Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale to medium ruby-purple, the 2014 Pinot Noir Jacob Hart Vineyard gives notes of ripe cherries and raspberries with suggestions of underbrush, fragrant earth, lavender and cinnamon. Medium-bodied, it has intense red and black fruit flavors in the mouth intermingled with earth and backing spice notions and framed by very ripe, fine-grained tannins. It finishes with satisfying depth and persistence.
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Wine Enthusiast
This outstanding vineyard, matching mature vines to biodynamic farming, really shines in 2014. A toasty nose sends up coconut and vanilla notes, leading into a full-bodied full-flavored wine with the structure to age another decade or more. It's the perfect balancing act between immediate accessibility and long-term cellaring potential. Drink through 2030.
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James Suckling
Notes of tar, bay leaves and cherries on the nose. The palate is bright with plenty of red-berry flavors, velvety tannins and tangible freshness. Slightly earthy. Drink now.
REX HILL has been making elegant Pinot Noirs for over 30 years in the Willamette Valley at the gateway to Oregon's wine country. It is one of the original LIVE certified wineries and owned vineyards that are farmed following Biodynamic principles. REX HILL honors exceptional single vineyards and continues a legacy of singular Pinot Noirs that reflect their origin. That sense of place is paramount to the way we farm our land and make our wines. Named a 2017 Wine Advocate Extraordinary Winery in the Americas, REX HILL consistently offers authentic wines that are balanced, complex, rich and delicious.
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.”
The Chehalem Mountains is a northwest-southeast span of several distinct mountains, ridges and peaks in the northern part of the Willamette Valley. Of all of Willamette Valley's smaller AVAs, it is closest to the city of Portland. Its highest summit, Bald Peak at an elevation of 1,633 feet, serves to generate cooler air for the rest of the AVA and its hillside vineyards. The region covers 70,000 acres but only 1,600 acres are planted to vines; soils of the Chehalem Mountains are a mix of basalt, ocean sediment and loess.