Winemaker Notes
#34 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2021
At the Slope, the Zena Crown Vineyard shifts to face primarily south, encouraging perfect ripeness and maximum phenolic development. Symbolizing a dark winter’s night, Slope exhibits aromas of chocolate, sage, bay leaf, and smoke cinnamon with flavors of wild morel, allspice, and bacon. The wine balloons out to a greater extent, past the mid-palate, then finishes with cleansing acidity. A Pinot that reminds Winemaker, Shane Moore, of instrumental dance music, great for the long nights of winter.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Sleek and agile, yet well-structured, with graceful raspberry, mineral and spiced tea flavors that build richness and tension on the way to refined tannins. Drink now through 2028.
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James Suckling
This offers attractively earthy and spicy nuances across ripe and rich dark fruit, such as plums and brambleberries. The palate holds such impressive depth and volume. Really rich, silky tannins here, carrying red and dark-fruit flavors long. Bold but drinkable pinot. Fine now.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Pale ruby, the 2017 Pinot Noir Slope has fine accents of cinnamon, autumn leaves and potpourri with savory red and black berry fruit. The concentrated, medium-bodied palate has a compelling dichotomy of firm, broody fruits and fresh, spicy uplift, and it finishes long.
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.