Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Hibiscus and perfectly ripe strawberries, like the best parcel in a top Tokyo department store. Hints of crushed stone and some lemon grass. Forest floor and some fresh mushroom, too. Full-bodied with fine, polished tannins that are layered and velvety. The finish goes on for minutes. Yet there is so much more to come. Better after 2026 but already a joy to drink.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby, the 2018 Pinot Noir Mineral Springs Ranch has pure scents of blueberries, cranberries, licorice, cured meats and burnt orange peel. The medium-bodied palate is powerful, silky and refreshing, with a flourish of dark spices across the long finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
The biodynamically farmed grapes bring layered and detailed flavors. Raspberry purée adds intensity to the fruit, with accents of toasted grain and lemon. Some 30% of the ferment included whole clusters, and 40% of the wine was barreled in new French oak. The long, drying finish adds highlights of chamomile tea. Editors' Choice.
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Wine Spectator
Structured yet elegant, this unfurls with raspberry and plum flavors that are layered with dusky spice and savory tea notes, building tension toward fine-grained tannins. Drink now through 2028.
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.