Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Sourced from a delineated section of this sloped, expansive vineyard, this Pinot has a fair amount of peppery herb, along with brambly berry flavor. It's tart, spicy and sharp, but beautifully balanced. Still quite young and tight, this one needs plenty of breathing time, or cellar it for a few more years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Representing a new but essentially self-explanatory site-designate totally 419 cases, the 2011 Pinot Noir Shea West Hill was treated to 60% new barrels, but their resinous contribution has been very well digested into a seamlessly, finely but tightly tannic, fresh cherry- and pomegranate-dominated whole. Hints of ginger add to the sense of finishing invigoration in energetic and long-lined if relatively firm Pinot. With time this should loosen up a bit and let itself and us in on a bit more fun. I suspect it will perform admirably through at least 2022.
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Wine Spectator
This fresh and silky red offers finely tuned tannins balancing the supple currant and pomegranate flavors on a light, enticing frame. Lingers pleasantly.
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.