Winemaker Notes
The 2016 vintage had a warm spring with record-breaking heat units in April and May. This transitioned into the their earliest harvest date on record. Lower elevation Dundee Hills started to pick the end of the second week of August, and their last fruit was in the door September 16th. The summer wasn't overly warm, though just warm enough to keep the vines moving forward, developing into a beautiful growing season and harvest. You will see the wines balanced and rich in a traditional Purple Hands Style. notes of black cherry, raspberry, milk chocolate, rich cherry, coffee, chocolate toffee, dense caramel, high tones of ripe watermelon, cotton candy and clove.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Spectator
Dark and well-built, with savory black cherry, violet and spicy clove accents that take on complexity and a hint of mineral toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2024.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby in color, the 2016 Pinot Noir Stoller Vineyard opens with crisp, fresh red and black berries and cherries scents over a core of pulverized rock with pretty potpourri and baking spice notes. The palate is light to medium-bodied, packed with red and black cherries and currants flavors with soft tannins and plenty of freshness, finishing long with the red fruit and spice coming through.
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.