured and refined, offering multilayered flavors of black cherry and blueberry. Shows black tea and savory spice accents while building tension toward medium-grained tannins.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2022 Purple Hands Shea Vineyard Pinot Noir is a complete wine that lasts long on the palate. TASTING NOTES: This wine excels with aromas and flavors of tangy red and black fruits. Pair it with a roast leg of lamb. (Tasted: November 24, 2023, 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.”
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.