Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Darker fruits of blackberry essence, underbrush, lots of dark chocolate and mocha-scented oak show on the nose. The palate is dense and chewy but supported by fresh acidity and grainy tannins up to the long, fruit-forward finish. The alcohol is not low but it is well integrated and will only improve. Drink in 2020.
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Wine Enthusiast
Homer is the winery's top barrel selection reserve, aged in 71% new French oak. Sturdy, tight and compact, it's packed with black fruit and barrel flavors. Its polished tannins are threaded with cinnamon spice, pepper and coffee ground notes. Drink 2020–2028.
Cellar Selection -
Wine Spectator
Plush and generous, with expressive violet and fresh raspberry aromas and rich, polished black cherry and toasty spice flavors that glide along the finish. Drink now through 2023. 342 cases made.
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.