Winemaker Notes
Saffron Fields sits in the middle of the marine sediment, solitary atop a unique saddle at 400 feet above sea-level in the Southeastern corner of the Yamhill-Carlton AVA. This forms a natural amphitheater which traps heat throughout the growing season, creating unusually robust, dark and brooding Pinot Noir.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Dark and red cherries in a very modern, fruit-proud style that has creamy oak-spice, layered into ripe rich fruit. The palate has a silky, fleshy and very concentrated feel with assertive, driving tannins and a dark-plum and cherry-fruited finish. Plenty to like here.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Lots of plum, violets, dried herbs, and forest floor notes emerge from the 2017 Pinot Noir Saffron Fields Vineyard. Made in a pretty, medium-bodied, elegant style, it has rocking complexity, silky tannins, and as with all these 2017s, beautiful balance. Give it a decant if drinking any time soon, and I suspect a year or three in the cellar will do it well. It should have 8-10 years of overall longevity.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Pinot Noir Saffron Fields Pommard Clone is scented of blueberries, blackberries and red berry hints with notes of tar, scorched earth and dried flowers. It's medium-bodied and ultra silky with juicy but youthfully shy fruits and a long finish. Give it another year in bottle.
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.”
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.