Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine's aromas of lilacs, goat cheese, fresh bread, oregano, raspberries and beeswax bring on the urge to find a picnic blanket and a place to stretch out. Tart raspberry and lemon flavors join forces with notes of saline and espresso. Restrained alcohol, zippy acidity and silky tannins make this a smooth sipping experience.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Entirely from estate fruit from what used to be called Dundee Hills Vineyard, the 2021 Pinot Noir Dundee Hills Vineyards pours a medium ruby hue and reveals aromas of cherry liqueur, wild herbs, and fresh flowers. Ripe and medium-bodied, with juicy fruit up front while having tangy, fresh acidity, it offers fine tannins and a rounded mouthfeel.
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.