Winemaker Notes
The Estate Pinot Noir is the best representation of Shea Vineyard as a whole in a given vintage. The 2021 is lush and elegant with dark red fruit aromatics and baking spice notes. Perfectly balanced acidity and silky tannins lead to a lingering finish. This wine is a great representation of the growing season, which was long and warm without any of the weather events Shea sometimes worry about when farming grapes; a dream from start to finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Cranberries, red currants, sour cherries and orange zest on the nose, with hints of licorice. Bright and fruit forward, with excellent tension too, and tight, fine-grained tannins. It’s medium-bodied, sleek and fresh.
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Wine Spectator
Opens with a burst of fresh raspberry and tart blueberry flavors, then slowly builds tension along with minerality and forest floor accents as this moves toward fine-grained tannins. Drink now through 2030.
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.