Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
In this exceptional vintage, the all-estate bottling over-delivers big time at this price. Brambly blackberry/kirsch flavors fill the mouth with sappy juicy flavors. The tannins are a bit stiff, and at first the wine hits a tannic wall, but more bottle age, aeration and/or aggressive decanting will open it up. The lengthy cinnamon-soaked finish hints at a stellar cellar life ahead.
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James Suckling
A red with plenty of cinnamon, plums and dried cherries. The palate is medium-bodied, delicate and polished with pretty fruit flavors. A little lean. Drink now.
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Wine Spectator
Firm in texture, with layers of savory tannins wrapping around a gentle core of dark berry and white pepper flavors. Finishes with elegance. Best after 2018.
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.”
Home of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.