Winemaker Notes
The 2018 Reserve Pinot Noir opens with aromatics of ripe plum, dried bing cherries, baking spice, and earth. The palate is supple, carrying flavors of cola and bing cherry, with hints of cedar and flint. This wine can be enjoyed now; however, it was constructed for longevity with proper cellaring.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Impressive clarity and concentration here, as well as freshness. The ripe dark cherries are nicely preserved. The palate adds some dark chocolate and spiced blueberries to the mix and very attractive, grainy tannins run long. Ripe, but balanced.
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Wine Spectator
Refined and pinpoint in structure, with vibrant cherry and pomegranate flavors that are laced with spice tea and orange blossom notes, lingering toward fine-grained tannins.
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Wine Enthusiast
This was fermented with native yeast in stainless steel, then aged for a year in 30% new oak barrels. Tight and brambly, with tart red-berry fruit, it shows an herbal edge along with details of green tea and green olives.
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Wine & Spirits
This wine has a plush texture that hints at the rich soils of the estate. Its flavors are just as lavish, framed by dark oak character. Cellar to let the oak knit.
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.