Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2007 Pinot Noir East Hill is more deeply colored, has greater density and more structure than the Estate cuvee. Fragrant aromas of balsam wood, violets, mineral, and assorted black fruits lead to a medium to full-bodied wine with outstanding depth and concentration. It will benefit from 3-4 years of cellaring (unusually long for this vintage) and drink well from 2012 to 2022.
Dick Shea has 22 clients for the fruit he grows at his large Yamhill-Carlton estate, most of whom vineyard designate the resulting wine. More often than not, it is the best wine in their respective portfolios.
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.