Winemaker Notes
Serve with braised meats, stews, sausages, mushroom dishes, or cassoulet - essentially the umami foods. It can be enjoyed in its youth after decanting for two hours or more and will develop over a decade.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Mark Vlossak leases eight acres of this biodynamically farmed vineyard in the McMinnville AVA. A faint cola spice adorns its dark fruit, the flavors as lifted as they are saturated. The fruit brightens up in the glass with air, leaving an impression of charm and lightness.
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James Suckling
Very pretty aromas of dark berries and flowers follow through to a medium body, firm and silky tannins and a fresh and clean finish.
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Wine Spectator
Light, open-textured and distinctive, with damson plum and floral aromas and flavors, lingering on the supple finish. Drink now through 2020.
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.”
Stretching southwest from the city of McMinnville, the AVA with the same name covers about 40,000 acres across 20 miles until it meets the Van Duzer Corridor. This corridor is the only break in the Coast Range whose gap allows the cool Pacific Ocean air to flow eastward into the Willamette Valley.
The Pacific's moderating winds hit McMinnville’s south and southeast facing slopes where cool-climate varieties—namely Pinot noir and Pinot blanc thrive on ridges at between 200 to 1,000 feet in elevation.
Soils here are primarily uplifted marine sedimentary loam and silt, with alluvial formations; McMinnville receives less rainfall than its neighbors to the east because it is situated in the rain shadow of the Coast Range.