Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas of plums and ocean breeze follow through to full to medium body, soft and velvety tannins and a savory finish. Hints of cedar and chocolate. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
Classy in style and classic in flavors, this single vineyard selection offers strawberry fruit with highlights of melon and orange peel. It's dappled with notes of coffee and cola, smoothed out from 16 months in French oak, one-fifth of it new.
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Wine Spectator
Lithe, deftly balanced and generous, with plum and blackberry flavors, picking up roasted tomato notes as the finish lingers against fine tannins. Best from 2018 through 2024.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2014 Pinot Noir Temperance Hill Vineyard has plenty of wild strawberry, raspberry and blackcurrant pastilles on the nose, demonstrating more complexity and vivacity than the 2013 at the moment. The palate is medium-bodied with a slight chewiness on the entry. Here, a mixture of red and black fruit, quite sappy in the mouth with well-judged acidity, a touch of spice with good depth and grip on the finish. There are a couple of rough edges to iron out, but otherwise this is a decent Pinot Noir that should drink well over several years.
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.