ROCO Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 2009 Front Bottle Shot
ROCO Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 2009 Front Bottle Shot ROCO Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 2009 Front Label ROCO Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 2009 Back Bottle Shot

Winemaker Notes

This Pinot is leap out the glass good. The wine has a beautiful rich nose of blackberry pie fresh from the oven with maybe an edge of blueberry. In the mouth there is a velvety richness with bright red fruit flavors and a nudge of black pepper and exotic spices. The sweet berry center has a tad of vanilla or honey that heightens that central sweet spot and escorts the wine through a valley of subtle complexities that add to the melding of berry, earth and graveliness as it dances across your palate.

Professional Ratings

  • 91
    The 2009 Pinot Noir Willamette Valley offers up notes of cedar, spice box, rose petal, cherry, and raspberry. Velvety-textured, sweetly-fruited, and well-balanced...
  • 91
    A yummy new release from Roco, this seductive, satin-smooth wine marries flavors of cherry and chocolate, with a subtle underpinning of mineral. The finish brings in butterscotch and barrel notes, all choreographed into perfect harmony. Editors' Choice
  • 90
    A graceful style, bright and lively, with a gentle core of red berry, tea and spice flavors, lingering easily against firm tannins. Best from 2013 through 2017.
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ROCO The Owners Winery Image

ROCO represents the finest in Oregon winemaking with storied bottles and humbling accolades. It’s a 30-year history of devotion to craft. In 1987, Rollin Soles purchased a breathtaking hillside property down a gravel road in the Chehalem Mountain Range. The property’s perfect combination of elevation, soil type, natural springs, and geological aspect were the seed of a dream that would eventually become ROCO Winery.

ROCO (Named for ROllin and COrby Soles) For nearly fifteen years, the Soles’ property remained a mostly wild landscape used for a variety of farming endeavors. Rollin was making wine at Argyle, his previous venture, and Corby was busy serving in a number of executive positions in the Oregon wine industry. But as the years wore on, the property’s southwestern exposure and diverse soils begged for the Soles to realize their dream: a vineyard of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay sloping toward the creek below, the Chehalem Valley beyond, and Oregon’s Coast Range in the distance.

In 2001, Rollin and Corby planted Wits’ End Vineyard and began bringing the idea of ROCO to fruition. Two years later, they produced their first vintage of Private Stash Pinot Noir—showcasing the very best of Rollin’s small-lot winemaking skills in a bottle that was eventually served in the White House. Building on their success, in 2009, the Soles built ROCO its own winery and added a tasting room in 2012. In 2013, Rollin expanded Wits’ End Vineyard and transitioned to full-time focus on ROCO to keep pace with its growing prestige and demand. Today, Wits’ End Vineyard remains the heart and soul of ROCO wines. ROCO Private Stash and Wits’ End Vineyard Pinot Noirs derive exclusively from these vines—and serve as Rollin and Corby’s testament to the beauty of place, their devotion to family and friends, and their commitment to Oregon winemaking at its finest.

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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.

EPC18521_2009 Item# 114077