tasting / savor / Oregon Pinot Noir
ALLURINGLY DARK, HERB-SEASONED NOSE, WITH A KIRSCH RICHNESS; LOTS OF RED- AND BLACK- BERRY FRUIT GIVEN A PULSE BY RED PLUM AND TANGY BERGAMOT; SILKY AND ENGAGING
delicacy, grace, and precision, in softly structured style, with a sweet, mouth-freshening finish. 2024–30. | 92 AR | Youthful mid-ruby in color. There’s a pleasing, red-berry fruit fragrance and a hint of vanilla oak, with a pleasantly ripe, juicy berry fruit quality to this wine, without any excessively overt oak influence, bringing a balance and freshness that makes it an enjoyably approachable dry red. 2024–25. | 89 DW | Floral (rose-petal) and ripe raspberry notes alongside a pinewood, resiny character, peppery spice, and a faint wisp of smoke. Dry tannins on the longish, bittersweet finish—it’s just a tad raw, slightly wild perhaps, but distinctive and not without charm. 2024–32. | 90
Ponzi Vineyards Reserve Pinot Noir Estate Grown Willamette Valley The Laurelwood District AVA 2019 (14% ABV)
| 90
AJ | Dark, dense black-red, not quite opaque but not far off. A little bit high-toned, and something a little dry and varnishy in the aromas, too— but also a tobacco mellowness and a plant- sweetness. An intriguing nose... let’s give it a little more air. Still a fair description ten minutes later. Rather sinewy and with some ghost leaf in the fruit; the oak a little too forceful. Ample and drinkable, nonetheless. 2024–29. | 87 AR | Medium-ruby and now starting to evolve to garnet at the rim of the glass. This shouts marked aromatics of cherry, light oak, and a suggestion of mint; taken aback at first, I liked how expressively the aromas shot out of the glass, while the fruit, also expressive, is less shouty, more restrained, with an appealing strawberry flavor underpinned by a minty note and buoyed by a firm-textured fruit quality in which the supporting elements are well-integrated. 2024–30. | 90 DW | Alluringly dark, herb-seasoned nose (dried herbes de Provence), with a kirsch richness; lots of red- and black-berry fruit given a pulse by red plum and tangy bergamot; silky of tannin and a long and engaging, complex, bittersweet finish. The most serious of the Laurelwood District flight, but retaining some levity: nothing pompous or ponderous here! 2024–32. | 93
Patricia Green Cellars Estate Vineyard Old Vine Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Ribbon Ridge 2021 (13.5% ABV)
| 90 AJ | Dark black-red. Sweet and warm: a big spray 214 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 87 | 2025
of raspberry. Open-pored and welcoming; not quite jammy, but certainly sweet; very Oregon, actually, for me, in its evocation of a languid autumn full of mists and fine rains and warm afternoons and rolling hills and the time to tell tales. These are the things I think of when I smell wines like this. Plenty of ripeness here, and some texture, too; if [the Brick House Evelyn’s Pinot Noir 2021] suggested higher altitude, here we are protected and low. Sunny and warm. Lush and open: delicious. Enjoy the ripe raspberry and plum, and there’s enough shaping tannin and bonded acidity to keep you coming back for more. 2024–30. | 92 AR | A healthy, youthful ruby in color, this is pleasingly fresh if quite broad in aroma, but showing fruit over oak and a hint of herb; it’s nicely full-flavored, with seamless red-berry fruit and sub-threshold oak nicely put together, pleasing berry fruit, nicely underlining acidity, no overt oak—a wine with the right things in the right place that’s almost self-deprecatingly introvert, yet at the same time, with balance and drinkability, very likeable. 2024–28. | 90 DW | Some thickly sweet fruit and oak on the nose and somewhat bristling and foursquare: this is no agile dancer, although the quality of tangy, orange-pithy bittersweetness and a complexing earthiness brings life and interest to the finish; just at an awkward stage, perhaps? 2024–32. | 88
Domaine Drouhin Oregon Laurene Willamette Valley Dundee Hills 2021 (14.1% ABV)
| 90
AJ | Clear, dark black-red. Zippy raspberry with quiet root spice: lots of fruit appeal here. Excellent. Rhubarb, too, and apricot. Exciting, fruit-fest flavors, as the nose suggested; plump and mouthfilling. Lovely intrinsic sweetness to those fruits, and they have purity and length, too. Just a little more structuring tannin and vinous sinew would be welcome. One of those bounding, exuberant labrador wines that would be even better if it could just calm down a little. So much to enjoy, though! 2024–30. | 90 AR | Medium-ruby in color, with a healthy, youthful hue, this is still quite youthful in its aromatic profile, showing a degree of berry- fruit fragrance, underscored by fresh herbal notes, too; there’s some attractive, mid-palate cherry-sweet ripeness of fruit, a hint of herb, too, and as you turn the wine around in the mouth, that sweetness gradually turns to savory as the double-whammy of fresh acidity and ever-so- slightly chewy tannin do their job of putting the fruit into the context of drinking with food; something that this wine is clearly made for. 2024–29. | 93 DW | Plentiful cherry and plum in fairly luscious style, blanketed with sweet vanilla oak and rather forceful alcohol on the nose and, as the wine progresses, a spirity finish. 2024–30. | 87
Adelsheim Laurel Leaf Vineyard Willamette Valley Laurelwood 2021 (13% ABV)
| 90
AJ | The clearest and lightest of its peers: a deep scarlet. Another wine whose relatively subdued fruit seems shadowed by oak at this stage—
perhaps a shame. A banana note also, adding sweetness to the cherry. The palate is just a little dry-fruited, but it has considerable grace and elegance—and restraint. Part of that dryness are the tannins but I’d still much rather have them than not. Redcurrant fruits, here, which makes a welcome change to all the cherry and raspberry. Very digestible. 2024–29. | 90 AR | This is relatively pale in color, but no more so than you might expect of a youthful Pinot Noir. The aromas show a combination of nicely integrated oak and dark-berry fruit in the right proportion, even if the oak-vanilla is a tad prominent at this point in time; and when you taste, the same proportions are nicely measured in the flavors of juicy-textured cherry, affirmed in a positive sense by background oak-spice and underlined by a nice structure of freshness and tannin, bringing it to savory conclusion. 2024–30. | 91 DW | Some earthy tones here: beetroot and pomegranate as well as cherry and red plum and bergamot—this is recognizably Pinot in flavor and also in feel, with an agile suppleness and fleshiness to a bright, juicy, slightly candied, medium-length finish. Again, very pleasantly accessible, if not built for the long haul. 2024–28. | 88
Trisaetum Estates Reserve Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Ribbon Ridge 2021 (13.3% ABV)
| 90
AJ | Dark black-red, though not quite the darkest of the Ribbon Ridge run (second-darkest). Gosh: toffee. Very different from its peers. The big sweet. Ditto ten minutes later. Juicy, lively, sweet- fruited, balanced with soft, accommodating acidity and a little tentative tannin. Much more serious on the palate, thus, than the nose suggested; it drinks well. But not the subtlest wine on the table. 2024–28. | 88 AR | A vivid, deep ruby. The aromas of this youthful Pinot Noir are distinct and powerful and could only be Pinot Noir, with fresh mulberries and an underlying floral note; it’s a wine that’s very different—uniquely Oregon, dare one say—as it just couldn’t be Burgundy… or maybe it could; either way, there’s a lot going on in flavor terms, with plenty of ripe mulberry-sweet fruit cut by that typically incisive mulberry-like acidity; that brings a freshness and backbone to a firm- structured red in which the tannins are slightly drying on the finish. 2024–30. | 91 DW | Cherry bakewell—almonds and marzipan and cherry jam; intense but none the worse for it; there’s a certain lipsmacking chewiness and lively acid tang to hold and frame the fruit through the quite long, and pleasingly sappy, finish. 2024–32. | 90
Hundred Suns Wine Old Eight Cut Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Willamette Valley 2021 (13.9% ABV)
| 89
AJ | Exuberantly deep and dark scarlet, shading to black-scarlet at the core. Sweet and superficially enticing, but a touch vegetal (sweetcorn). Clears a little with air, and the cherry starts to sing... and then ten minutes later, it is very attractively perfumed and full of cherry
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