Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Homer is the reserve cuvée, a barrel-selection seemingly chosen for a bit of extra concentration. It retains its elegance, with scents of lavender, incense and Asian spices leading into bright, intense flavors of cherry and plum. The wine gathers itself in the midpalate, showing that fruit density, and finishes with a lick of chocolate. Drink 2018–2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Pinot Noir Homer includes both pre- and post-storm pickings. It has an elegant bouquet with dark berry fruit, bergamot and forest floor scents - complex and quite absorbing. The palate is medium-bodied with a silky smooth entry, good density in the mouth, very harmonious, although I actually find a little more tension in the Block 7 and Block 23 this year. The finish has a touch of truffle coming through with good weight and it should drink well for the next 10-12 years.
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Wine Spectator
Broad, expressive and light-footed, with sassafras and pepper notes weaving through the currant flavors, lingering against crinkly tannins. Has presence and length. Best from 2017 through 2023.
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.