Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Balance, depth, detail and elegance are the hallmarks here. Pretty raspberry/cherry fruit comes up quickly, framed in proportionate acids and tannins. Streaks of malt powder, caramel and mocha weave through a long, subtle finish. Drink now through 2025.
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James Suckling
Very perfumed with flower, peach and strawberry character. Full body, tight palate and a big mouthfeel on the finish. Shows structure and richness.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2014 Reserve Pinot Noir comes from sections that tend to stand out in the vineyard and are kept separate during fermentation - looking for length and concentration. Matured in around 30% new oak and the rest neutral, it has a lively bouquet with raspberry jus and crushed strawberry with a hint of a vanilla coming through with aeration. The palate is medium-bodied with fine, juicy tannin, plenty of crushed strawberry and cranberry notes, a hint of spice and cardamom with a well-balanced, quite dense finish that lingers nicely in the mouth. It is not overly complex in style, but the delineation and focus deserves a round of applause.
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Wine & Spirits
This round wine delivers generous cherry fruit with a peppery twist. That exuberant fruit will win you over with its simple, vibrant energy. (2,008 cases)
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Wine Spectator
Fresh, inviting and open-textured, layering the plum, currant and floral flavors with lightly prickly tannins, coming together harmoniously on the finish. Drink now through 2022. 2,008 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.”
Home of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.