Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Bottled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, the 2019 Pinot Noir Woodstock is perfumed with a hint of purple flowers, violet, black raspberry, and cinnamon. The palate is fresh and crunchy with savory pine, red cherry, and turned earth. It is structured and refreshing at the same time it feels luxurious, with dark fruit and layered complexity.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple, the 2019 Sequitor Pinot Noir has alluring scents of dark red cherries, wild blackberries, aniseed and tobacco leaves, with wafts of sweet balsamic and dried violets. The palate is silky and fresh, with deep, earth-laced fruits hinting at more to come with additional bottle time. It's juicy and inviting now but deserves another 2-3 years in bottle.
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Vinous
Saturated magenta. Powerful red and blue fruit, floral and exotic spice scents show excellent clarity and mineral lift. Sappy, alluringly sweet and penetrating on the palate, offering juicy boysenberry, Chambord, candied violet and star anise flavors that deftly blend depth and vivacity. Shows bright clarity and repeating florality on the strikingly persistent finish, which is framed by smooth, polished tannins.
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Wine Spectator
This full-bodied red is buoyed by a deep, tense core of tannins and acidity, framed by blueberry and raspberry flavors that show dusky spice and forest floor accents, building density toward medium-grained tannins. Drink now through 2030.
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James Suckling
Ripe strawberry with toasted oak and coffee, but not overdone. Medium-bodied with a fluid center palate and a light finish. Delicate on the palate.
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Wine Enthusiast
You need to lean into the glass to get the aromas initially, but it's well worth the effort. Notes of black-tea leaves, dried flower, herb and spice lead to medium-bodied, juicy, cinnamony flavors, with orange-rind notes threaded throughout. Give it additional time in bottle or decant to see it at its best.
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.”
Ribbon Ridge is a regular span of uplifted, marine, sedimentary soils (called Willakenzie), whose highest ridge elevations twist like a ribbon. An early settler from Missouri named Colby Carter noticed this unique topography and gave the region its name in 1865—though it wasn’t declared its own AVA until 140 years later, in 2005. The AVA is enclosed by mountains on all sides between Yamhill-Carlton and the Chehalem Mountains, and is actually part of the larger Chehalem Mountains AVA. Its soils have a finer texture than its neighbors with parent materials composed of sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone. Given its presence of natural aquifers in this five square mile area, most vineyards are actually easily dry farmed!