Winemaker Notes
It matches perfectly with grilled salmon, meats, vegies and potato salad. Ready to drink, the 2009 Pinot Noir Temperance Hill will evolve over 8-10 years.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
High-toned rosy scents belie this wine's depth of flavor. The flavors are dark with black cherry accents, their density suggesting an age-worthy wine. It has the stuffing for something substantial, like roast duck.
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Wine Spectator
This earthy wine shows a silky feel to its flavors of berry, orange peel and tea, which come together with mineral notes to make the finish lively and expressive. Needs time to settle into itself. Best from 2013 through 2019. 920 cases made.
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.”
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.