Winemaker Notes
Symbolizing a winter evening, Slope exhibits flavors of blueberry pie, fresh roasted coffee and moral mushroom. The mid-palate has a weight that is combined with balanced lightness and a red fruit element that almost surprises the taster—it's a bit like a backbeat in a song, once you hear it the song pulls instantly together and requires pressing the repeat button.
Vegan
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium ruby-purple in color, the 2014 Pinot Noir Slope is a little closed at this youthful stage, offering glimpses of black raspberries, wild strawberries and pomegranate with suggestions of fertile loam, dried leaves, moss and truffles. The medium-bodied palate is firm and broody, revealing glimpses of the fragrant earth and red fruit layers that should blossom over time, which are now firmly encased by chewy tannins and racy acid.
Rating:93+ -
Wine Spectator
Focused and refined, with rose petal and raspberry aromas and well-built cherry, sweet anise and spice flavors that finish with polished tannins.
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.”
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.