Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir Estate Cuvée is dark and savory on the nose: red cherry and cranberry are accented by tones of tar, forest floor and amaro. The medium-bodied palate explodes with generous red fruit and complex spicy accents. It's structured by finely astringent tannins and fireworks of fresh acidity, and it has a long, expressive finish.
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James Suckling
Aromas of dried cherries and herbs lead to a palate of cherries and raspberries with hints of spices. A balanced, medium-bodied wine with smooth tannins and a seductive finish. Starting in 2018, production of this wine was cut in half to bring more of the single-block vineyards into the blend to provide a better representation of the estate. Drink or hold.
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Wine Spectator
The 2021 Pinot Noir Estate Cuvee pours a deep ruby-purple hue and offers aromas of ripe red and black berries, dusty earth, and pine. Generous and rounded in its fruit, it’s medium to full-bodied, with a supple texture, sweet tannins, and notes of mocha on the finish.
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.