Winemaker Notes
Pairs well with lightly seasoned red meats, chicken, turkey, lamb and root vegetables.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Detailed and refined with cherry and pomegranate flavors that are laced with loamy mineral, black tea and dark spices that build tension toward fine-grained tannins. Drink now through 2029.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Résonance purchased this site close to Domaine Drouhin and Domaine Serene in 2014. After clearing the property of blackberry vines, they discovered a natural amphitheater on classic Jory soils (the Résonance vineyard, purchased in 2013, is planted on basalt). Vines were planted in 1996 and more Pinot Noir and Chardonnay have just been planted. Pale to medium ruby, the 2017 Pinot Noir Découverte Vineyard opens with inviting scents of raspberry jam, rhubarb and pomegranate with notes of warm earth and autumn leaves and a floral undercurrent. The palate is light to medium-bodied with youthfully shy fruits (this was bottled three to four months before I tasted it), with a soft frame and very juicy acidity, finishing restrained.
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Wine Enthusiast
The potential is here for the wine to develop further complexity, though currently it's still a bit jangly. Raspberries and blueberries share the flavor podium with peppery herbs and truffley fungus. The earthy, herbal flavors carry well into the finish, and further bottle age may help to soften some rough edges. Drink this wine after 2021.
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.