Winemaker Notes
A mix of fresh black plum and cranberry, ripe boysenberry with nutmeg and a hint of toasty oak and floral notes linger on the palate. Solid, yet smooth tannins hit right at the beginning of this wine followed by bright, well-integrated acid.
Vegan
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Pinot Noir Yamhill-Carlton Pinot Noir is a beautiful wine. Coming from two sites and fermented with 20% stems and aged 15 months in 30% new oak, it offers a deeper ruby color as well as a classic bouquet of red currants, black cherries, scorched earth, spice, and forest floor. Elegant, medium-bodied, and layered, it's a gem.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple in color, the 2016 Pinot Noir Yamhill-Carlton has a deep, broody, black-fruited nose with ripe blackcurrants and black cherries with hints of crushed blueberries, licorice and grated cinnamon. The medium-bodied palate is flavored of blackberry and boysenberry preserves with nuances of pie spice and touches of black soil with a lovely frame of firm, structuring tannins and plenty of freshness, finishing long.
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant and zesty, with floral black raspberry, orange zest and clove flavors that saunter on a long, snappy finish. Drink now through 2023.
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Wine Enthusiast
Supple and smooth, this is loaded with sweet purple berry fruit and a lush streak of mocha. The blueberry pie flavors come with enough of a tannic spine to give the wine good focus through the finish. Drink now to 2025.
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.