Winemaker Notes
An intense color with nice red tinges. The nose is complex, with notes of black cherry, blonde tobacco, black truffle, violet flowers, and noble essences of wood. The palate reveals a perfect harmony between the tannic structure and the aromatic complexity, while the minerality gives a vibrant finale, suggesting a long life.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Lovely aromas of blackberries, along with hints of pepper and smoke, lead into a tasty wine with even more berries and plums. Aged 17 months in 30% new oak, it's got a streak of roasted coffee, and further highlights of Dr Pepper, buoyed with ample acidity.
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Wine Spectator
Offers a sinewy beam of minerally acidity and lively tannins, framed by black cherry and forest floor accents that build tension toward a tight ending. Hands off for now. Best from 2022 through 2028.
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.