Winemaker Notes
#25 James Suckling Top 100 Wines of the World 2025
#4 James Suckling Top 100 Wines of the USA 2025
The 2022 Mineral Springs Ranch Pinot Noir is a wine that starts quietly, but gradually draws you in until you never want to let go. Its aromas begin with familiar notes of ripe red cherry and red plum, then reveal more intriguing layers like white peppercorn, roasted red pepper flake, and red raspberry seed. On the palate, it offers a generous mix of red alpine berries and wild currants, complemented by captivating hints of palo santo and propolis, a rich, herbal exudate from honey bees. Structured and vibrant, this is a wine that will be remembered and discussed for years to come.
Blend: 100% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
The tension and linearity of this wine are incredible, as fresh, vivid fruit flavors ride an electric wave of bracing acidity from the first whiff to the long, lingering finish. Layers of haunting mushroom, iron and bay leaf nuances meet cranberries, sour cherries, rhubarb and black tea flavors that linger and echo after the last sip.
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Vinous
The 2022 Pinot Noir Mineral Springs Ranch is spicy, with nuances of white pepper, dusty rose and dried strawberries. Its soft texture offers a tart core of fruit to balance as crisp mineral tones and inner florals arch across the palate. Structured yet balanced and long, this 2022 finishes with admirable length and a sour citrus tinge that adds freshness. Patience is suggested. Rating: 94+
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant and tart with acidity, this red offers well-sculpted cherry and cranberry flavors highlighted by savory tea and tarragon tones that build toward lively tannins. Drink now through 2032.
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Jeb Dunnuck
A medium, matte-red color, the 2022 Pinot Noir Mineral Springs Ranch is ripe with autumnal spiced aromas of baked cherries, mushroom-covered earth, walnut, and baking spice. The palate is medium-bodied, with ripe tannins and a more modest feel through the finish.
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.