Winemaker Notes
A millefeuille of rock lightened with silt and clay, plus a sprinkling of stones and pebbles. The small feeder roots of the vines work themselves completely into the horizontal layers of this very unusual for Oregon rock pastry. These basalt rocks are all about the fractures providing space for tiny amounts of clay (a unique microbiome) and feathery roots, which provoke great tension holding together its mineral and fruit driven sides. Like a suspension bridge anchored by opposing notions of flesh and bone with high toned red fruit connected to mid-tone blue and black flavors creating a liquid harmonic wave. Plush richness with ripe raspberry and pomegranate flavors accented by plum, tea, mineral and spice notes.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Opens with a burst of savory forest floor aromas, leading to a rich and structured core of blueberry and cherry flavors, steeped in river stone and sandalwood accents that gather tension toward refined tannins. Drink now through 2029.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Pinot Noir Yamhill Close has a pale to medium ruby color and offers aromas of tar, turned earth, burnt orange, baked red berries and smoked cranberries with nuances of amaro, tree bark and a lacy veil of new oak spice. Medium-bodied, the palate is silky and offers intense, layered flavors with a firm but ripe frame and great freshness on the long, bitters-laced finish.
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Wine & Spirits
This comes from a tiny sliver of a vineyard block composed of what the Rose & Arrow team terms “alterite” soils: volcanic strata that haven’t yet decomposed into soil. It’s a succulent red with a warm savor, aromas of cured meats overlaying the dark, plummy fruit. It feels broad and saturating, with a mildly gripping texture; for a guanciale pasta.
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.