Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Tarry and a touch foresty, this wine has a generous red cherry note filigreed with a whiff of smoke. It delivers its flavors with poise and grace, black cherry lingering with a tension derived from vinous, tree bark elements and a hint of tar.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From the estate's oldest, high elevation, "Pommard clone" vines, the WillaKenzie's 2010 Pinot Noir Aliette delivers and umami-rich amalgam of roasted red meats and shitake mushrooms allied to fresh, tart-edged cherry and plum. Here the spice from barrel is well-integrated into a fine-grained and dense yet far from heavy palate. Black tea, moss, and forest floor notes emerge with a bit of airing, lending a sense of surprising but positive evolution, while salinity serves for welcome saliva-inducement in a downright gripping finish. This impressive bottling should develop even more depth with a few years in bottle and reward return visit through at least 2020, and hopefully (as well as quite possibly) beyond.
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Wine Spectator
Sleek, transparent and silky in texture, offering black cherry, espresso and subtle smoke notes on a delicate frame, lingering easily and expressively. Drink now through 2018. 350 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.”
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.