Winemaker Notes
The palate is not just big, but BIG! Got to love the huge tannin grip from skins, seeds, and stalks (stems) in this wine. Black cherry fruit is almost over- shadowed by a spice rack of Mediterranean Italian spice mix, cardamon, forest floor, browned stems, and wet slate minerality. This is a robust wine from start to long, long finish.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
Winemaker Rollin Soles hails from Australia, where grape stems are referred to as "stalks"; an illustration of him being pursued, or stalked, by the thunderbird that represents the winery appears on the label of this wine. To produce it, Soles destems whole berries into small fermenters for a ten-day soak while aging the removed stems separately for seven days under inert gas; the latter are then hand-punched into the fermenters and punched down twice a day before the gently pressed juice is transferred to French oak and matured for nine months. The resulting wine is an intensely bright, floral beauty. Cherry bark, dried roses, violets, and a zing of pink peppercorns flourish on the nose and palate. Wild strawberry, cinnamon, and tilled soil are enveloped in a distinct, stemmy mouthfeel.
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Vinous
The 2021 Pinot Noir The Stalker is darkly floral and exotic in the glass as a whiff of incense and cedar shavings combines with spiced orange peel and balsamic cherries. It sweeps across the palate with textures of pure silk, showing a more graceful style and a pleasantly bitter tinge of cedar that complicates its tart red berry fruit. Grippy and long on the finish.
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James Suckling
Fragrant nose of rose petals, raspberries, pomegranates and rhubarb. Very fresh, with a medium body and chalky tannins. Nicely mineral at the end.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Taking on more layers, the 2021 Pinot Noir The Stalker is a youthful saturated ruby and opens to aromas of sandalwood, preserved cherry, and anise. Medium to full-bodied, with ripe tannins and mouth-filling fruit, it‘s a generous wine, with mineral accents and a great finish.
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Wine Spectator
Lean in style and rather briary, with sleek raspberry, underbrush and savory mushroom flavors that build tension toward medium-grained tannins. Drink now through 2031. 1,370 cases made.
Home of some of the planet’s most amazingly elegant and expressive Pinot noir, the Willamette Valley is a pastoral, mixed landscape of green, bucolic rolling hills, dramatic forestlands and small, independent, friendly wine growers. As a leader in environmental stewardship, the valley has some of the nation’s most protective land use policies, with two-thirds of its vineyards farmed sustainably and over half, organically. While the valley claims a cool, continental climate, and is heavily influenced by the cold, moist winds of the Pacific Ocean, its warm and dry summers allow for the steady, even ripening of Pinot noir.
The potential of Willamette Valley Pinot noir continues to attract the investment of serious growers and winemakers both locally and from abroad, as naturally the finished wines bring accolades from professionals and enthusiasts. With a range of styles from delicate dried cherry, raspberry and hibiscus to stronger notes of truffle, mocha, plum and spice, a fine Willamette Valley Pinot noir is a perfect expression of both character and grace.